How I Honour Yoga As An Asana Facilitator
I went to my first hot yoga class in high school and it wasn’t until 10 years or so that I did my first teacher training. I saw myself as a student and I continue to see myself in this role. It wasn’t until a studio owner and friend suggested it to me that I thought it would be an opportunity to learn more about the practice and to meet new people. Teaching my first yoga class was electrifying. I was nervous but so proud of myself for holding space for people to move and to go within.
I taught the neighbours in my apartment, I taught my co-workers, I taught my YTT cohort, I taught yoga in exchange for learning tarot - before or after work, I taught whenever I could! When I wasn’t teaching, I was practicing. And while I learned about asana sequencing, I also had so much unlearning to do too.
I’ve been thinking more about my relationship to my yoga asana practice, and these are some of the ways that I currently honour yoga as a yoga asana facilitator:
I teach what I know. I don't pretend to teach what I don't.
I am transparent about who I learn from and what I have learned.
I am aware that what I learn may change, and I continue to educate myself.
I know trauma-informed and anti-racist education is essential to my yoga study.
I learn about the colonial and political history of yoga so that I remain critical and do my part to reduce commodification, cultural appropriation, and ancestral trauma that is inherited as the yoga that is practiced in the west.
I do not promote or see yoga as a way to lose weight.
I do not believe yoga is for bougie skinny people.
I honour the truth that every body is different, and it is ok.
I honour all eight limbs of yoga, where the physical limb is one part of the path.
I honour the practice as an asana facilitator who creates space for students to embody intuition.
This has been something that I’ve been thinking about as I think about what I share about my practice. I used to share much more of my asana practice on my social media, but I stopped after feeling like I was only contributing to the problem of how we perceive yoga in the west - which is asana, and asana that fits into Western ideals of beauty, fitness, and health.
I’ve recently realized that I want to share more of my practice again. The insecurities and the fears of how it may be perceived no longer hold me back because I know who I am as a yoga asana facilitator.
In how I honour yoga through how I hold space in class, I show my values to my community. And those are not the values of using the practice to be strutting peacocks according to a narrow definition of strength or beauty and to punish the body into shapes that do not serve our well-being.
I work with yoga students 1:1 and I have an online yoga club where I teach weekly vinyasa and yin classes and hold special workshops on Radical Rest.
Written By: Irene Lo
