seeing differently

Iyengar Method and Seeing

There are days where I realise I am not seeing clearly.

Not because my eyes aren’t working
- but because I’m looking through something I haven’t named.

I wear prisms in my glasses.
A quiet correction. A subtle shift.
They don’t change what is there,
but they change how it arrives.

And most days, I forget they are even there.

In practice, this is where I begin to pay attention.

Not to what I think I see in a student,
but to how I am seeing.

The Iyengar Yoga Method does not rush this process.
It does not reward quick conclusions.

It asks for something far less comfortable:

To stay.
To look again.
To refine perception until it becomes honest.

The same pose,
the same instruction,
the same student -

and yet, never the same.

What changes is the lens.

Some days I see effort and call it resistance.
Other days I see the same effort and recognise protection.
Or fear.
Or intelligence.

And if I am not careful,
I will teach what I assume is there
instead of what is actually in front of me.

I am not just observing bodies.

I am interpreting space.
Weight.
Timing.
Breath.

I am reading something that is constantly moving,
even when it appears still.

And this is where I miss the mark.

Not because I don’t know what to teach,
but because I have mistaken my perception for truth.

It is a quiet error.
Hard to catch.
Easy to justify.

Especially when you are “the teacher.”

But the method, if I let it, corrects me.

Not through theory -
through contact.

Through placing a hand and realising
I was wrong about the direction.

Through watching a student organise themselves
in a way I did not predict.

Through noticing that when I step back,
something more accurate emerges.

Seeing, then, is not fixed.

It is trained.
Refined.
Unsettled.

It asks me to hold my knowledge lightly,
and my attention steadily.

There is also this:

I am not here to tell a story about what I see.
But sometimes, that is exactly what I do.

I narrate.
I interpret.
I fill in the gaps.

And occasionally, I mistake that for teaching.

So I return.

To the body in front of me.
To the space between us.
To the possibility that I have not yet seen it clearly.

The work is not to see more.

It is to see differently.

The work is not to see more.
It is to see differently.

And to remember -
I am always looking through something.

X Kellie