What Is Good Enough?

I've been teaching yoga for about a year and a half and still frequently ask myself if I am teaching a "good" class or not. I don't have that many students, and I have to ask myself if it's me, or if my class is too hard or not hard enough.
—Brona

Read John Friend's response:

Dear Brona,

Your thought-provoking question seems to arise from your association between effective teaching and the number of students you get in class.

When I started teaching yoga in the '80s in Houston, Texas, I would often have fewer than six students in class. When someone dropped out, I regarded it as a failure of my teaching. In time, instead of judging my teaching effectiveness on this kind of quantitative criterion, I examined whether I was doing my best in manifesting my intentions for fostering certain qualities within the students. As a beginner teacher, I simply wanted to have each student feel better about himself and about life at the end of class. If I felt that I did my best in manifesting this intention, then I regarded it as a good class and my teaching as effective, even if my class numbers were consistently low.

Some 25 years later, as a more experienced teacher, my overriding criteria for a good class include:

• Did I meet the students' basic desires for the class?
• Do the students better recognize their innate goodness and beauty?
• Have the students more fully awakened to the Supreme Being that underlies their physical, emotional, and mental patterns?
• Do the students feel more connected to life?
• Was the flow of the students' prana optimized? That is, do they feel more vibrant and healthy? Do they feel that they have greater ability to enjoy life through all of their senses?
• Do the students have any practical understanding of how to further enhance and serve life and others outside the classroom?

In order for me to answer "yes" to all of these questions, I use all the teaching skills and technical knowledge that I have gained through many years of study and teaching. First, I create a personal connection with each student. Then, employing the most effective language skills I can, I apply technical knowledge for teaching hatha yoga, including postural sequencing, instructing with the breath, observation of alignment, physical and verbal adjustments, use of demonstration, and pacing the class in order to help students more fully awaken to their hearts and to enliven them with shakti.

Although I may have a lot of skill and technical knowledge in teaching yoga, if I don't meet a student's general desire or motive for coming to my class, they probably won't return. For instance, a lot of new students want to sweat and get more physically fit in their yoga class. So while I give these students a workout, I still try to follow my main intention of providing them with a spiritual "work-in." I give them what theywant, so they will be satisfied and open to what Iwant to give them.

At the end of the day, know that you did your best as a teacher of the exquisite spiritual art of yoga. Keep your teaching close to your heart. Unceasingly study and practice what you teach. When you put your whole heart into your intention to help others through your teaching, then you will always be fulfilled and truly successful.

John Friend, the founder of Anusara Yoga, has practiced a variety of hatha yoga styles since the early '70s. Today, he is widely considered one of the most charismatic and highly respected yoga teachers in the world. Blending an uplifting Tantric yoga philosophy with Universal Principles of Alignment, John's teaching style guides each student to fully live every moment from the heart. In 1997, John founded Anusara Yoga to promote his innovative vision. Today, Anusara Yoga is one of the most popular and fastest growing schools of hatha yoga in the world.