Hold the Revelation, Please

A word of advice: everything that I say could be totally wrong.

 

I hope you don't come to yoga to be saved, seen, or heard. While those are all possibilities, they are not written in my agenda. Yoga is a forum of your experience, not my revelation.

 

You learn information in many ways. Yes, you do learn through revelation; that is, you are told something is true, like through your parents, caregivers, religious leaders, and most yoga teachers (😅). You also learn through your nervous system--sensation and direct experience of your environment. And you eventually get good at inference; if this is true or false, then that is also true or false, based on your learned experiences. We encounter all of these learning modes in yoga.

 

Allow me to offer you a revelation of mine, then you try it out for yourself: I'm a scientist of life and a skeptic at heart. I too get that throw-uppy feeling in my mouth when someone tells me "oh yes this is definitely true!" Don't sign up for what I say at face value, ever. I know what I know, and I don't know what I don't. In class I will impart a few of my own revelations, and the revelations of my teachers, to you. If all my revelations were unequivocally true, if it were as simple as that, you would be done with me and I'd be done with you after a few weeks.

 

But this is exactly where your experience begins! The most interesting thing about yoga is its subjectivity. It's not necessarily about what I say being universally true, but rather your application into experience and eventual inference in a meaningful way; your artistry of how a proposed revelation meshes into your vast knowledge of what you hold as true, or how it doesn't. Some things I've "revelated" will work for you, and some things won't. Some things you will call me out on as BS and some things you will rock out with. Cool with me. Your body is always true for you and your life, but not in all yoga poses and definitely not in all of my offerings.

 

In yoga, we will move through a full range of shapes, actions, and invitations. In every pose may you expand your experiential knowledge through the vehicle of potential revelation. "Oh...what's he saying? What's that? Why can I do this and not that? Let me try this out..." Honor all the ways in which you learn and apply each as valid.

 

Recall the excitement of that little voice in your head that says "Hey! Let me find out for myself!" Consider everyone who has taught you in your life; honor the lessons you have taught yourself above all.