Under the Influence
Remember the first year, when the practice cracked something open and the world rearranged itself around us. We sat longer, read the texts with hunger, caught ourselves mid-reaction and chose differently. The philosophy was alive in the body and in the choices, and living it felt easy while the experience stayed that intimate, saturating everything.
But somewhere in the second or third year, did the intensity soften? It can happen so gradually that people mistake it for settling in, for overcoming the impostor syndrome. Teachers get busy, with bills arriving and new obligations around brand, schedule, market position. Integration, right? This must be spiritual maturity, making peace with the demands of earning a living. And some of that is true, but beware. The gravity of conventional life has a way of pulling yogis back to the ground, back to the materialist philosophical underpinning of Western capitalism.
So here is the question every teacher has to answer honestly. Are we still practising with the same sincerity that first brought us to the mat, or has the sādhana become a professional obligation, something fitted around the teaching schedule rather than the other way around? The practice came first. It has to keep coming first. Everything a teacher offers a student flows from the quality of their own inner work, and when the practice itself goes thin or habitual the teaching follows, however polished the cues, however full the room.
“As teachers we exude our innate qualities and attract students so aligned. If you have a steadfast and disciplined approach, the students who identify with that approach will be drawn to you. They will thrive on your timeliness, devotion, and the glow cultivated by your personal practice. They will model the ideals they see like moths to the flame. If, on the other hand, your behaviour reflects a practice that is unstable or inconsistent, you will attract students with the same inconsistency.”
Fitness to teach means checking our own state before walking into that room, asking whether we are clear, grounded, and present enough to hold space for other people’s practice. This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable, because we live in an age of microdosing and plant medicine ceremonies and heroic doses of DMT on weekends, and the yoga community is right in it. There is a difference between a considered, supported exploration of consciousness and using substances to paper over unresolved trauma that keeps surfacing. A teacher self-medicating repressed childhood material with psychedelics and then turning up on Monday morning to teach vinyāsa, that is a sequence that needs serious examination. Students can feel it. They may not be able to name it, but they register the quality of our attention and the steadiness of our presence, and they respond accordingly.
And sometimes the best move is to step back from teaching altogether. Extended leave and travel. Personal matters that need full attention, or plain overwork and running on fumes. The realisation that a studio has gone sour, or that a style of yoga is no longer ours. These are reasons enough to pause, and the pause is its own act of integrity when the alternative is grinding through classes on autopilot. The practice will still be there. Students find their way. The return, when it comes, is from fullness rather than depletion.
The non-negotiable through all of this is the personal practice. The classes we teach and the studios we attend, the workshops and retreats and the social media presence, all of it is secondary to the hours spent alone on the mat, in meditation, in the quiet confrontation with ourselves that nobody sees. That unseen hour is where the yoga happens. A yogi ventures again and again into the place of terrifying doubt and uncomfortable uncertainty until the intellect is bathed completely and permanently in the light. If that has slipped, the way back is the mat, the meditation, the unseen hour.
“The secret of sustainable teaching is to get out of the way. You did not invent yoga; you are just passing it on. The teacher merely manages the fire, stoking and adding material, intervening occasionally. The fire is self-sustainable for the most part. It is the yoga itself that has had the impact, you are just the vehicle that delivered it. Your job is to be a competent messenger.”
One of the most practical things you can do to protect your practice is to get the administrative weight of teaching off your mind. Class bookings, payments, cancellations, waitlists, the endless back and forth of scheduling, all of it occupies mental space that belongs to your sādhana. Studio management software like Punchpass exists precisely for this purpose, and teachers who use it well report that the hours they reclaim are significant. This is a small, concrete decision with real consequences for how you spend your attention. Automate what can be automated so that your bandwidth stays with the practice.
Punchpass is studio management software built for yoga, fitness and dance studios. Simple to use, no contracts, and trusted by thousands of studios worldwide.
About the Author
Josh Pryor is CEO of Yoga Australia and a Level 3 Registered Teacher. A specialist in Mysore style yoga, Josh’s approach is light-hearted and enthusiastic. Josh is the author of two books, including The Spirit of the Matter, which explores the Mysore style class format as a path for modern yoga practice.
