Yoga Journal - Teacher Tells All

As I was getting ready for work this morning, I watched NBC’s Today Show and pondered what I would write this week about my latest installment of yoga teacher training. Katie Couric interviewed the Harvard sophomore and best-selling author at the center of this week’s national news scandal: “Did Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarize parts of her book, How Opal Mahta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life?”

I’ve followed this story closely, and I’m torn between compassion and disgust for the inexperienced author. After all, I’m a young, aspiring writer myself who understands how easy it can be to unconsciously borrow from another writer’s tone and/or style. But I also would’ve loved to expose a story like this during my brief career as a reporter and editor for my college newspaper. (Harvard’s newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, was the first to break the story.)

The story also reminded me of something restorative yoga teacher Jennifer Morrice said during my yoga teacher training session this week on the importance of restorative yoga.

“Half of teaching is stealing from other teachers,” she said with a light-hearted laugh, then, she gave us permission to re-use her analogy comparing the mind in restorative yoga to snow settling at the bottom of a snow globe.

I’m also torn on this issue. Theoretically speaking, I don’t think most of what I learn in a yoga class is the brainchild of any one specific teacher. (The whole yoga concept started at least 2,000 years ago!) It seems to me like more like yoga today is a collaboration of many minds in the yoga community, both past and present. So how can we claim any of the ideas we come across by drawing on this rich tradition as our own?

This is yet another aspect of teaching yoga where balance seems to be key. As a teacher, I definitely wouldn’t want to pawn anyone else’s ideas off as my own. But I don’t always see the necessity of sharing where I got my knowledge about every little thing. (As a student, I find it extremely annoying when a yoga teacher stops class every five minutes to give kudos to Ana Forrest or Rodney Yee.)

Won’t it be understood that the things I’m teaching are not original? And since it’s so hard to differentiate between someone’s innovative idea and something seeded in years of yoga tradition, is it even possible to plagiarize another teacher’s pose modification or sequence? (Bikram Choudhury would argue ’yes‘.)

Lucky for me and all the other inexperienced and wannabe teachers out there, it seems like most yoga teachers, like Ms. Morrice, are happy if their teachings are so clear and insightful that other teachers would want to relay that information to their own students. It’s one of the things I love about the yoga community—most people in it agree in that whole concept of sharing and oneness.

On a lighter note, I also learned how to do some pretty neat arm balances I never thought I’d be able to do, and to spot a student’s handstand without getting kicked in the face! I never would’ve thought that learning to teach asana would be the easy part of my teacher training experience!

Comments

Nice thoughts and lovely blog. Just two little things to take note of. Yoga is over 6,000 years old - far greater than 2,000. And its Bikram Choudhury, not Bikran. Bikram is a living master, and whether you agree with him or not, you'll want to have his name correct ;o)
Namaste!

Posted by: Sorsha Miles | May 2, 2006 01:59 AM

I remember reading an article by a new yoga teacher. She thought she would be nervous teaching her first class. But as she sat facing her students she felt all her teachers and their teachers behind her. Yoga is built on a wonderful foundation of knowledge passed down from teacher to student.

Posted by: Gail | May 6, 2006 04:10 AM

Since you are following the Kaavya Viswanathan story closely you know that rather then "unconsciously" copy another author, Viswanathan actually copied whole sentences, up to 14 words long, word-for-word, including the italics of one word! This is the most blatant plagiarism possible and mathmatically impossibel to do "unconsciously". Think a million monkeys at typewriters for a million years and the chances of one of them somehow typing out Hamlet. Looking for deserving souls for your compassion, consider this, "Every day in Africa, 6,600 people die and another 8,500 contract the HIV virus - 1,400 of whom are newborn babies infected during childbirth or by their mothers' milk. Africa is home to 25 million people with HIV - 64% of global infections." (UNAIDS) See data.org for more info and immediate actions that we can all take.
Namaste

Posted by: Ben Banks | May 9, 2006 03:58 PM

Erica-thank you so much for sharing your journey. I am also a new teacher and smiles accompanied by that "all too familiar feeling" in the pit of my stomach arise each time I check out a new blog. Just to let you know you are not alone with these ideas, feelings, thoughts... I also notice my classes changing depending on the type of classes I have been attending; whether it is more power, vinyasa, or restorative. I agree that it is not plagerism and I try to remind myself that teachings are passed down from one teacher to the next. Therefore when I attend a class and a teacher is sharing info than I can now share it with someone else.

Posted by: kristen | May 16, 2006 06:23 PM

hi erica, must say - it's great to read your blog. i completed my training nearly one year ago and am absolutely loving teaching. i am always being inspired by classes i attend and then go on to share these thoughts and asana sequences in my own class - i love the idea of sharing it round. After all - that is why I became a teacher, to share my passion for yoga and have it inspire others.

If i can share a little of what yoga has done for me with others - that is achievement enough.

**good to hear you're avoiding being kicked in the head in helping others in handstand - took me a while! :)

namaste.x

Posted by: stella | May 17, 2006 01:39 AM

Erica,
In response to the comments faulting your compassion for Viswanathan: Compassion is for everyone. The victimizer as well as the victim. Compassion cannot be deserved or earned. Compassion can only be given freely to all.
Thanks,
Jim

Posted by: Jim | May 26, 2006 06:30 PM

Hi Erica,
I don't think of myself as a yoga teacher really, I say I am "sharing yoga". This is all everyone does really. We all go to trainings to be inspired, others share with us, and we pass that along. I had a colleage once who would attend trainings and return and say, "you can't use this pose, it's MINE, I got it at the conference with (fill in blank with master teacher name)".
I never understood that thinking. "Master teacher" got it from someone else and that someone else got it from someone else...
I think it's great to let your students know you train and are motivated to remain a student and learn, but name dropping-no. Let ego go.
Andrea

Posted by: Andrea | June 29, 2006 03:00 PM