A few months into my marriage I had a call with my coach. I shamefully admitted that this whole marriage thing seemed like a lot of work, that it wasn’t very easy and if things were right, aren’t they supposed to be easy?
My coach at the time asked lovingly, “Is everything you love easy?”
I thought about my career as a yoga teacher and coach. Not so easy, especially in the beginning.
My practice, on and off the mat. Sometimes really fucking hard.
And then my man. I certainly loved him and sometimes I almost as certainly wanted to run for the hills.
This was the beginning of me stepping into a new stage of my life where I loved things because I loved them, and I worked at things because it was so unbelievably necessary and life became juicier when I did.
Byron Katie, brilliant author and the founder of “The Work”, wrote, “Our parents, our children, our spouses and our friends will continue to press every button we have, until we realize what it is that we don’t want to know about ourselves, yet. They will point us to our freedom every time.”
In changing our relationship with “the work,” we are able to see it outside the small scope that we’ve boxed it into. “Too hard.” “It should come easy.” You don’t become a great yoga teacher overnight. Instead you do the best you can with what you have and suffer through many awkward moments until teaching or leading begins to become more fluid.
The most powerful thing we can do as teachers and in any role where we teach others is to lean in and listen when we notice fear, worry, judgment or reaction. What can this moment teach me? How can I approach this from another perspective?
We do the same thing on our mats day in and day out. Some days our practice feels wave-like or light as a feather, other days we may as well be a bag of lead. We approach our practice then with this in mind, offering a child pose when we need compassion or a playful sequence when we need to ignite our creativity or lighten up.
Try on loving the work and see how it feels. As that badass nun Corita Kent once said, “Happiness is lighter than you think.”
Suggested Resources:
Loving What Is, by Byron Katie
Self Coaching 101, by Brooke Castillo