december 2017 / january 2018yogajournal.com.sgBut he persisted, and I said yes, and we quickly fell into a
relationship. It was exciting to share love, community, and a
spiritual practice. After four months together, he met me on
a street corner with a bright flower. “I want you to move in
with me,” he said.
He could sense my hesitation.
“I’m so sure it will work out,” he nudged. “And if
it doesn’t, I’ll give you the apartment. You’re safe.”
But I wasn’t. Less than a year after moving in with
him, he grew distant. I began having panic attacks. I was
devastated, but not surprised, when he told me, “We need
to move out.” Of course, by “we” he meant me.
Over the following weeks, I discovered I was one of
several students he had pursued. I felt eviscerated. Part of
the sadness was loss of love; a lot of it was loss of trust.
I hadn’t even packed my possessions before he started
seeing a woman he’d met in another one of his meditation
classes. When I confronted him about the danger of dating
students, he told me that if I showed up to the meditation
group, he’d “shut it down.” I believed him. He was in the
position to ostracize me, so I stayed away.
For a few years, my sense of safety in both relationships
and in the spiritual community—at least the Buddhist
one—were ruined. I tried attending other classes but was
struck each time with immovable anxiety. I roamed around
feeling stuck in a personal bardo, the Buddhist term for
a space between one life and the next. To make matters
worse, I felt ashamed that I couldn’t just “get over it,” and I
was frustrated that the very activity I’d normally turn to for
healing—meditation—was now associated with pain.
In the past several years, the yoga world has been rocked
by ethically questionable behavior among powerful leaders.
It’s certainly not unheard of for a teacher and student to fall
in love after connecting in class—and some of those stories
have happy endings. But whenever yoga or meditation
teachers and their students become romantically involved,
the power imbalance combined with the vulnerability
associated with spiritual practice can make for a
complicated and potentially dangerous relationship—
especially for the student, says Judith Hanson Lasater, PhD,
veteran yoga teacher and author of Restore and Rebalance:
Yoga for Deep Relaxation. “A breakup can mean losing
not only a helpful asana or meditation class, but also an
emotional refuge,” she says. “Practices that were once
healing and even life-saving for students can become
tainted with pain.”
Still, spiritual communities are human ones, and
attraction between teachers and students is inevitable.
Given that, is it ever OK to act on such an attraction? And if
so, how can people in yoga communities—especially those
in leadership roles—address teacher-student relationships
in a way that fosters awareness and protects those
involved?The chemistry of love
and enlightenment
Codes of conduct around teacher-student and manager-
subordinate relationships are explicitly spelled out in most
university and industry settings, and often written into
employment contracts. By and large, romantic relationships
are forbidden, and violating this rule can have serious
consequences. In fewer cases, such relationships are
strongly discouraged and held to strict standards regarding
disclosure. For example, the American Counseling
Association prohibits therapists from having intimate
relationships with clients, their romantic partners, or
their family members for a period of five years following
professional contact—and even then the relationship must
be reported to the Association.Yoga and meditation practices have therapeutic and
educational characteristics, yet the teacher-student dynamic
is even more fraught because of their spiritual nature, says
Vatsal Thakkar, MD, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry“In high-emotion settings that elicit strong
physical responses, like a yoga or meditation
class, the sensations of relaxation and bliss can
be wrongly attributed to a specific person.”