Why This Yoga Teacher Of 15 Years Takes Beginner Yoga Classes

This guest post by Emily Burg originally appeared on Yogi Living.

I have been practicing yoga for 15 years, and teaching for five, and when I attend a yoga class for my personal practice, it is a Level 1 or restorative or gentle yoga class.

For most of my time practicing yoga, I thought that the purpose of the practice was to ascend.  To develop the ability to perform ever more complex asana. To practice more often.  To get sweatier on the mat.  To be able to hold a pose longer.

I had it all wrong.

All of those years of yoga practice experience didn’t make me a more advanced yogi, because in yoga, being able to stay connected to our beginner’s mind is what actually demonstrates our mastery.  One of the greatest challenges in yoga is to go as deep and practice with as much focus, commitment and intent in a basic yoga practice, as you would in a Level 3 all inversions and arm balances class.

This was nearly impossible for me once I became a yoga teacher, though of course when I reflect back on my teacher training, the focus was never was never to turn us into the most flexible yoginis but rather to make us the most grounded, centered and wise guides for our students.  Yet I felt that as a teacher I had to demonstrate an elevated practice, attend upper-level classes and never require an adjustment, because, as a teacher, I should have a perfect practice.  This was in spite of being a teacher who instructed my students that there is no such thing as a perfect practice, and that the core of the practice is learning to come to acceptance with whatever version of ourselves shows up on the mat each day.

Yoga, which had been a central part of my life for so many years, was no longer a source of refuge, inspiration, expression, creativity and release.  Instead going to the mat as a teacher felt like work: I was either unable to shut off teacher mode or, I was so busy watching how the teacher taught the class, looking for ideas and cues that could feed my own work as a teacher, I lost the ability to stay present in the moment as a student, I lost the unifying connection between my breath, body, and mind that yoga enables — the reason I came to and stayed on the mat for so many years.  I lost my student’s mind, my beginner’s mind.

A combination of missing my yoga practice, and missing the opportunity to be a student, led me to reconsider my yoga practice altogether and to return to yoga as if I were a new student.  Now only attending level 1, gentle or restorative classes, I approach each class as though it’s my first time on the mat, and in a way, it is: I am traveling back in time, reconnecting with the beginner yogini I was once, and in many ways I still am, now in the form of an established yogini and teacher: a woman who comes to the mat stressed and anxious, overworked and under slept, seeking solace, grounding, insight and connection to an ancient lineage of wisdom and wellness.

About Emily Lauren BurgEmily (aka Guru Em) is a former investment banker and strategic analyst turned yoga and meditation teacher. She uses mindfulness and wellness practices to address stress, anxiety, and change and help her students experience wholeness. To learn more or connect with Emily visit her website, Guru Em.