Since I started the course, I feel like a little girl in school again. I look up to my teachers and I wonder if and when I’ll ever get to where they are now. I perceive my tutor’s monstrous knowledge and experience and I feel tiny in comparison. It is a confidence issue: a personal problem of personal comparison.
Then I think: ‘hey, I have just started, what do I expect?’ and I also note that everyone has a different path in life. Lots of my peers are far older than me and older than our teachers, with lots of experience in something other than yoga. We are all different, I don’t have to aim to be like my teachers, inspired by them yes, but not like them; I can’t be, I’m a different person.
My philosophy teacher (actually that’s ‘darsana’ – seeing experience) says: ‘Learn from your mistakes and move on. Those are the times in which you really learn something’.
Yesterday I received my coursework for module 1 back, but before my tutors gave us feedback they warned not to take things personally. When I received my paper back my heart sank. A lot of my work was questioned, there were a lot of remarks and in general looked quite ‘red’. I texted my friend: “disaster”. So much for not taking things personally.
I went home disappointed that after so much work I didn’t do as well as I thought. Sitting in my inbox there was an email which revealed my official mark: 74/100. Much better than I expected after the impression I got from the marked paper!
And then it kicked in: I’m learning and these, although in some cases are corrections, in most cases are suggestions for improvement from someone with a lot more experience than me. Those red scribbles and questions marks are there to make me think and build up my knowledge – those are the golden drops I need to make sure I collect and treasure! If I take on board all of those, I’ll eventually build up knowledge and experience. Maybe just like theirs (or different!).
Yes, I understand now. I should not take things personally but learn from my mistakes and imperfections.
(And that’s when my sense of gratitude towards my teachers swelled. Thank you teachers for teaching me how to accept myself − on top of everything else!)
A yoga teacher's journey 