A Dialogue with Nixa about Learning and Teaching

This was an e-Dialogue I recently had with my friend Nixa who is a wonderful yoga teacher. If you ever get a chance to check out her teaching I am highly recommending it. The subject of the discussion was teaching and learning and it will be obvious to you how passionate Nixa is about studying, practicing, learning and teaching.

Enjoy.

upsidedowncarl

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Carl: Hi Nixa, thanks for letting me hang out and join you. I enjoyed the process and being there for your teaching both times. I only wish I was able to stay for the whole thing.

Nixa: hey carl, i was actually wondering, with plenty to do and family at home...why do you stay? i was curious and your email prompted me with the opportunity to ask. i don't mind at all, but the thought had crossed my mind.

all shri,
:-)nixa

Carl: There are times like last night when I have an 8:30PM appointment and so I figured it was a more productive use of my time to be there, hear and soak in the good stuff you were offering for the time I could be there than it would be to sit in a Barnes and Noble or a Starbucks reading until the appointment. In other words the simple facts of the life of a yoga teacher are the answer. Although one day I will be able to have the maha siddhi of dissapparating and reapparating, and I will go back home on some of those breaks and be able to return in time for the next appointment. Short of that, I would accept a flying broomstick or my own personal helicopter. I think either would do the trick just about well enough.

But it is also nice to be around good teaching and that kind of learning environment. Last year at about this time I had the opportunity to sit in on a training program that Yoga Works lead for the teachers of Be Yoga and Karma Yoga after they bought those studios. It was a great experience to be in that kind of learning environment again. And when I got to sit in on Leslie Kaminoff's anatomy course it was also pretty cool going over all that information even if it was for the 50th time.

In other words, I 100% agree with what you said that first night when you told the students that the step they are making right now is, perhaps a first step, but that the learning continues for as long as you stay focused and interested. I feel like my teaching has grown so much in the last two years and I know two years ago I felt that as well and the previous years before that.

I remember five or six years ago thinking I was a pretty decent teacher but knowing that the guys who I really looked up to as teachers had been doing it for decades and how much would change as I continued to develop my practice and my teaching. I still feel that way.

I feel most lucky for the time I got to spend with Andre Bernard who was not a yoga teacher but what he was teaching was in some sense really yoga even if he was not aware of it. I only met him when he was pretty old and by then he had forgotten more about movement and the body than most people will ever know but he still knew more than anyone I have ever encountered. In spite the depth of his knowledge, I feel like the most special thing I got from him was what a great person he was, what a great human being. At the time he was in his 80's.

He died almost three years ago. And I know that before I met him a lot of the people who I looked up to were people who were sort of arrogant and thought highly of themselves in part because of how much they thought they knew.

Andre knew way more but did not care about anything besides helping people learn. In myself I still see a lot of that kind of arrogance that was present in some of the teachers I used to admire. It takes time to loose stuff like that and all those insecurities. But I know that if there is value to me or my teaching it is definitely not because of how much I know, but more for how skillfully I am able to get out of the way and allow the practitioners to see themselves for themselves. I am not always successful but it is certainly worth trying.

Wow, that was a mouthful. :o)

In Oneness and peace.

C

Nixa: ...and that certainly answered the question. i'm glad we have a situation that we can observe one another, have the strong teacher-student relationship.... and continually grow. not all fields/relationships have that pattern. we're blessed. when it's in your blood and soul, what else can you do?

I picked up BKS Iyengar's newest book, Light on Life, this morning and read the preface. The last line in the preface made me cry, sweetly. He said, " It is my profound hope that my ending can be your beginning". And then I turned to the very last paragraph of the book:

"Hokkusei, the great Japanese artist, said when he was already in his seventies, that given another ten years, he would be a great artist. I salute this humility. Let me conclude by quoting the words of the Spanish artist Goya who, in the seventy-eighth year of his life, when he was already deaf and debilitated, said, Aun aprendo--- 'I'm still learning'. It is true for me too. I will never stop learning, and i have tried to share some of these lessons with you. I do pray that my ending will be your beginning. The great rewards and the countless blessings of a life spent following the Inward Journey await you."

Saprema,
Nixa

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