Question – Discipline and Meditation

My husband and I attend a new studio that recently opened after we moved to a new town. It is much more “relaxed” than our old studio, with people coming and going from class (even during postures) to refill water, etc. We are really grateful to have a studio at all after several months without one, and the owner and instructors are wonderful, but we also feel distracted at times by all the movement and fussing. I always try to think about the distractions as a challenge that I should try to overcome…but it doesn’t usually work. I would LOVE to be an undistractable yogini, never letting anyone steal my peace (as B says). It is hard to know what to do, because I feel people are more vocal in general about the practice being too rigid and instructors being too militant, making those of us who crave predictability seem too strict and uninviting. I can see how it would be a fine lint to walk for teachers/studio owners.

Hi Kathleen, bunni and Kristin

There is a belief ‘out there’ that is this: In order to have a well disciplined studio one has to be rigid or militant or strict. The tone of those descriptions often tends to be synonymous with control and harshness.

I believe that you can have a friendly completely allowing studio where people are well disciplined, they don’t wipe sweat, they don’t leave the room (unless there’s an emergency) and they follow instructions, there’s no talking, but it’s neither oppressive nor dictatorial.

There are hints of this in some of the above descriptions.

I have always striven for the ideal situation in my studios and have sought it out in studios that I visit (and helped nurture that in my teacher trainings). It’s about setting a culture, a way of practising. It’s about teaching with the right amount of suggestion in the instruction. The recited script does not do this.

What you say and what you don’t say are both equally important and determines the tone and informs everyone’s outcomes. Done well it will have people easily, willingly and without a hint of coercion, doing EXACTLY what you would like them to do in order to lead them through their practices (before, during and after poses).

It is possible that a person who gets up to leave the room can be barked at, told to leave and not come back, screamed at, embarrassed or humiliated publicly or have the door locked on them. Hmmmm. Very friendly eh? By the way, these are all things that actually do happen. I find that very surprising. Some teachers have given other teachers the feedback: “you need to be more bitch”. No wonder students complain.

On the flipside: That same student can get up to leave and be assessed visually or by a quick question by an empathic or understanding teacher … The issue can be dealt with right there or when they get back. Or even during savasana. Maybe the ideas will be floated about the principles of distraction, heat, feeling nauseous, the ability to develop self-discipline, listening to the body, why one stays in the room unless it is absolutely essential that they leave. There are plenty of things that could be said based on the context of the occurrence.

But … and this is important … rather than being a dressing down, a humiliation, an embarrassment, or totally overstepping the lines of human interaction and being inappropriate, one has the choice to treat everyone with dignity (which does not mean being a pushover) and create something of value (by talking thoughtfully on points of life, philosophy and yoga practice) while CREATING a culture of self-discipline, calm, quiet and a focused beneficial yoga practice! All this without necessarily singling out the ‘culprit’.

It is in this way that as a good teacher you can teach excellent breathing skills, the beauty of being in unison, the gift of listening to one’s own body, the way things should be when faced with choices about wiping sweat, leaving the room, lying down in between poses, talking in class, where and how long to wait to leave the room after class, where and how long to wait before entering the studio close to the end of a preceding class and so on and so on…

Set the culture right, instruct intelligently and with the outcome of helping everyone rather than pushing a barrow and there is almost NO TIME EVER that you have to tell anybody off, be strict or militant or manage those annoying things that seem to happen in the descriptions of studios above.

Amazingly all this CAN be done without a dossier of rules for anyone to read!

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂