Conversations with Mirra and Aadil

Aadil Palkhivala (6:47)

Aadil Palkhivala  & Kirsten Elfendahl (4:10)

Mirra and I created the Purna Yoga 500 hour teacher training to address some of the most important issues that yoga teachers are missing.

Aadil Palkhivala on 500 hour teacher training (5:12)

If you have specific questions on our yoga teacher training, please contact my college administrator, Kirsten Elfendahl at 425-747-4498 or kirsten@yogacenters.com

Tambra graduated from the 500-hour Level  of The College of Purna Yoga this September.  I hope you will enjoy her video.  What did she find?  May we all find it too.  Thank you, Tambra!

(Tambra White on The College of Purna Yoga, 2:31)

The language of transformation is the language of compassion. Our students are transformed, not by the blaze of fiery words intended to burn their ego to ashes, but by the warmth of kindness, care, and love. If you try to help a stubborn, egoistical student by beating on his ego, the student, in defense, will only harden his ego-shell and retreat inside, becoming inaccessible to your teachings, to you, and, most lamentably, to himself. The student becomes like a cold, scared child, trying to cover himself with an oversized ego-coat. Teach him instead with compassion and warmth, so much warmth, in fact, that he must remove his dark, protective ego-coat and become receptive to the light of transformation.

This, however, is not a license to mask the truth with phony compliments or other lies of fake courtesy. The truth must be told, yet not with the haughty attitude “I must tell the truth no matter what the cost!” Offer the truth in a way that empowers your students to make the necessary changes in their lives. Ruthless truth must always be tempered with kindness, satya balanced with ahimsa.

The art of guiding others lies in knowing how to help them harness the power of their own minds and access their own inner wisdom. This enables them to overcome their resistance to transformation, cast off fears, and embrace evolution. In time, they will become attuned to inner guidance, and no longer be scattered and misled by external references and compulsive comparisons. By the very act of teaching, we compel our students to use the power of their minds; the question is whether this power is being used to destroy or to build, to regress or to transform, to imprison or to set free.

Sri Aurobindo has a whole book on teaching that every teacher can benefit from reading. He states, “The first rule of teaching is that nothing can be taught.” This idea is so beautiful! Perhaps the most respectful thing we can do for our students is to keep in mind that we cannot teach a student anything. We can show something to them, explain it to them in a hundred different ways, go over and over it with them, but only the student can learn it. Obviously that’s true-otherwise, all my students would have learned everything I’ve taught so far!

Since learning really depends on the student, not on the teacher, our job is to elicit the learning response from our students, to teach them so that they want to learn what we are teaching. This means being an embodiment of the teaching so that our students are inspired to learn and they yearn to follow the example we are setting. This does not excuse us from the responsibility of being the best teachers we can possibly be, but only reminds us that our responsibility is to teach, and the student’s responsibility is to learn. Only then is a mutual respect being shown between the teacher and student.