Finding Space From Yoga

When the thing you love becomes your money maker and you start feeling frustrated, angry, and burned out

How do you find space from something when you are still expected to keep doing it or be near it? This is something I have been grappling with lately in my life.

The thing I’d like space from is teaching yoga. This is a little complicated because I own a yoga studio and am the face of the business. People really like my classes and everyone is very used to me being here. A lot of people are attached to me and my style of teaching and this creates a lot of internal pressure.

The Burn Out…

When I opened the yoga studio I was the only person doing everything and I taught 6-classes a week for over a year by myself. This led to serious burn out. I was very particular in who I wanted to come into my studio and teach since it was by “baby” and I had expectations about how I wanted the place to be. I finally opened to the idea of other teachers and started to receive some help. At first it was just one person who covered my weekend class and I was still teaching too many classes. I also sometimes taught twice a day, once at 9 am and then at 5 pm and that really hurt me. I realized I needed to find someone to cover my Tuesday evening class. I eventually found this help and slowly added other classes to the schedule that were not taught by me.

While this did help, it was a little bit too late. I didn’t realize how burned out I was and in fact kept going for another year without awareness of how much yoga was starting to hurt me. See one issue with my teaching is that I was doing most of the poses while teaching. This was the way I learned at my school and I fell into the habit of teaching this way. It was easier to do the movements to keep track of the cueing and people seemed to like looking at me for confirmation on how to do the pose. It helped me stay in a flow state and was a crutch in some ways. Along the way I got hurt at one point and couldn’t do the poses and so had to only verbally teach. That felt really hard and awkward and as soon I healed, I went back to teaching as I had before.

The Signs Said…

As time went on I noticed that I really didn’t feel good teaching yoga. It’s very hard to be a teacher who does the poses, leads the cueing and breathing, looks at the students, and hopes to maintain some semblance of the pose within their own body. It’s really not smart to do it this way long term. What tends to happen is that not enough focus is put on my own body and I end up hurting myself by doing the poses. The point of yoga is to come deeply into your body and breathe and feel the pose, and that’s just not possible when you are teaching the class.

I ended up hurting myself again last December and this forced me to only verbally teach. Not doing the poses while teaching was a little bit of a relief and the more I did it, the more confident I felt doing it. But I still felt stressed about teaching yoga and found myself dreading teaching classes, even though I didn’t have to do the poses. This led me to finally acknowledge that I was struggling with burn out and I vocalized that I needed to figure out a way to have space from yoga. It wasn’t just the physical aspects of yoga, it was deeper, I was burned out emotionally, energetically, and spiritually.

It All Started With My Personal Practice

Before opening the yoga studio I had a strong personal practice. I really enjoyed yoga and looked forward to my practice every morning. Others in my household were inspired by my level of dedication to my practice and this is probably why my husband thought it was a good idea to open a yoga studio. He thought, “she likes doing yoga, maybe we should open a yoga studio!” What happened is that what I once loved and enjoyed now became a job and something I did too much. As soon as I started teaching at that level I no longer had a personal practice and on any days off, I avoided yoga entirely. I just didn’t want to do it. I didn’t fully acknowledge the sadness of losing my personal practice until a few months ago. When you choose to do something you love as a way to make money, it can be a slippery slope.

Where I am now is in a state of needing space. I found teachers to cover teaching all of my classes for the month of February and I hope in that time I can feel better about yoga. The hardest thing is that what I used to love is now hurting me on multiple levels, yet I am still in a business that relies on me keeping this all going. I also fear that if I stop teaching yoga that people won’t keep coming to the studio. I have so many people tell me they love my classes and that I am the best teacher or their favorite teacher and this creates a lot of pressure on me. Some people might thrive on this type of compliment but for me, it creates a sense of expectation to keep showing up a certain way. What I know is that I can’t keep doing things the way I have. I have to take a break. I don’t want my feelings of anger and resentment to come out while I am teaching or just be felt or imparted energetically.

So finding space while still in business is tricky. I am seeing how it feels to not teach for a month and will go from there. My intuition tells me that I might only be able to handle teaching once a week, if even that. It just hurts my body physically right now to do yoga and the thought of teaching creates stress and anxiety within me. I wish I didn’t feel this way but at least I’ve addressed it and am sitting with all the emotions. I’d really just prefer to have a personal yoga practice, maybe occasionally take someone else’s class, and not be a yoga teacher.

My Real Passion Lies Elsewhere

I have many other talents and skills and yoga just happened to be something I was naturally good at. I have learned a lot from opening this business and teaching and I’ve grown so much. It’s ok that I’ve realized I don’t want to be a yoga teacher long term and I am taking steps to phase myself out. People think that my passion is yoga since I opened a yoga studio, but it’s really not. My husband saw this as an opportunity and we took it. It’s been successful and this business can continue, but maybe not with me being the main focus or teacher. There are many teachers in this area and I will focus on attracting new teachers as well. Anyone can teach yoga, but not everyone can run a business or do sound and energy healing and deeper facilitative experiences. I really desire to do more work with my training in music therapy, sound healing, and spiritual guidance. I want to lead workshops, retreats, and do sound baths in other spaces and locations. I’d like to feel free to travel and explore and not be bound to one area. So all in the right timing things are unfolding.

Deeper Meaning of Yoga

There is a deeper issue I’ve been having with teaching yoga. It is the way we’ve appropriated it in the West. It has become purely a workout or exercise and the main goals of yoga are being completely missed. The intention of doing a physical yoga practice is to get your body in a state that you can then sit and meditate for longer periods of time. Then you can experience the deeper subtle energy practices of yoga. Yoga is an ancient practice that extends off of the mat, it is a path of self-transformation that encompasses teachings, practices, sacred texts, that help to cultivate wisdom, balance, and awareness. Obviously I have not brought these aspects into my classes because I live in an area where it seemed best to go slow on talking about the more spiritual or energetic aspects of yoga. It was easier to just teach a class that mainly focused on the body and the breath. Whether a person is aware or not the act of doing yoga does get your energy moving internally and this does have a positive effect. If I am going to maintain a connection with yoga and teach it, I will need to dive deeper into other aspects of what yoga has to offer. The fear is that people may be turned off and some may stop coming. I guess you can’t please everyone and time will tell.

I continue to be vulnerable and express myself along this journey. This is a way that I can process my emotions, make changes, and perhaps help someone else out there who might be facing a similar situation. Being brave enough to put my thoughts out there is important and I will continue to be the change I wish to see in the world. I have deep gratitude for yoga and am glad that people are doing this practice, I just need to heal my relationship to it and find a new way to share it with others.