Counting

He taught me not to kill spiders just because I am afraid of them.

I’m thinking of that now as I make my morning coffee. There’s a spider that’s set up home in the join of the wall to the ceiling. It’s right above my head, as I spoon coffee into the pot. I’m thinking of my yoga teacher, as I do so often at the moment. Each day I bring to mind a different thing he taught me, something we talked about, something we shared. I feel as though I’m counting the things I learned from him, trying to tally up my worth as a student even as I’m counting the days since he was last in touch. Some months ago I got an email to say that he wouldn’t teach me over the summer, that he was thinking about what he could offer and would be back in touch in September. This took me completely by surprise. I didn’t think that he got to choose who he taught. But I suppose that’s my assumption. I don’t know what the rules are in the strange world of yoga student-teacher relationships (I know there are none).

The last proper conversation we had was awkward and sits heavily with me. So now I’m counting the days until he might be in touch again by counting the things I’ve learned from him. Will this show that I do learn, albeit slowly and in my own time? Could my list prove that I am a good student? Will it counter my fear that he’s rejecting me, that he has put me in the category of unteachable? In my attempts to reassure myself, I make this catalogue of righteousness, although I could easily (much more easily) write instead a catalogue of regrets or self-recrimination as I cast my mind back to the times I suppose I must have behaved badly, when I sat too awkwardly in the seat of the student, the times when his ideas were too big, confronting or destabilising for me to absorb them in the moment.

I like to think he taught me these things:

1. not to kill spiders just because I am afraid of them
2. to venerate all creatures
3. to talk to trees
4. to walk barefoot
5. to see the energy in everything, even myself
6. he introduced me to Patanjali and Sanskrit as the language of yoga
7. he taught me about chakras and koshas and subtle body stuff
8. he helped me experience the intricate interconnections between mind and body
9. and he blew my Cartesian dualist mind over and over
10. he emboldened me to take my Sanskrit GCSE even though I felt unready
11. he taught me to speak in in front of an audience
12. to overcome the selfishness of feeling shy in order to help others
13. how to begin a job interview with a single calm breath and a feeling of seated stability
14. how to sit in stillness
15. and how to begin to move
16. he taught me a whole bunch of yoga shapes to make with my body that opened up a universe of physical enjoyment and mental spaciousness that I never dreamed could exist within me
17. he taught me how to breathe for power
18. how to breathe for calm
19. that there’s a time to control
20. and a time to let go
21. how to wake up and be grateful
22. that some baggage is too heavy to carry alone
23. that kindness is always first
24. he taught me to mind myself and let others mind themselves
25. to be less self conscious
26. to be more Self conscious
27. to see the world upside-down
28. that I can play like a child
29. and also be a responsible adult
30. to try
31. to keep trying
32. to listen and keep listening
33. to believe in things I cannot see
34. to love the rain
35. to trust in change
36. to accept that life can be hard and scary
37. and I can open my heart to it nonetheless
38. that aging and loss and grief can also be an experience of love and compassion
39. he taught me patience
40. adventurousness
41. curiosity
42. to be proud of everything I can do
43. to be humble about everything I can do
44. that I am allowed to change my mind
45. and it’s ok not to know
46. and it’s OK to spend months and years making the same enquiry
47. and that this is the joy
48. and is the heart of the practice
49. and that sharing this enquiry is much more what teaching yoga really is than any fancy sequencing or anatomical knowledge or philosophical wisdom
50. that time is precious
51. that I can do hard things
52. that details matter…

… and so much more that is too big for a silly list I write just as I drink my morning coffee and watch the spider on the ceiling.

I’m still in the process of learning all these things, of course. They are not complete, any of them. They never will be.

Now his summer-long silence is teaching me other lessons too. Hard lessons about power dynamics, about yoga student vs studio client, about my klesas and patterning and how that plays out in my behaviours (and how that interacts with his), my sense of self-worth and my boundaries, the futility of self-recrimination, the potential of new beginnings, and also about the bedrock of my sadhana and the faith I have in it on a deep level that’s untouched by the heavy emotions and doubts I feel each day.

His silence is teaching me that I can carry on this practice without him.

Though I would rather not have to.

He has taught me so much. And maybe that’s enough.