I was teaching a yoga class and the woman in the back of the room was doing yoga. Only it wasn't the type of yoga I was teaching or that the rest of the class was doing.

I watched fascinated as she moved through an elaborate series of seemingly invented postures, oblivious to the rest of the class. She did relax at the end with everyone else, however. I asked her afterwards what she was doing.

"Oh, I am just listening to my body and doing whatever it tells me to do," she said.
"So why do you want to come to this class?" I ask.
"You're a great teacher," she said. I started to humbly thank her. "So your classes are crowded and I can hide in the back and do my own practice."

As yoga students, we are always looking for a great teacher, someone who can inspire us, teach us, and take us to the next level. But the search for a great yoga teacher must start within us. We need to become a great student first.

Here are the guidelines to become a great yoga student:

Realize everyone has something to teach you.

Yoga students and sometimes yoga teachers make the mistake in thinking that teaching yoga is about winning a popularity contest. Students compare notes in the studio lobby, "Oh, if you like Teacher A, you will really like Teacher B. I think Teacher C is too easy. Teacher D really works you out. But now I am at the point where I only want to go to classes taught by Teacher Z."

I have seen students even show up to take a class and then walk out when they discover their "favorite" teacher is not there that day. They miss the point. Yoga is not teacher-centric. It is practice-centric.

Every teacher has something to teach you - and often it is not what you think it should be. I remember going to a yoga class years ago with my wife and telling her afterwards: "The teacher drove me crazy with his fake-sounding, super-mellow voice." "Yeah," she said. "He reminded me a lot of you." Enough said.

Respect the teacher within the teacher.

In the yogic tradition for hundreds of years, the teacher was the most respected person in your life - more than your parents or any figure of authority. We do not understand that in the West because we often mistake the role of the teacher with the personality of the teacher. The role of the teacher is someone who shares the teachings. The teachings are the important thing - not the personality of the individual teacher.

I would never bow to a man or a woman but I will always bow to a teacher. When you show respect to a teacher, you show respect for all teachers, for the teachings of yoga, and ultimately for yourself. If you want to rebel and be disrespectful, please park in a no-parking zone, talk back to your boss, or engage in your favorite self-indulgent destructive behavior - but always respect the teacher within the teacher. It is the only way you can learn what yoga is really about.

Understand a teacher is 90% the projection of the student.

Whatever you think about your teacher is almost all about what you think about yourself and has very little to do with the teacher. A teacher is a mirror that reflects the student. This is the only way we can learn about ourselves - through self-reflection. I remember a comment card we got from one student about a teacher: "He doesn't even look like a yogi. He's too fat. He thinks he is better than everybody else, sitting in front of us and making his little jokes." For this person, appearances are everything and any value the teacher could have offered is lost in a projection of a student's own insecurity.

On the other hand, students can have positive projective fantasies about their teachers that are also more about their own needs than about the teachers themselves. I remember one woman going up to a nationally known teacher at the end of a workshop and telling him: "During our last meditation, I opened my eyes and I saw you in the most beautiful and blissful state. Your heart center was really, really open. What were you meditating on?" He replied: "Cheese and macaroni. That is what I am having for supper tonight."

Examine the reactions and thoughts you have about your teacher. They will tell you a lot about your current state of mind, fears, and lessons you need to learn.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

This is an old saying in almost all practices and spiritual traditions. What it means is that you often get the teacher you deserve or, more politely, the teacher you are capable of encountering at the level of your current development. As you advance in your self-understanding, your capacity to recognize and attract the teacher you need to reach the next level also increases. Why should a master teacher waste time with you if you are not willing to master yourself?

Students make the mistake believing that if they can only find an advanced teacher, they will advance. Instead you need to do the work with the teacher right there in front of you. Then you will earn the right to meet your next Teacher.

One simple test is this: Are you ready to meet your teacher when they do arrive to teach you? Are you fully present, sitting in class and ready to learn? Or do you come in after the teacher has arrived and class has begun? We all have an emergency once or twice a year that may cause us to be late to yoga class, but think of the energetic message you are sending by showing up after the teacher has arrived. Who is waiting on whom to appear?

Know that the only purpose of having a teacher outside yourself is to realize the teacher within yourself.

A great student realizes that they are the teacher as well as the student. Ultimately your yoga practice must become self-directed -- but not in the same way as the person who does his or her own poses at the back of the class. Through your yoga practice, you will increase you awareness, awaken your intuition, and learn to trust that guiding spirit that is present in all human beings. This awakening will direcdt you. Others will continue to teach you, but you will realize that is only through your own self-study, discipline, and surrender to grace that will you understand the purpose of yoga.

When you know that teacher lives within you and within all others, then you will become a great student.

May you have great teachers in your life.
May you teach others by your presence.
May you recognize and honor all teachers.
May you recognize and honor yourself.

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