Teaching Yoga with Your Best Self

Today on Alive in the Fire, Yani shares a few thoughts about teaching yoga from an authentic space...

The key to being your best [teaching] Self, is just be your Self.

When I first began teaching, I was exposed to numerous teaching styles, techniques, and traditions.

The greatest support someone gave me was to invite me to just be, and speak, my own truth—to be what I already am. Without having to change anything that didn’t feel authentic. Suddenly, like magic, I was allowed to be me. To be real. 

When you teach, speak your truth— everything that you are, everything that you do. And keep doing just that.

There will be voices that arise. Some of those will speak light, love, compassion, and support; others will not be so light, not so kind, not so supportive. Whether those voices arise from external forces, or within, I invite you, too, to be—and to speak—your truth. Shine your light.

Your light in this life, your energy, your power, your magic— only you can contribute that to the world around you. So by making an effort to replicate someone else’s light, you take away from your own light shining.

Shine your light. Speak your truth. Shine with those around you, but shine in your way. Your way is needed.

And in sharing your most authentic genuine Self, you add to the wholeness of what all this is, this world. It is your wholeness—you, your teaching, your story, your light and your dark— that makes all this whole.

You will attract what is meant to come your way. And you are invited to stay there, sharing what you want, need, desire, and aspire your Self to be, in the space where you are needed.

The love, light, dark, empty, whole divine within me,

honors the love, light, dark, empty, whole, divine within you.

- Yani

Photos by Allie Kenyon, taken at Yoga By Kels.