a teachers path
Learning to Teach is Learning to See
Becoming a teacher takes us deeper into the subject. It’s not just about performing postures or memorising sequences, it’s about learning to see.
In some traditions, one can be certified to train teachers in a weekend. In our lineage, the parampara restricts us. I wasn’t “allowed” to teach teachers for 15 years. Allowed is a strange word, as if someone else alone decided, that it was someone else’s permission. In truth, the process is far more demanding, and more beautiful. It takes dedication, consistent practice, and years of experience to cultivate the ability to extract what matters, to mirror a student’s growth, and to support someone as they step into the role of a teacher.
Teaching is not just showing. It is learning how to look beneath the surface, to recognise effort, potential, misunderstanding, and fear, often all at once. A teacher of teachers must be able to see the seeds of confidence before they sprout, and also notice where weeds may choke growth. That depth of perception doesn’t arrive with a certificate; it ripens over years of sustained practice, under guidance, in community.
The Iyengar methodology offers a system that makes this ripening possible. It provides structure without rigidity, discipline without dogma. The scaffolding is profound: it carries us through the stages of learning and offers tools precise enough to serve each individual body, each unique journey. It doesn’t make us “better than” anyone else, it simply holds us accountable to the depth we are entrusted with.
And yes, like any system, it has its cracks. No method is flawless, no lineage without challenges. But perhaps that is exactly the point. As Leonard Cohen reminds us, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” The imperfections invite us to look more deeply, to stay awake, to remember that the practice is not about perfection but about presence.
It took me 15 years before I was certified to guide teachers. Those years were not wasted, rather they were essential. They allowed the practice to seep into my bones, to become not something I do but something I am. Only then could I begin to support others on the path of teaching. Not because I had “achieved” something, but because I had been shaped by the discipline long enough to hold space for others to find their own voice.
Training teachers is not a weekend’s work. It is not the handing over of techniques. It is the slow, careful act of cultivating vision, helping someone else learn to see. And that process, like the practice itself, never really ends.
The gift of the Iyengar system is that it teaches us to keep looking: to see more clearly, to question more deeply, and to stand more firmly in the role of student even as we step into the role of teacher. For in truth, the two are never separate.
xo kellie