Starting From Scratch

We shall not cease from exploration.

And the end of all our exploring.

Will be to arrive where we started.

And know the place for the first time.

T. S. ELIOT

When I started teaching yoga, over a decade ago, it was a hard graft. Aside from running round London covering any class I could, I also had a couple of my own. To begin with, I’d regularly have just one student per class. Sometimes, no-one showed up.

Slowly but surely, I got more clients. Fast forward a few years, and I started teaching at the yoga studio Triyoga. Some nights there were now close to fifty people in my class. I breathed a sigh of relief. It felt good to no longer worry about whether I was even going earn enough to cover the cost of a flat white, once I’d paid the room rent, or my transport. And of course being in a room with all these lovely people who’d chosen to take my class, gave me a buzz.

Then 2020 rocked up.

Luckily, yoga studios in in UK have reopened. But rebuilding, in the wake of the pandemic, feels in many ways like starting from scratch. Often I’m taken back to the those early years where, on a good day, five people might show up, four of whom I’d never met and who - as is inevitable - might not resonate with me and how I teach.

I’m not going to pretend this new normal has felt entirely comfortable. Yet from the grit of it, two pearls have emerged:

The first is the reminder (yet again!) that the essence of life is change, and nothing lasts forever. This can be all too easily forgotten, especially when we’re cruising along nicely. We might believe that because we’ve climbed the mountain, we’re never going to end up at its base again. The truth is, there are always going to be peaks and troughs.

The second pearl is that I’ve had to ask myself whether teaching yoga actually still matters to me? When things are ticking along, it can be too easy to accept the status quo and not pause to question it.

The answer is, yes. Practicing yoga still brings me great joy, as does sharing it with others. Which was the spark that led me to pursue teaching in the first place.

In that yes, I have to remind myself to let go of the part of me that has demands and expectations about how my life as a yoga teacher should look, as well as of the part of me that misses what teaching was like pre-pandemic. And to reconnect with that spark of joy that brought me to it all those years ago.

Perhaps you also have somewhere in your life where you feel things are no longer what they once were? If so, it might be worth asking, does this still matter to my heart? And if the answer’s yes, to remember the spark from which it grew – whether it’s the love you have for someone, or the passion for something you do.

Our relationships, our careers, and indeed everything, will inevitably go through various cycles, some more ‘up’, some more ‘down’. It can be tempting, when we hit the lower ones, to think we need to sweep out that person or that career. Sometimes that’s absolutely the right choice. At other times, such as when we hear that inner yes, can we instead learn to be with whatever it is, in its re-formed state, and in the remembrance that this too is part of the great dance of life. It too, in time, will give way to some new and as yet unknown form.