december 2017 / january 2018yogajournal.com.sgInsight Meditation Center and Against the Stream Buddhist
Meditation Society, Theravada Buddhist communities,
which both call for students to cease study with a teacher at
least three months before becoming romantically involved.
“In our trainings, we bar teachers from dating students
and encourage teachers to report feelings of attraction to
senior community members or the teacher’s council,” says
Dave Smith, meditation teacher and founder of Against the
Stream’s Nashville outpost. This holds teachers accountable
and gives them a place to process feelings (beyond the
cushion or mat) before acting on them. “You cannot use the
classroom as your dating pool,” says Smith.
To be sure, all members of a community can be affected
when teachers and students carry out visibly inappropriate
relationships, says Noah Levine, author of Dharma Punx
and founder of Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation
Society. “Just witnessing a crossing of these boundaries
can make you feel unsafe and confused. You might wonder,
who’s next?” Levine says. As one meditation student in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, told me, “I didn’t get involved
with my teacher, but I knew she dated her students—and
that made me uneasy. The studio was supposed to be a
sacred space. But I never said anything.”
It may seem logical to some that a yoga or meditation
studio is a prime place for meeting a partner who is of like
mind and spirit. Many insist that consciously entering into a
relationship can work. “My husband was one of the senior
teachers when I was training to become a yoga teacher
myself,” says Sara Schwartz, a yoga instructor in Los
Angeles. During her training, the studio reviewed a “do not
date your students” policy, but the two felt there was an
undeniable connection. So, they talked about the possibility
of a relationship. “We waited until training was over to get
involved, and my husband spoke with the studio manager
for advice before asking me out. Yoga brought us together,”
says Schwartz.
Minneapolis studio owner and veteran yoga teacher
David Frenk met his partner, Megan, when she was his
mentee in an apprenticeship program nearly a decade ago.
Yet even though there was an initial spark, they waited six
months to go out on their first date. “That six-month gap
between our relationship as mentor and mentee and our
romantic partnership felt important,” says Frenk. “Now, we
have a family and co-own several studios. We teach our
trainees that it’s not OK to casually date students. But if
you meet someone and feel there’s potential for a real
relationship, that’s different. People would prefer to think
of the relationship between student and teacher as fixed,
or absolute, but it flows on a continuum.”There’s opportunity
for the yoga community
to have more candid
conversations about
the intersection of
practice and love.
So you’re in love. Now what?
Even though my intuition had warned me that dating my
meditation teacher was a bad idea, I fell for him—and felt
compelled to see it through. I didn’t recognize the ways
in which I was naive, conflating my attraction to him with
the teachings themselves. In hindsight, it’s clear that I
didn’t know how to be my own advocate. I didn’t realize
that he could have—and should have—addressed the
power imbalance in our relationship.
While I no longer regret the journey our relationship
sent me on, I do wish I’d had more information and advice
on this topic back then. If you find yourself attracted
to someone taking or leading your class, it’s important
to consider the situation in ways that offer respect and
protection for everyone involved—both inside the
relationship and the yoga community in general. Here’s
how.
Set boundaries. If I could talk to my younger self as
she was falling for her meditation teacher, I’d tell her
to immediately find another meditation group. Lasater
says that would’ve been a good move. “When there are
feelings between teacher and student, it’s best the