OM Yoga UK - August 2017

Te acher zone

Teacher’s Tales:

A

h, the Lesser-Spotted All-Knowing Yoga Teacher. You

are more likely to have vegan rainbow chocolate

hand-delivered to your door by a unicorn on a magic

flying yoga mat.

The All-Knowing Yoga Teacher does not exist.

I’m confident that any yoga teacher reading this will feel a sense

of recognition here, but it might come as a surprise to any yoga

students out there who may have at some stage assumed that their

teacher who seems so calm, serene and ‘together’, or who mentions

anatomy in their teaching cues, must have the answers to life, the

universe and everything.

The amount of knowledge yoga teachers are sometimes

presumed to have can be alarming to say the least.

Naively, this came as a shock to me when I started teaching

because, though I had asked my teachers questions before, they

had been about poses or something we had been practicing in the

class. I did not expect them to be a counsellor and it never occurred

to me to ask about say, medical remedies, because, well – they’re

not a doctor – they’re a yoga teacher. (Unless, of course you know

your yoga teacher is a doctor, then fair enough!)

It often begins as soon as you have completed your 200-hour

training or even during your training. It starts innocently enough –

you’re at a party, it comes up in conversation that you are studying

It’s okay not to know everything, By Paula Hines

to become a yoga teacher and the next thing you know, a stranger

decides to ask you about their dodgy knee.

Questions about body parts are most common. Not unusual, one

might think. But questions like, “I’ve got this pain in my shoulder,

do you know what it is?” are the sort of thing I don’t even pretend

to know the answer to. The kinds of non-yoga related questions

you may be asked can be (and often are) pretty wide-ranging. A

few examples of questions I’ve been asked before and after (and

occasionally, during) a class include:

“I’ve got a bee sting that’s sore – what should I do about it?”

“My nose has been itchy all week – any tips?”

“Can yoga be used as part of an exorcism?”

Yes, some questions can seem amusing, but on a more serious note,

“I don’t know,” is a valid answer. It may not be the answer the person

asking wants, but honesty is the best policy. After all, the All-Knowing

Yoga Teacher does not exist.

Paula Hines is a London-based yoga teacher and writer

(ucanyoga.com).

Te acher zone

The all-seeing yoga teacher