Do you still love yoga?

I want to talk about something that does not get said enough in the yoga world.

Burnout among yoga teachers but I wonder if what we are actually feeling is burnout.  We still show up, we still love yoga, we love teaching, we care and put effort in to our classes, we still want people in class to feel better than they did when they walked in.  But there is almost a flat feeling.  Not sure how else to describe it.  It's not uninspired...just not overly inspired.  Kind of flat.

What it  looks like

Maybe your classes aren't filling the way you want them to.  And you are starting to wonder if it is you. If you are doing something wrong. I get into my head that maybe people don't like me or what i'm teaching.  They would rather have the gorgeous, perky 20 year old in the matching ALO set and killer abs and playlist.

Maybe are working as hard as you have ever worked and the ceiling is still right there. The same number of students. The same pay per class. And no clear sense of what comes next or how to get there.

Getting to the studio starts to feel like work. Not the good kind of hard work that produces something meaningful. The grinding kind that leaves you tired and depleted.  

These are the questions that keep me up:

Am I making a real difference for anyone?

Does what i have to teach matter to anyone?  Does anyone actually care about how all of this works?

Should i just put together a "creative sequence" and fuck all the other stuff I know.

Is this worth it?

And underneath all of those questions is a quieter one that is harder to sit with.

Where do i go from here?

Being a yoga teacher is genuinely hard work

We are teaching broad and deep subjects. We are working with people's nervous systems. With how they learn and change and adapt. With their relationship to their own bodies. With the stories they carry about what is possible for them and what is not.

We are in the room with chronic pain and grief and stress and trauma and the ordinary exhaustion of being a human being in a complicated world. And we are trying to create the conditions in which something shifts. In which someone walks out different from how they walked in.

I think this happens because we know and we see the poses as access points for people to get to the some of profound parts of the practice.  But then those poses become restrictions for us as teacher.  Because the practice is so much bigger than alignment, than the poses, than the sequences.  Somewhere along the way the emphasis became creative sequences, advanced poses, amazing playlists, IG and Tik Tok posts. 
And what we teach, the profound parts of the practice get lost in the dopamine driven world of more superficial aspects of it. 

When you understand the mechanism underneath what you are doing, when you can see why the practice is sophisticated and why it matters and why it works, the work comes alive again in a completely different way.  The poses and maybe even your sequence haven't changed. But you have. 

Maybe the flatness you feel is not weakness or a sign you're burned out. The questions you are asking may not be signs that you are failing. The disillusionment with the industry is not cynicism. Maybe it's your intuition telling you that you're about to step up onto the next level.  

The teacher who is asking if anyone cares about what I am saying is not a teacher who has lost their spark. They are a teacher who knows they have more to give than the current container allows. Who has outgrown where they are and does not yet know where to go next.

They probably don't need to rest (although sleep is important), or "fill their cup" (I mean..hydration is important too), but maybe going deeper into other areas of their learning to reconnect with what lights them up about the practice will re-ignite the passion they have for yoga again.

The practice is as deep and as sophisticated and as genuinely transformative as it was the first time it changed you. You have not lost your love for it. Maybe that love has expanded and changed form. Maybe you just have more questions from that expansion.

Maybe you could use more support for your expansion. Into the mechanisms. Into the science. Into the framework that explains why this ancient practice is one of the most sophisticated tools ever developed for working with the nervous system, the mind, and the capacity for change.

That depth exists. And it changes everything.

If this landed somewhere real for you I would love to hear from you. Reply here or reach me at [email protected].

And if you want to know what going deeper looks like across ten weekends the link is below.

For more information about APEX 300 hour click here.

Melissa