It's Madness! From The Dangerman Sessions
Readers of Yoga Dork are witnessing the steady crumbling of
the Anusara brand. For those unfamiliar,
there have been numerous allegations of personal, um, misconduct and illegal
business practices levied against Anusara founder John Friend. YD has presented both the allegations and
JF’s responses. Read the saga on YD if you would like, the specifics are not
really my focus today.
My own personal opinions of this method and its founder
(pure hokum, both) aside, there is no denying that a great many people found
benefit by practicing this method. There
are also a number of people who have invested a significant amount of money to
become certified to teach this method, and, if they are actively teaching, have
been making some income from this method.
True or not (JF admits in general terms to some wrong doing)
these allegations have hurt the brand. Meaning the teachers and students who
follow the method have taken a greater hit than JF himself.
For those of us who teach yoga, we need to be aware that we
are representing a brand, more accurately several brands: Ourselves as teachers, the
method/style/school we teach, the locations where we teach, and yoga as a
business. When any one of these brands
suffer, we all feel the effects.
I am not saying that we teachers need to be saints. We need to be sincere students. We need to demonstrate the positive results
of this practice because, let’s face it, our students have a choice. There is a lot of competition. There is always another teacher, another
studio. They can decide to just go for a
jog instead of to a yoga class. This is
the struggle they don’t tell you about in teacher training.
At the very core of our teaching needs to be our personal
practice. I am pained every time I hear
a teacher complain they don’t have time to practice or state that they need to
practice more. It is very easy for a
student to see when a teacher does not practice what they teach. What message does that send about the teacher
and the practice? Discipline (tapas) is the first step on this
path—find the time. Our students have found
the time to show up; we have the responsibility to show up to our practice as
well.
We also need to align ourselves with the correct people. I
am very blessed to teach at a studio where the owner is very supportive of the
teachers. She is actively in the
community making a positive presence for the studio. She is transparent and gracious with the
teachers. She minds the brand. This
inspires me to promote the studio. In turn, the studio draws good teachers and
the student base is continually growing.
The students get quality classes, the teachers make money, and the
studio stays open. Positive business
practices perpetuates positive results.
I have been in the opposite situation as well, where shoddy
business practices (late payments, owner not actively promoting the business,
teachers constantly subbing out their classes) make it difficult to want to
continue—the saving grace is the students.
As teachers, we need to mind our collective brand. We need to keep our own practices consistent,
and we need to encourage our fellow teachers to do the same. The main reason why the situation with JF got
to the point of an explosion on the blog-o-verse is because people allowed JF
to get away with it—no one called him out on it until last week. He wasn’t minding the brand (although he kept
making a lot of money from it), but neither were the teachers and students who
allowed the bad (and illegal) behavior to go on. That is called ‘vicarious
liability.’
We don’t have to be saints; we need to be sincere
students. Sincere students and sincere
teachers keep each other in check. We
all benefit when we all mind the brand.
Speaking of getting to practice: Flight School—Arm
Balance workshop Saturday Feb. 12, 2-4 at Hudson River Yoga.
No comments:
Post a Comment