As a new teacher, unskillfulness feels like it is everywhere. We make errors of omission, get our timing or rhythm off, or flustered by a rogue text read just before class. This is what makes us feel like imposters in the saddle, though we are not.
Over time and with experience and practice, our unskillfulness changes.
Sometimes it looks like resentment, which means it’s time for a yoga winter.
Sometimes it looks like plan-less teaching that leans into the thousands of hours of experience, and still falls flatter than planned teaching.
Now that we are 24 months into pandemic life, it feels socially bizarre.
I realized yesterday in a Level 1 training that I have not really been around real life humans in a teaching and lecturing environment in an exceptionally long time, and I’ve lost a bit of my filter.
For you, this might be a good thing. In fact, I personally appreciate when a teacher gives me their unfiltered opinions and ideas, but I didn’t have a tremendous filter in the first place, and I noticed my own adorable, unskillful habits rearing up:
– Pirate vocabulary
– Unsolicited opinions
and occasionally
– Unsolicited advice
GAH.
I suppose this could be just another hoop or loop of teaching life, or I could lean into the excuses of pandemic adaptations or managing my person’s epic health crisis, but I don’t think that’s the thing.
(I also did not bring sufficient lunch and did not refill my tea or water bottle as much as I needed to, which are old unskillful patterns of mine).
So here’s what I’m doing, and I’m curious to know what YOU would do, dear reader, as I build out my toolbox for How To Emerge Without Putting Your Foot In Your Mouth
– Direct messages to those who I unskillfully adviced
– Conversation with my own mentors about my adorable behavior
– Reminders to Put On My Own Oxygen Mask First
– Some sort of self grace
