What's Liking Your Teacher Got to Do With it?

I've had a few spiritual teachers in my day. A couple of Zen teachers. Maybe four yoga teachers, if I don't count the one time only events. Of those, I worked closely with about half the group, and can't say I felt dislike for any of them while I worked with them.

But is liking your teacher necessary? Or even beneficial?

This post could easily be applied to any spiritual teacher or guide in my view. It's focused on yoga teachers though, and given my interest in teaching yoga - and presence in a yoga teacher training - it's a totally fascinating issue to consider.

Most Westerners focus on personality. Most want not only for their teachers to “like” them but, if they are also teachers, for their students to “like” them. Behavior is modified and softened. In other words, students kiss their teachers’ behinds, while teachers refrain from any criticism that might offend.

Yoga has grown very “social” in the West. Teachers and students often become friends (or more than friends). Personally, I steer clear from yoga cliques. In the primary relationship between teacher and student, however, I do seek real rapport. But is this necessary? Or am I filling another need in myself, too?

I remember wanting to be liked by my first Zen teacher. We had a pretty strong in-group, out-group thing going on in the zen center at that time, which I think was one of many issues that lead to the unceremonious exit of said teacher. I can still recall the first day of the first retreat I did, feeling entirely petrified for several hours as I tried to do the rituals and the rest "right," and worried I'd be called out for being a screw up. The intensity of my fear was so great at times that I could barely sit upright, let alone focus on my breath or much of anything else. And I can see now that at least some of that was tied to wanting to be accepted into the "in-group," to be liked by the teacher and more senior students, and thus be amongst those who could be called "the good Zen students.

Looking back, I can see this is both a totally normal thing to do, and also is quite indicative of a self-focus on overdrive. Being liked or disliked by a teacher really has little bearing on one's spiritual development, but at the time, I must have thought that it did.

Let's consider the "social" aspect mentioned above. I personally believe that it really can be wonderful when communities spring up around yoga, for example, because there is a decidedly privatized, individualistic streak running through the larger North American yoga world anyway. Many people arrive at a class 5 minutes beforehand, the class is run entirely by a teacher talking people through poses, and then everyone rushes out the door to their next destination. So, when genuine communities develop where people actually share their experiences, talk about the practice, think about the deeper questions behind the body practices, and just have fun together - that should be celebrated. I'll certainly celebrate it.

On the other hand, no doubt there can be yoga cliques in ways that are like what happened at my zen center. And no doubt healthy communities can devolve into insular groups where people reinforce the worst in each other, thinking they are doing the opposite.

But back to the specific issue at hand, it's interesting to consider how wanting to like, and also to be liked, might impact yoga practice in communal settings like studios. I love discussion, and even debating, when everyone is treated with basic respect, regardless of their opinions. I remember times in my Iyengar classes where our teacher would bring up some challenging topic for discussion, one or two of us would say something, and everyone else would just stare silently at the wall in front of them. What's this about? Many things perhaps. Maybe they don't know about the topic. Maybe they have no opinion. Maybe they had a rough day, and just can't think clearly. Plenty of possibilities.

But I also think that one reason could be that silence on a topic you might disagree with someone on in class, especially the teacher, maintains a sense of ease in the relationships there, and also keeps the likability factor up. There is certainly a risk if you disagree with your teacher. And if you have a regular group of students you're in, there's a risk in disagreeing with them as well.

However, what happens when people don't take risks, don't share what they have experienced or have learned about in such settings? In my view, everything stays on a more surface level. Your teacher may like you and you might like your teacher, but the learning lab you work in together gets stale at a certain point, and the murky, challenging issues of life fail to be surfaced and considered fully. On a recent post about yoga and men, a few commenters mentioned angst towards the syrupy, feel good language of some yoga classes, and that can end up playing a role in all of this. Yoga becomes a place to get a "feel good" hit, and then people go back to their "regular lives" and struggle until their next yoga class.

To flip the coin over, though, I personally have never been attracted to yoga teachers, zen teachers, or really anyone who defaults to harsh, almost militaristic methods of teaching. There is a strand of Zen teacher ancestors who regularly beat on students, called them names, shouted at them, etc. - all in the name of waking them up. I can imagine this benefits some people, but I don't think it's needed for the majority of us. In addition, the issues around liking a teacher can come up for people no matter how a teacher teachers. People can seek to cozy up to the drill sargent just as much as the gentle spirit: it just might look different.

In the end, though, I'll just repeat what I said earlier. Being liked or disliked by a teacher really has little bearing on one's spiritual development. So, perhaps it's most important to check in on your motivations and intentions when considering your relationship with spiritual peers and/or teachers. The same goes for teachers who feel a need to be liked. I certainly had that while teaching ESL and had to learn to have more open conversations with students, to disagree respectfully when certain viewpoints came up, and to be honest with students when, for example, they missed too much class or were arguing too much with classmates (this happened sometimes).

One of the challenges I see with yoga classes is that more often than not, there isn't really a somewhat stable community of students working with a teacher. So, the trust level needed to take risks, share painful stories, and to explore more difficult, uneasy issues is often lacking. Part of my interest in yoga teaching has to do with helping to develop more communities, so that the depth of the practice can be accessed for more of us, as well as to just bring about more coming together, being together, working together in a society that is filled with the opposite.

Overriding the Desire for Social Acceptance

There is a strong desire running through most of us to both appear happy and healthy to others, and to actually be happy and healthy ourselves. When the latter is absent, often the pressure to put on appearances is heightened. Others worry, and you don't want others to worry. So you try to manage yourself and also others by sweeping all the shit under the rug. Pretty damned screwy.

It's vitally important to explore the rough edges that appear in your life. To not automatically default into a view that says feeling depressed or sad or upset means you're faulty, in need of therapy, or some other such story. It's true that some of us fall too deeply into despair or rage, for example, and need to go for intensive help of some sort. However, I believe in this modern world littered with psychologists and spiritual programs emphasizing psychology, it's really easy to embrace the story that you're in trouble, and need to "do therapy."

One of the symptoms of all of this is over-emphasizing "positive thinking and acting." I found two recent posts addressing this issue, which are worth a look.

The Dalai Grandma has been writing, among other things, about her experience with needing a kidney transplant. One of the reasons I'd recommend her blog is that she presents the whole situation honesty, and in detail. Sometimes, she's living in hopefulness and joy. Other times, she's cloudy and disconnected. And still other times, it's crankiness and frustration. In other words: reality.

I don't like to be told to look on the bright side, though of course there's a reason I undertook this kidney transplant, to live much better, much longer, once we're through this. But as for putting a spin on my experience, there is this experience, what it is, in total, though it's only that - experience. Today it's been unpleasant. Much of the day in bed trying to be warm, cold sweats, blurred vision, inability to concentrate, nose running. Immunosuppressants are very strong. My nurse told me to eat when I take them (3 times a day) and that cut down on stomach pain and belching. At least I'm not nauseated. (I know, that's thinking positive. And at least I haven't come down sick in some other way, and there are many ways. And I'm not "in rejection." In other words, this is working fine. A good recovery.)

It seems to me it's best when whatever one might call "positive" thinking comes out naturally, manifesting through one's experience, and not out of an attempt to please or pacify or avoid. And we don't need to be dangerously ill in order to experience a shift in perspective about something that we've suffered over in the past. But obviously, when such things come, the intensity is hard to ignore.

Emma over at the Chronic Meditator has some similar reflections in her latest post.

Here's what I'm exploring...

If I have a day when I feel miserable, bitter, and very ungrateful about being sick...should I feel a preference that this day not be that way? Should I feel a preference that I feel at ease and peaceful being sick? Or should I have no preferences ?

For me, this exploration is very rich. I'm suddenly allowing all these really difficult feelings to flow through my body - boredom, frustration, anxiety about the future, terror, emptiness, and despair. I know this all sounds really miserable, and not like 'good news' at all, but I have this strong feeling that allowing these feelings to flow is really my path.

I resonate with this sense of flow, and letting go of claiming or privileging one set of experiences over another. One of the challenges I have experienced with allowing this kind of flow, or paying attention to the flow, is that it shows you the instability of "yourself" and your identities. People ask you how you're doing and you aren't quite sure what to say. Who am I? becomes more central of a question, which probably means you're pointed in the right direction, but it also shifts how you interact with others - to the point, where some of the significant people in your life might struggle to relate to you, and you to them.

When faced with this awkward, unstable ground, I often, you often, all of us often choose some sort of bypass. Positive thinking is just one form. But the point is that instead of feeling awkward, unstable, and not terribly in knowing, we opt to do something that plugs us back into the socially accepted field. In other words, we opt to maintain social acceptance over discovering who we truly are.

This shouldn't be something we "get down" about. It's pretty hardwired into humans to do what we can to maintain some level of social acceptance. But I think awakening in this life requires some bucking of that, some willingness to override that collective impulse that drives us to turn away, disown, and even hate part of our experience.

p.s. The image is a nod to my sister, who loves Napoleon Dynamite. I didn't care for it much to be honest.