I don’t want to be a yoga teacher anymore. I want to be a yoga facilitator.

After an entire weekend of anatomy study—that is poking and prodding my classmates to feel their muscles and bones, looking for abnormalities in their bodies, and studying how they move—I’ve given up on the idea of “teaching” anyone.

Aside from the surprisingly compelling workshop where I was finally able to retain many of the anatomical terminology I’ve been struggling with for months, this week’s speaker, Michael Watson, impressed something even more important upon my class. We may be studying to become yoga teachers, but we should be striving to become facilitators for others’ yoga practice instead.

In other words, we shouldn’t strive to show students our way of doing things but empower them to find their own way.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I certainly have a much more profound experience as a student when I have the room to explore the sensations in my body than when someone is telling me what I should be feeling.

The key to facilitating is providing the opportunity for awareness. Yoga poses without mindfulness are nothing more than choreography, Watson said. Although that may be great exercise, it’s no substitute for bringing a student’s awareness into his or her body. That’s the ultimate gift because then they can grow and deepen their practice for themselves.

Watson did an exercise with us on Sunday where he asked us to make subtle movements with our bodies (lying on the floor, twisting from side to side, gently lifting our hips off the floor, etc). With each movement he asked us to just observe how the movements affected us. If ever we aren’t sure what we’re feeling, Watson said, we should slow down and reduce the range of movement. This was his advice for yoga, as well as for life.

I never knew I could learn so much in a class about anatomy.

On a side note, would people take a yoga facilitator less seriously than someone who markets themsleves as a yoga teacher?

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I went into my training session this week expecting to learn how to teach people who are recovering from injuries. I left with a heightened fear of hurting someone, and a little injury of my own—a sprained ankle.

OK. So I didn’t really sprain my ankle, but my teacher assigned all of us to approach our yoga practice for the next week like we’re nursing an old injury. I was assigned a sprained ankle (not to be confused with a strained ankle, an injury to a tendon rather than a ligament).

The mock injury may prove to be confusing and annoying (and I hope a great learning experience), but I’m more concerned with how I will handle it if someone with an injury I’m only vaguely familiar with walks into a class I’m teaching.

Darren gave us two rules of thumb for handling students with injuries:
1. Unless your name has an M.D. at the end, never EVER diagnose.
2. It’s OK not to know everything.

It’s a good thing that I’m not expected to know everything about injuries—because I don’t. In fact, even after we went over a list of injuries and what poses to avoid for each type of injury, I don’t feel like I know nearly enough to suggest pose modifications confidently. And even if I did know everything about yoga and injuries, how do I give all of my students the attention they deserve while I cater to one recovering student?

I’m still stumbling over my words trying to describe a Sun Salutation. If I have a hard time explaining simple movements to healthy yoga students, how am I supposed to guide someone nursing a pulled muscle, or even a hernia?

All of this was overwhelming enough, but then Darren proceeded to share his teaching horror stories with us. He was teaching when a student dislocated a shoulder in the middle of his class. One of his students had been practicing yoga for years before he pulled up his shirt to reveal a big bulge protruding from his gut and said: “I think I might have a hernia.”

I was going into freak-out mode when Darren reminded us that these are not common occurrences. In fact, there is a lot to be learned from students who have had injuries because many of them will know what they are (and are not) supposed to do. I took refuge in the principle that if I remind students to listen to their bodies and avoid anything that doesn’t feel right, they will most likely succeed in protecting themselves from further injury.

I’m not so nervous about this issue that I fear teaching, but I did buy a few more books on the subject. I have every intention of lugging these books with me to every class I might venture to teach until I feel more confident with injuries.

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I got tired of yoga this week. I didn’t feel like going to a yoga studio. I wasn’t in the mood to study the Yoga Sutra. Every time I attempted to sit down to meditate, my mind whirled with feelings of anxiety and frustration.

One day at work this week, I had my yoga clothes in hand, on my way to change clothes for a lunchtime yoga class, when I suddenly stopped, thought, “I don’t really want to do yoga,” and promptly returned to my work. Some might say I’m going through a rebellious period. When I’m not feeling warm and fuzzy about my yoga practice, I like to think of myself as a conscious objector—at least I’m mindful of my feelings.

I realized I’m not alone in this when one of my brave classmates admitted she was having similar feelings. “Yoga doesn’t feel like an escape like it used to,” she said. “It feels like an obligation.” I had to refrain from jumping up from the bolster I was sitting on to show my understanding and support.

I was relieved that two of this week’s classes focused on the origins of yoga and the study of Sanskrit with UC Berkeley professor Chris Thompkins. I really needed a reminder of why I enrolled in a teacher training course in the first place—because I really want share my own humble yoga experiences with others, just as so many yoga teachers have contributed for thousands of years before me. For the first time in a while, I felt connected to all of those teachers.

That feeling completely renewed my excitement for my teacher training.

I didn’t take in all the wonderful information offered during these sessions. I’ll probably always pronounce Sanskrit words in my subtle Southern accent, and I certainly couldn’t give a lecture on yoga history, but at least I have a foundation to build upon.

I guess my teachers were right when they said although we may not retain everything, as yoga students, we always take away exactly what we need.

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