In the entire time I've been teaching (what has it been now, like, four months?) I haven't—not even once—taught an original sequence of asanas. I know what you're thinking: "There are no original sequences, you silly, novice teacher! Are you really so self-absorbed that you believe yourself capable of inventing something that all the yogis in the thousands of years people have been doing yoga haven't thought of? Ha!"

OK. Maybe that's not what you were thinking at all. But it's kind of how I've approached my teaching. To be honest, that line of reasoning has served as a really good excuse not spend a lot of time thinking about sequencing. I realize that my teachers, and their teachers, the teachers before them, are far wiser than I could ever be. So instead of sitting down to prepare for a class and thinking about what I have to offer my students, I sit down and try to remember what my teachers have offered me.

This way I can teach the same sequence of poses, pointing out the same essential actions my teachers point out. It's served me fairly well so far. I have to think very little. I'm a master copy cat. You know that annoying game kids play where they repeat your every word, every movement, every breath, for, um, ever? I'm like the most annoying kid you've ever met. And up until recently I took pride in that.

Have you ever heard teachers talk about teaching a class and having the strange, almost out-of-body, experience of hearing their teacher's voice come out of them instead of their own? That happened to me. Only, one of my favorite teachers to mimic is a lovely woman from Brazil, whose second language is English. When her voice came from my mouth, it said, "straight your arm" instead of "straighten your arm." This is perfectly charming when she says it in her thick Brazilian accent, but it sounds completely ridiculous coming from a native English speaker from Tennessee. Later on, I told a joke I've heard my male, 50-something teacher tell many times about how many yoga teachers it takes to screw in a light bulb (which is only a little funny when he tells it, but not at all coming from me.) My thirteen-year-old student looked at me blankly, her brow furrowed. In this moment, a different voice came to me. Thank God, this one was my own internal voice. "Erica, what are you DOING!?," the voice screamed, exasperated. This was my epiphany.

So that's it. From now on, I'm going to draw from my own experiences, my own practice, to guide me when I prepare for class. That's not to say that I'm going to stop being influenced by older, wiser, smarter teachers. I'm just going to use my own voice—and my own brain—more often.

Here's to authenticity!