Aaron on Letting Classes Be Boring
At high school Aaron was a bit of a troublemaker and his father decided he had to go to meditation, and every Thursday he sat in a Buddhist temple and meditated. Years later, after five knee reconstructions, he was looking for something to get his body back on track and stumbled into a yoga class which helped.
He started teaching in a spare room offered by a friend who runs a gym down the road, and then COVID shut it down and he pivoted to online, and what he had assumed would be a constraint turned into one of the biggest expanders of his teaching life. When the restrictions lifted he opened the studio he now runs, which he calls Om Som.
Most people in the Om Som community need rest, in Aaron’s reading, and the teaching shows them how to slow down, how to relax, how to be still, and how to arrive at a consistent meditation practice. That approach has tightened since he graduated as a yoga therapist, which he names as his biggest milestone to date, and tailoring a practice to the person in front of him is what changed the most.
The breakthrough he points to is the recognition that even with a hundred thousand yoga teachers out there, there is only one of him, and the same goes for every teacher trying to work out what they offer. Alongside that he passes on the lesson that took him longer to accept, which is that it is okay for your classes to be boring, and it is okay for there to be space, because in that space, if the teacher can hold it, students get the opportunity to go inwards and meet yoga for themselves.
What excites him in the current cultural moment is that Pilates is taking over the exercise side of the movement market, and that opens room for yoga to return to mudrās and bandhas and mantras and kriyās, all the parts of the practice he believes makes yoga what it is. Yoga has a movement part and an awareness part, and he argues the awareness part is the larger one, and his hope is for yoga to live in the modern world as a doorway into meditation rather than a competitor on the exercise floor.
Visit or follow Aaron’s studio:
Website: omsom.yoga
Instagram: instagram.com/omsom.yoga
Facebook: facebook.com/omsom.yoga
We’re celebrating yoga teachers who have
transformed their love of yoga into a thriving career.
Through our new storytelling campaign, we’ll feature inspiring journeys, lessons learned, and the positive impact teachers are making in their communities.
Through real stories, we aim to:
- Recognise the incredible work happening across the industry.
- Increase visibility and leads for local yoga businesses.
- Inspire yoga teachers who are walking a similar path.
- Build trust through authentic storytelling.
Know a teacher who has a story to share? Nominate them!
(Send an email to [email protected] for details.)
