Getting To The Essence: Kathleen Pringle's Teacher Training For Intro I

Kathleen Pringle, owner of Stillwater Yoga in Atlanta offered another Teacher Training for teachers who are aspiring to go up for the Level I Assessment in the Iyengar Yoga System. The lessons were many and I cannot bring justice to all of them here, but I want to convey a core lesson that I hope will be of value to my readers.

The practitioners who came to the training were from local areas around Georgia, Nashville, and as far as Israel (after a recent move to the states). We brought our nerves and our courage to demonstrate what we thought we knew and learn about what we didn't know. Kathleen brought her ever-growing wisdom of how to experience, teach, and train, to help us become the safest and most effective yoga guides for our students.

Training never stops in Iyengar Yoga. Kathleen's more than 30 years experience, innumerable conventions and workshops with more Senior Teachers, along with ongoing trips to Pune, India are proof of that. However, it is through this kind of rigorous training that the true purpose of each pose is discovered.

In our training, Kathleen encouraged us from the beginning to ask ourselves questions like, why does this pose exist or why do we teach this pose before that one? The undercurrent of the training flowed according to Kathleen's acute understanding of how human's learn and how Iyengar wants his teachers to teach. We learn first by looking.  Our sense of sight is one of the strongest of the five senses. Therefore, we were asked to take or observe a Level I and Level I-II class. Regardless of whether we were observing or taking the class, Kathleen asked us to identify specific things that we experienced from the class. What observable actions did the teacher demonstrate that were effective? How were those observable actions articulated? What were the main instructions for the pose?  What were the corrections?  Did we feel they were clear, understandable, and effective?

She followed this session by allowing us to demonstrate a pose using observable actions and simple instructive points. The exercise is another basic part of the Iyengar Method and it is extremely difficult, especially if you have worked on countless articulations of a single action in a pose in your own practice. Your head begins to spin with vrttis (fluctuations) of all the different things you could say, your heartbeat quickens, you feel as if you are going to pass out --- but you take a deep breath and practice Patanjali's Sutra 11:33 Vitarkabadhane Pratipaksabhavanam, which encourages the Sadhaka (student) to cultivate the opposite disposition.

In order to cultivate the opposite temperament which will resist the current chaos in the mind, body and/or spirit, Patanjali suggests using the guidance of the Niyamas, the five personal precepts which are Soucha, santosa, tapas, svadhyaya, Isvarapranidhanai:  Purity, contentment, burning desire, self study, and surrender. It takes practice but it is like exercising any other muscle. If we do it and keep doing it, our ability to do it grows stronger.

It's a process. I definitely have struggled from the stress involved with this process, because of an overwhelming fear of not getting it right (see previous blog).* However, if we calm ourselves down enough, we can decide what we feel are the primary actions of the pose. We can choose what we want to show and what we feel needs to be articulated with words.

It's amazing how much clarity comes from this exercise.  Simplifying what we want to say and show - not only makes it easier on the student, it makes it easier on you as the teacher.  You know what you are asking for, so you know what actions to look for in your students.  If we start running our mouths our students get confused and we loose track of what we are actually teaching.

This is an invaluable lesson not only in yoga but in life. As a writer, I have rewritten and rewritten and rewritten and rewritten in order to unclutter my mind enough to figure what I am trying to say. I have often used poetry as a tool, because it requires you to take out all the unnecessary words and refine the necessary words in order to succinctly convey whatever feeling or expression you're trying to get across. My work with the Iyengar Method is similar and it is not only transforming my own practice and teaching, it is slowly transforming how I write, how I speak, even how I learn.

There will always be better choices of observable actions and words.  It is our work to keep refining these choices through training and through observation of the effectiveness of our teaching with our students.  Did they see the action I wanted them to observe?  Did they understand what actions I said I wanted them to do? How effective were my choices in creating a pose in my students that will give them the most benefits from that pose?  Was I able to put them in a place where they could learn and experience?  Or did I confuse and frustrate them, so the benefits of the pose were lost completely?

As teachers, we strive to thoroughly understand the pose we are teaching.  We want to know how to keep students safe in the pose and what modifications might need to be made in order for the student to maintain the basic actions of the pose. We work on our own practice to be able to show the final stage of the pose and how to teach it step-by-step, so our students can experience their progress. We examine the directional flow of the pose and how best to develop actions that will maintain that directional flow.  We also examine how wrong actions could be more injurous based on that directional flow.

When learning from more experienced teachers, Kathleen encourages us to Trust, Verify, and Observe what we learn. We trust that the teachers we are learning from have more experience with the pose than we do. We verify what we learn from them by experimenting on ourselves and we observe our experience in order to be able to share what we've learned with our students (it's also nice to give public credit for that learning to those wonderful teachers who were willing to share what they know).

We want to examine poses from bottom to top. What affects the proper alignment of the pose.  How can we help our students get into proper alignment, so they can benefit the most from each pose?  We have to understand the essence of each pose we are teaching. When we can get to the essence for ourselves, we are better equipped to help our students build a stronger, more stable foundation they can build on.

Namaste.


I would like to thank Nancy Mau & Anna Leo for letting us infiltrate your class with our pens and notebooks. Nancy, we all appreciated your time and advise during our demos and demonstrated practice. I also want to thank my cool training mates who taught me more than they know.  I hope to keep in touch, so we can continue sharing and learning. And of course, a very special thanks to Kathleen for her ongoing insight and inspiration.

If you are interested in the next Teacher Training or in the upcoming Workshop with Manouso Manos please visit Stillyoga.com for more information.




* I definitely struggle with perfectionism and performance anxiety.  In my efforts to get to the essence of my teaching and practice I am also getting to the essence of my own being. As I slowly delve into this aspect of myself I'm beginning to understand a lot of it comes from growing up with perfectionist for parents, and also being under a microscope for over twenty years where at various points in my youth I was put on a scale and weighed daily, had my neck, feet, and hips examined --even x-rayed to determine whether I was Grade A ballerina material (needless to say, I wasn't), which forced me to feel shame for not having all the right physical attributes for the art I loved. These were things I could do nothing about. My neck was not going to grow longer.  My left hip bone was not going to reform itself correctly.  My arches were not going to get higher. - etc.  Auditioning for companies or roles in a performance held similar shame when it appeared as if they would pick less technically skilled dancers mainly because they fit the body type.  Perfectionism was a way to control a situation I had no control over.  We hide behind many masks thinking it will protect us somehow. I'm grateful for the opportunity to recognize some of them and perhaps even get to take a few off for good, thanks to Iyengar Yoga and meditation. 

My Iyengar Yoga: "Organic Farming Of The Self and Eradicating the Worm Within"

"Yoga does not look on greed, violence, sloth, excess, pride, lust, and fear as ineradicable forms of original sin that exist to wreck our happiness – or indeed on which to found our happiness. They are seen as natural, if unwelcome, manifestations of the human disposition and predicament that are to be solved, not suppressed or denied. Our flawed mechanisms of perception and thought are not a cause for grief (though they bring us grief), but an opportunity to evolve, for an internal evolution of consciousness that will also make possible in a sustainable form our aspirations toward what we call individual success and global progress."

"The whole educative thrust of yoga is to make things go right in our lives. But we all know that an apple that appears perfect on the outside can have been eaten away by an invisible worm on the inside. Yoga is not about appearances. It is about finding and eradicating the worm, so that the whole apple, from skin inward, can be perfect and a healthy one. That is why yoga, and indeed all spiritual philosophies, seems to harp on the negative -- grasping desires, weaknesses, faults, and imbalances. They are trying to catch the worm before it devours and corrupts the whole apple from inside. This is not a struggle between good and evil. It is natural for worms to eat apples. In yoga we simply do not want to be the apple that is rotted from inside. So yoga insists on examining, scientifically and without value judgment, what can go wrong, and why, and how to stop it. It is organic farming of the self -- for the Self."   ---BKS Iyengar, Light on Life

Sutra 11:34  Vitarkah himsadayah Krta Karita anumoditah lobha krodha mona purvaka mrdu madhya adhimatra duhkha ajnana anantaphala iti pratipaksabhavanam  - Uncertain knowledge giving rise to violence, whether done directly or indirectly, or condoned, is caused by greed, anger or delusion in mild, moderate or intense degree.  It results in endless pain and ignorance.  Through introspection comes the end of pain and ignorance.  --BKS Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali

As many Iyengar students know, in the books written by the Iyengars there is usually a section called, HINTS and CAUTIONS.  In Light on Yoga, this section goes on for almost ten pages to cover the hints and cautions needed for pranayama practice alone. Yoga is capable of shedding great light, which is why it can't be taken lightly.

Many people come to yoga for its physical benefits and needless to say there are many. But when as Iyengar says we "let the yoga do the yoga", our consciousness slowly begins to move from the outer most sheath of the body to the inner sheaths.  These sheaths are known as Koshas.  There are five Koshas:

Annamaya Kosha (physical body)
Pranamaya Kosha (energetic body)
Manamaya Kosha (mental body)
Vijnanamays Kosha (wisdom body)
Anandamaya Kosha (bliss body)

The people who leave yoga are those who may have hit an inner sheath and perhaps their own place of caution ---a glimpse of a possible worm inside themselves.  Instead of wanting to dig deeper and potentially clear it from their garden, they run away from it. I know. I have found myself running away on more than one occasion even though I always come back. Recently, I could even say I made myself sick with kidney and bladder issues as one of these lovely worms came to the surface in all its glory.

I know some people don't like Louise Hay and her ideas that we have some control over illness or disease.  However, it's interesting to note in her You Can Heal Your Life book she ascribes kidney problems to a sense of shame, failure, disappointment, and being over-critical and bladder problems to excess anxiety, fear of letting go, being pissed off, and incontinence to emotional overflow and years of controlling the emotions. If you look at the Chinese Five Element Theory: kidney problems (Yin Water Element) indicate excessive fear and anxiety and bladder problems (Yang Water Element) come from excess fear, anxiety, terror, frustration, inadequate courage.

I'm not opposed to Louise Hay and the Chinese Five Element Theory. I have worried myself sick. I figure I come by it honest.  My father is a marathon worrier.  So, I could blame it all on him and say  it's adhidaivika roga - or genetic disease with hereditary origin.  Although, it could also be considered adhyatmika roga - a self inflicted disease.  Iyengar explains in Light on the Sutras of Patanajali in his commentary on sutra 11:34 that disease, pain and distress come in three types 1) overindulgence in pleasure through desire 2) lust 3) pride. He continues saying that these can also come from non-deliberate habits and behaviors rising from imbalances of five elements --- I'm assuming we could probably draw parallels to the Chinese five Element Theory.

There are 20 Sanskrit words in Patanjali's Sutra 11:34. While studying Sutras 11:29-11:46, I'd have to come up against this long Sutra and like any good Southerner I'd turn the page. I'd think to myself, how am I ever going to get this one, it takes almost a half a page to write it. Then, low and behold I get the opportunity to truly understand it through a special "teachable moment".  Thank you Patanjali for yet another fallen oblation.

To clarify Sutra 11:34, Kquvien DeWeese encourages us to look at other interpretations. Mukunda Stiles interpreted the Sutra as "Negative thoughts and emotions are violent, in that they cause injury to yourself and others, regardless of whether they are performed by you, done by others or you permit them to be done. They arise from greed, anger, or delusion regardless of whether they arise from mild, moderate, or excessive emotional intensity.  They result in endless misery and ignorance. Therefore, when you consistently cultivate the opposite thoughts and emotions, the unwholesome tendencies are gradually destroyed."

We hear it all the time, "I think therefore I am." Cogito ergo sum as Rene Descartes put it.  How we think about ourself or others or what we believe have a lot of power and like my meditation teacher, Alice Franklin says, "We like to prove ourselves right". Patanjali's Sutra suggests a remedy:  When you have or experience a negative thought, belief, or emotion cultivate the opposite --cultivate the positive.
That (like every other aspect in the practice of yoga as Nancy Mau mentioned in class Saturday) takes faith, courage, mindfulness, concentration, and true vision:

Sutra 1:20 Sraddha Virya Smriti Smadhi Prajnapurvaka Itaresam.  "The concentration of the true spiritual aspirant is attained through faith, courage, mindfulness, concentration, and true vision." BKS Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali.  

Needless to say, I've still got a lot of work to do, but I'm going to keep at it.

I hope you will, too.

Namaste.