Unlearning
There’s a strange tension inherent in the role of Yoga teacher.
On the one hand we work within a classic pedagogical model. We run classes of 60 or 90 minutes, we impart information, we keep time, we guide students in techniques of asana, meditation and breath work.
On the other hand, I sometimes feel that the greatest gift yoga gives me is the opportunity to ‘unlearn’…
For me, ‘unlearning’ arises as I slow down, quieten and relax my body and mind. Some examples of unlearning that I am working on and will probably continue to work on for the remainder of my days…
unlearning the belief that my thoughts define me
unlearning getting caught up in the mind’s endless chatter
unlearning habitual movement and tension-holding patterns in the body
unlearning critical and judgmental ways of responding to myself when I am in distress
Some of my work takes place within an educational context which is OFSTED inspected. This requires the production of paperwork to ‘evidence that learning has taken place’ and ‘demonstrate progress’.
I don’t find this easy.
As Daniel Simpson writes in his brilliantly researched and readable book The Truth of Yoga: “Yoga is sometimes described as a science, but its effects are not easily measured. Since practice consists of experiments on oneself, its results are subjective….What works for one person affects others differently.”
How to measure that ‘learning has take place’ in a yoga class? How to assess ‘progress’ in terms of a person’s ability to relax their mind? Or subtle shifts in awareness as someone begins to understand what it feels like to pay attention to their breath?
Since the funding for these classes is tied to OFSTED inspections I will be continuing to grapple with this problem of documenting learning and progress… suggestions welcome!
Anna, I really enjoyed this (and agree about Daniel’s book!). Yoga is like psychoanalysis, in that it has a similar unverifiability problem.
Outcomes are immeasurable.
I do think borrowing from coaching language is useful — setting ingoing intention, then checking in using a log (what went well/badly/what shall I tweak?/modify intention/set new task) over perhaps a month is helpful (both for us as teachers and for students).
This is where yoga and writing absolutely do work together (something that, as a writer, I’m
especially interested in) — they can intersect at journalling, and each activity can make the other more purposeful.
I find intention-setting fascinating, and it does give me an anchor as well as a setting-off point (it’s a lot like “answering the question” from my old life as an academic!).
It feels to me as though in training to teach yoga, I’ve learnt to change my question from, “How do I do that?” which often leads me to frustration, to, “What am I aiming to do?” and from that question I almost always find answers unfolding, in ways I couldn’t have foreseen, but which do lead to outcomes I can name in retrospect.
For example, if my question (of yoga or of my life) is “What am I aiming to do?” and the answer is “settle the mind” (because something unsettling is going on), then somehow that makes sitting on the mat easier, and feeling into the body easier, and then the compass is set, and a practice — a sequence — unfolds from it.
What’s really weird and uncanny is that then I teach this sequence, and get feedback from the class or an individual, which modifies it, and some kind of collective intention spiral arises.
But that takes us well away from Ofsted, and back to the immeasurability of outcomes.
Thank goodness.
The pedagogical model doesn’t really apply to adults in most learning contexts, though I can see how this is particularly relevant in Yoga. It fascinates me how the world just doesn’t catch up with that. I had a professor in grad school who tried as much as he could to “go against the system” but he still had to give us one written assignment “to prove that learning had occurred” which he hated. But because we were studying “adult learning” itself he could openly discuss his frustrations with the students, at least that helped!