On fearlessness

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over again to our own annihilation, can that which is indestructible be found in us.”

-- Buddhist teaching

The beginning of November marks the time, a year ago, that I set off for Costa Rica with a map, a backpack and a plan… Luckily, the backpack was well constructed, because the other two items went to hell pretty quickly. The happy ending to the rough start of that story, of course, was that the gravitational pull from Nosara Yoga Institute lured me in like a ship to the Bermuda triangle. I can’t speak for the boats, but I know that I was certainly not lost there. I was found.   

It has been almost a year since I began teaching yoga, and while I feel blessed and deeply nourished by the journey so far, that in no way has made it a completely smooth ride.

My first several months of teaching I was filled with fear. One of the major obstacles to pursuing a teacher training in the first place was that I felt nervous speaking in front of people. With a certification finally under my belt, I now felt even more nervous about what I would say when I finally got the courage to stand in front of a class.

Then there was the logistics of creating a class. Even though my body knew the practice intimately, directing others through familiar asanas felt like learning a new language. Would my directions be clear? Would I be able to discern right from left? Would I forget what I had planned? I would be instructing my students to link their movement to their breath, but would I be able to speak and breathe myself? (The answer to those questions, I would soon learn, depended entirely on the day and the class).

Then there were the familiar pangs of the desire for approval and the fear of rejection. Would anyone come to class? If they came, would they like it? If it was too hard, would my students hate me? If it was too easy, would they be bored? Will they like me? Will they come again? You see, as much as this practice is about dissolving ego, mine still raises hell on a regular basis.

All together, it’s been an incredible year. I feel like I’ve grown tremendously as a teacher and a student. It turns out the lessons I learn while teaching, are just a continuation of my own personal yoga practice. Just as I continue to grow every time I step on my mat and begin breathing deeply, I evolve every time I step in front of a class and ask others to do the same. Just as in my own personal practice, I have gained confidence and clarity, but I also make missteps, have moments and areas of weakness, and so keep myself humble.

I don’t experience the same level of nervousness prior to teaching, but I also remember what those early months felt like.  As another teaching says, “courage is not the absence of fear, but the determination to move beyond it.” And so, I keep moving on.