January 1, 2025 • 18 mins
Practice with me in the Quietmind Yoga Membership at https://www.quietmind.yoga
This is the start of a new series on the 10 Core Competenices of Yoga - starting with the first and arguably most important: Mentorship. I'll share:
Some of the most important lessons from my mentors
How to find a mentor
How mentors can save you years of frustration and confusion.
Stay tuned for next time when we'll talk about the core competency of Energetic Anatomy!
--
If you feel called to dive deeper into other topics of yoga philosophy, join the waitlist for my Quietmind Yoga Teacher Training at quietmind.yoga/ytt. That’s where I guide you through the ten core competencies of yoga, including philosophy, yoga history, mindfulness, anatomy, and teaching skills.
--
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Keywords: alignment, astrology, birth chart, astrology reading, Vedic astrology, life purpose, self-discovery, authenticity, spiritual growth, mindfulness, inner peace, Quietmind Astrology, podcast episode, values alignment, personal transformation, life changes, cosmic insights, planetary influences
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
There is so much to learn in theworld of yoga.
It's kind of a joke. You may have heard people think
taking a yoga teacher training is the end.
Like you take the training, now you're done, and now you're
ready to go teach. But it's actually the beginning.
You take a teacher training and then you realize how much you
didn't know, that you didn't even know that there is to learn
(00:28):
about yoga. And that was my experience too.
Like I was so into it. And then I took my first teacher
training and realized I was justscratching the surface.
And as I went forward from there, I started to categorize
things and try to make things a little easier for me to
understand. And not just pick random books
and random classes, but try to see how it all fits together.
(00:51):
And what I landed at is what I call the 10 core competencies of
yoga. I didn't just make this up, I
really just observed it. A lot of what I do as a yoga
teacher is from observation. Rather than trying to invent
something or create something, it's just observing like how do
the best teachers do this? And one of the things that I
find really helpful and how am Idoing stuff that I think is
(01:14):
helpful? And I think learning yoga can be
distilled very easily and very neatly into these 10 core
competencies. So I'm going to start a new
series here on the podcast aboutthis and go through all ten of
them. And I'm going to start today
with the topic of mentorship. So I go deeper into this in the
Quiet Mind Yoga membership, Quiet Mind dot Yoga.
(01:37):
You can sign up now or in the yoga teacher trainings that
Ioffer and other programs. But the first one is mentorship.
And I go back to this a lot because if you want to learn any
topic, just find somebody who has done it and learn as much as
you can from them. And it's always come back to
that. Like no matter what I'm
(01:57):
learning, as I'm learning more Spanish, I was, I was sharing
this with somebody and, and theyasked me, Oh, you're learning
Spanish, Who's your teacher? And I was like, OK, I'm not
practicing what I preach becauseI know the best way to learn
anything is to have a teacher right away that somebody who has
the thing that you want and can help you avoid a lot of mistakes
(02:18):
along the way. So I had that in my yoga path.
I had that in my astrology path.I teach those things now in my
yoga and astrology work. And whenever I'm going to learn
a new topic, that's something that I seek out.
And it's a continual pursuit really for me and other areas of
life, like some things are very challenging for me, like
(02:40):
relationship dynamics and overcoming past trauma and stuff
from my childhood condition is acontinual work in progress for
me. And I think I've learned a lot
and I hope I've learned a lot and I've invested a lot in that
training. But I still feel like a student
in a lot of ways in that world. And really in every world that
I'm in as a yoga teacher, as an astrologer, I still feel like a
(03:02):
student. I'm always learning and always
learning from people who have something that I would like to
have. And that's really how you find a
mentor is you look at, OK, what is something that is not working
for me that I would like to prove that I see somebody has
that thing and I can just ask them for help or take their
training or work with them in some way.
(03:23):
Now, a lot of people might not be accessible that you can
actually work with and actually having a mentor relationship
might not be accessible for the people you want to work with.
So that's a challenge with this.But a lot of times you can find
their books, their their lessons, their online courses,
classes, ways of learning from certain people.
(03:45):
But if you have the access to actually work directly with
them, I find that to be incredibly valuable.
And a lot of my own growth in every area of my life has come
through that. And as a musician years ago, I
kind of went the other directionof like, I don't want to be
condition into some way of making music.
(04:05):
It's my art, it's my expression.It's got to come from me
authentically. I don't want to learn a bunch of
scales and just have it be like,I'm just repeating what other
people have done. And that limited me a lot as a
musician. And then when I went to play
with others, like improvising orthings like this, people would
say, oh, do an F major sustain 9chord.
(04:26):
I don't know what that is. I know how to play some
interesting, cool things that feel authentic and interesting,
but I didn't really know how to speak the language to
collaborate with others and as amusician.
And that can be OK, that can work to some degree, but it
actually limited me a lot more as I went along my path further.
And if I'd actually had more of a mentor relationship and stayed
(04:49):
with certain teachers I worked with, that would have benefit me
a lot more as a musician. But that was ultimately just
part of my path and not my full path.
And as a yoga teacher, it's verymuch a teacher to student to
teacher to student relationship over many, many years.
Everything that we're sharing asteachers has come from books and
(05:09):
teachers before us. And as one of my mentors would
say, yoga is caught, not taught.So actually being in their
presence is ideal with yoga if possible.
But it can be a digital presence, if not a physical 1.
So being on Zoom still, there's a lot to catch in the actual non
verbal communication and the just speaking with somebody face
(05:32):
to face, having that personal time with them on Zoom, which is
a bit inaccessible with a lot ofpeople, but I make that
accessible with my work. So if that's something you're
wanting, I do offer this in my trainings and my classes and
things like that. But having a mentor basically
saves you a lot of time, a lot of frustration, a lot of
confusion trying to figure things out.
(05:54):
So that's why I think it's one of the core competencies because
you could get by without it kindof.
I mean, you might end up just inventing some new way of
stretching, and that's cool. But we're learning a system that
has held up through thousands ofyears like extremely well.
And it's basically people spent their whole life trying to
understand the human body, the breath, the energy, the chakras,
(06:17):
the doshas, the gunas, all thesedeeper topics that we talked
about. People have been scientists of
the body and mind and figured itout.
And now modern Western science is catching up with it and
validating these things. And more and more is just every
year there's new things coming out of, oh, did you know, like
this non sleep deep rest or whatused to be called yoga nidra,
(06:40):
but now we call it non sleep, deep rest is incredibly
beneficial for this, this and this, just like they said in the
punished shots thousands of years ago.
But we didn't want to listen to it then because it was just
pseudoscience. But now we've got the empirical
science. So it's true, right?
So there's a very much a Westernmindset of like, if it's not
scientifically proven, it's not real.
(07:02):
And the Vedic tradition and the what Eastern tradition is.
Here's what I found. Try it yourself and you'll see,
you'll experience it. And that's what the Upanishads
talk about. That's what the Yoga Sutra is
like. Here's a map of what to do.
Practice the limbs of yoga. Do this and you will get some
pretty amazing results. And some of it is like very
(07:25):
spectacular things. They say like you'll conquer
death and all this. I think some of it is
metaphorical, like you'll overcome the fear of death, you
overcome your insecurities, things like this.
But it's all there in the past. And this tradition doesn't pass
down teacher to student, teacherto student for thousands of
years. And we just got to step into
(07:46):
that flow, that that frequency, that that current that's already
moving, that river that's already going.
We step into it by finding a teacher who is also in that
current and that river in that stream and receive that wisdom
and is passing it down. So that's what I'm sharing here
on the podcast. Probably 70 to 80% of what I'm
(08:07):
sharing is basically things I'velearned in the past from other
teachers. And that's something one of my
early mentors said, too, when I asked him for advice is like,
what do you suggest? You know, I just finished my
first teacher training. I was about a year in the
teaching. What do you suggest I do?
And he said, just go to as many classes as you can, learn from
(08:29):
as many teachers as you can, because the things that you end
up saying as a teacher yourself will a lot of times be things
that you've heard from other teachers.
And that's so true, including what I just said right there.
So it's just this continual stream and you add new things to
it. And as I started teaching
myself, first I was repeating a lot of things I'd heard, but
(08:49):
then I would test things out andkind of uncover things myself
and land on certain observationsmyself.
I think of it more as observations rather than
discoveries or inventions because as I'm observing what's
working for people as I'm teaching and what's working for
me as I practice now, I have newways of speaking about it and,
(09:11):
and sharing those things and practicing those things and
teaching those things. And one of those for me is what
I call these 10 core competencies.
I chose that phrase. But again, I didn't invent this.
I'm just observing it and just finding that it's what has
worked really well for me and for other people.
And the first one is mentorship.I put it first because it helps
(09:32):
everything else tremendously. If you don't have a mentor,
again, you can kind of figure some things out and kind of end
up going down a lot of blind alleys, wasting a lot of time
and energy and money, really just trying things.
And that's a worthwhile pursuit if you feel called to it, If you
don't feel called to a mentor, Iget it.
(09:53):
That's how I felt with music. It's like I didn't want somebody
just telling me this is the way to do it.
It's like I wanted to just kind of figure it out on my own.
And ultimately, it was very limiting and I wouldn't change
it. I don't have regrets really.
But if I were going to Start learning any new skill now, I
would look for a mentor, somebody who has those results
(10:14):
that I want, that I can learn from and I can build upon,
rather than starting from scratch.
And another one of my mentors said that basically he wanted me
to stand on his shoulders and take yoga to a place that he
couldn't in his path. And one of those things is
teaching online. And he doesn't really teach you
online. But that's a big part of what I
(10:35):
do and big part of why I startedon my path too, because I
actually went to a class, had anamazing teacher, one of my first
classes. And three classes later, she
said, OK, I'm moving, leaving. This was 2008 or so.
And I asked her if she had anything online.
And she said she might try to start something, but she didn't
(10:57):
know. So I set this spark in me like,
oh man, if she had online classes, I'd be practicing every
day. I really like her class.
It feels so good and all this. So it kind of became a mission
for me that once I could share yoga if I, I didn't know I'd
ever take a training or what. But once I started to take my
trainings, like I want to put itonline.
I want that person like me in the middle of Minnesota who
(11:20):
doesn't have a good teacher nearby to have a good teacher
they can go do online. So that was a big motivation for
me of sort of gap of not having a teacher there.
But that inspiration, the ability to do it all came from
working with teachers in depth over a long time and my first
two years of teaching and then having these explicit
(11:43):
relationships where I ask somebody, will you be my mentor?
And let's just talk about what that looks like.
And there is a few of those veryimportant relationships for me.
So if you have some money in your life that could play that
role, I recommend you just ask them.
And as the person now on the other side of that, it feels
great to be asked and it's an honor and privilege to get to
(12:05):
share in that more intimate way.So don't be afraid to ask.
And the worst thing that happensis they say no, but they might
refer you to someone else and they don't have anything to lose
really by asking. So if there is somebody you feel
inspired by and you want to workwith on a deeper level, you can
just ask them. Or more common now, teachers are
(12:25):
creating these programs where they offer this sort of thing.
And I started offering that as well because of my positive
experience of my mentors. And that was part of first
teacher training. I was in then mentorship
program. And then just just personally
explicitly asking somebody to have that role for me because I,
I really needed that at the time.
(12:47):
I was going through a lot of changes in my life and it's so
valuable. And a lot of times for me, that
relationship was very simple, like maybe a short conversation
every now and then and it just just enough to like steer me on
the right path. And what Ioffer is a lot more
thorough and in depth in that. But sometimes it can be that
simple, just like 1-5 minute conversation and it just steers
(13:11):
you on the right path, helps youavoid a bunch of mistakes.
It's just such a sense of ease and trust and safety knowing
like they've been on this path, they've been at this point
before, they've had to make similar choices and they've
worked out a lot of the deep thinking stuff that you would
have to spend hours, maybe yearsdoing yourself.
(13:31):
And it just helps you save so much time.
So you want an honest relationship with a mentor.
You don't want somebody who justsugar coats things, just tells
you what you want to hear. You want somebody tells you the
truth. You want somebody who you can
trust to be honest with you. You want somebody who has
experience doing the things you want to do, right?
If you want to teach Vinyasa andthey only teach restorative,
(13:53):
that's not the right mentor for you.
If you want to teach vinyasa, find a vinyasa teacher.
Or if you want to teach restorative, find a restorative
teacher who has years of experience and has done things
that you want to do. If you want to leave retreats
and they've never LED retreats, that's not the right mentor for
you. If you want to leave retreats,
that's all you want to do and that's all this other person
does. That's a great person to reach
out and say, hey, I'm looking for a mentor.
(14:16):
Do you offer anything like this?I'm open to how this could look.
You know, I'm not asking for a lot here.
I just like maybe once a month we could check in for a few
minutes so I can buy you lunch, you know, make it very easy for
them to say yes and not a big burden or big responsibility for
them if it's not something they currently offer as like a
service. And a lot of times like just
(14:37):
offering to help out goes a longway too.
Like if somebody's already running retreats and you know,
social media marketing, you could say, hey, I'm looking for
a mentor and here's what I couldoffer in return for like a 10
minute meeting once a month. Like I could help you with your
promotion for your retreats. And here's an example of my
(14:58):
work. Here's what I would do for you
as an example of what I would dofor you.
That kind of approach, if you'regoing to reach out like that,
that's actually do the work and show them like or hey, I'm an
audio engineer, I edited your podcast and added some music.
Here's an idea of what I could do for you.
Let me know if you like it. If you do, I could offer to do
your editing in exchange for some sort of mentoring role,
(15:21):
like maybe 20 minutes a month and we have a little check in
and Ioffer, I asked for support in my path as a teacher, this
kind of thing. So make it an easy yes for them
if it's not something they're currently offering because
they're probably busy and probably getting offers like
this. So just take that into
consideration and they might sayno and that's OK.
(15:43):
Every no is just closer to more aligned yes.
So it's not personal, it's not ajudgement and it's not the end
of the world. You have to hear no a lot as a
business owner of any kind or anentrepreneur of any kind.
If you want to improve your business skills as a Yogi, then
as a yoga teacher, then you're going to need to get comfortable
with hearing know a lot and and just putting yourself out there
(16:05):
a bit and taking risks as part of the deal.
And that's something we'll talk about more and one of the other
core competencies about the business of yoga, which will
come much later. But I wanted to start here with
mentorship because it sets the stage for everything else.
Because next we're going to talkabout energy, the energetic
anatomy of yoga, the subtle stuff, and that stuff,
(16:27):
especially kundalini, Like it was said, like you, you
shouldn't learn kundalini yoga unless you've done this
different numbers, like 1929 years of hatha yoga with a
teacher and the teacher decides,OK, you're ready.
Now I'm going to teach you this energetic, subtle stuff, and
that's the old way. And we've evolved a lot as a
society and just in the universea lot since then.
(16:50):
Everything's speed up tremendously.
So the accessibility to things like chakras and kundalini is
way more accessible than it's ever been.
So you don't need to necessarilygo through decades of training
before you're ready for it. But that principle is a pretty
sound one that it helps to have a teacher who can help you know
when and where you're ready for certain things and not overload
(17:13):
you with things you're not readyfor and not overwhelm you with
things, but also help you guide you in the direction of what you
are ready for. So hopefully here in this
podcast, I am in some ways playing this role of mentor for
you and guiding you on your path.
And if you find it helpful, justleave an honest review, an Apple
podcast, share with a friend andcheck out Quiet Mind at Yoga,
where I guide you through hundreds of practices.
(17:36):
And the most common styles of yoga is classes for all requests
in their low back pain, shoulderpain, strength, flexibility,
balance, whatever you're lookingfor, it's probably in there.
And a class that I've put a lot of thought and care into in the
Quiet Mind Yoga membership at Quiet Mind dot Yoga.
And you can practice along with me there.
And look forward to sharing morewith you next time in this
(17:58):
series on the 10 core competences of yoga.
Talking about energetic anatomy on the next episode.
There is so much to learn in theworld of yoga.
It's kind of a joke. You may have heard people think
taking a yoga teacher training is the end.
Like you take the training, now you're done, and now you're
ready to go teach. But it's actually the beginning.
You take a teacher training and then you realize how much you
didn't know, that you didn't even know that there is to learn
(00:28):
about yoga. And that was my experience too.
Like I was so into it. And then I took my first teacher
training and realized I was justscratching the surface.
And as I went forward from there, I started to categorize
things and try to make things a little easier for me to
understand. And not just pick random books
and random classes, but try to see how it all fits together.
(00:51):
And what I landed at is what I call the 10 core competencies of
yoga. I didn't just make this up, I
really just observed it. A lot of what I do as a yoga
teacher is from observation. Rather than trying to invent
something or create something, it's just observing like how do
the best teachers do this? And one of the things that I
find really helpful and how am Idoing stuff that I think is
(01:14):
helpful? And I think learning yoga can be
distilled very easily and very neatly into these 10 core
competencies. So I'm going to start a new
series here on the podcast aboutthis and go through all ten of
them. And I'm going to start today
with the topic of mentorship. So I go deeper into this in the
Quiet Mind Yoga membership, Quiet Mind dot Yoga.
(01:37):
You can sign up now or in the yoga teacher trainings that
Ioffer and other programs. But the first one is mentorship.
And I go back to this a lot because if you want to learn any
topic, just find somebody who has done it and learn as much as
you can from them. And it's always come back to
that. Like no matter what I'm
(01:57):
learning, as I'm learning more Spanish, I was, I was sharing
this with somebody and, and theyasked me, Oh, you're learning
Spanish, Who's your teacher? And I was like, OK, I'm not
practicing what I preach becauseI know the best way to learn
anything is to have a teacher right away that somebody who has
the thing that you want and can help you avoid a lot of mistakes
(02:18):
along the way. So I had that in my yoga path.
I had that in my astrology path.I teach those things now in my
yoga and astrology work. And whenever I'm going to learn
a new topic, that's something that I seek out.
And it's a continual pursuit really for me and other areas of
life, like some things are very challenging for me, like
(02:40):
relationship dynamics and overcoming past trauma and stuff
from my childhood condition is acontinual work in progress for
me. And I think I've learned a lot
and I hope I've learned a lot and I've invested a lot in that
training. But I still feel like a student
in a lot of ways in that world. And really in every world that
I'm in as a yoga teacher, as an astrologer, I still feel like a
(03:02):
student. I'm always learning and always
learning from people who have something that I would like to
have. And that's really how you find a
mentor is you look at, OK, what is something that is not working
for me that I would like to prove that I see somebody has
that thing and I can just ask them for help or take their
training or work with them in some way.
(03:23):
Now, a lot of people might not be accessible that you can
actually work with and actually having a mentor relationship
might not be accessible for the people you want to work with.
So that's a challenge with this.But a lot of times you can find
their books, their their lessons, their online courses,
classes, ways of learning from certain people.
(03:45):
But if you have the access to actually work directly with
them, I find that to be incredibly valuable.
And a lot of my own growth in every area of my life has come
through that. And as a musician years ago, I
kind of went the other directionof like, I don't want to be
condition into some way of making music.
(04:05):
It's my art, it's my expression.It's got to come from me
authentically. I don't want to learn a bunch of
scales and just have it be like,I'm just repeating what other
people have done. And that limited me a lot as a
musician. And then when I went to play
with others, like improvising orthings like this, people would
say, oh, do an F major sustain 9chord.
(04:26):
I don't know what that is. I know how to play some
interesting, cool things that feel authentic and interesting,
but I didn't really know how to speak the language to
collaborate with others and as amusician.
And that can be OK, that can work to some degree, but it
actually limited me a lot more as I went along my path further.
And if I'd actually had more of a mentor relationship and stayed
(04:49):
with certain teachers I worked with, that would have benefit me
a lot more as a musician. But that was ultimately just
part of my path and not my full path.
And as a yoga teacher, it's verymuch a teacher to student to
teacher to student relationship over many, many years.
Everything that we're sharing asteachers has come from books and
(05:09):
teachers before us. And as one of my mentors would
say, yoga is caught, not taught.So actually being in their
presence is ideal with yoga if possible.
But it can be a digital presence, if not a physical 1.
So being on Zoom still, there's a lot to catch in the actual non
verbal communication and the just speaking with somebody face
(05:32):
to face, having that personal time with them on Zoom, which is
a bit inaccessible with a lot ofpeople, but I make that
accessible with my work. So if that's something you're
wanting, I do offer this in my trainings and my classes and
things like that. But having a mentor basically
saves you a lot of time, a lot of frustration, a lot of
confusion trying to figure things out.
(05:54):
So that's why I think it's one of the core competencies because
you could get by without it kindof.
I mean, you might end up just inventing some new way of
stretching, and that's cool. But we're learning a system that
has held up through thousands ofyears like extremely well.
And it's basically people spent their whole life trying to
understand the human body, the breath, the energy, the chakras,
(06:17):
the doshas, the gunas, all thesedeeper topics that we talked
about. People have been scientists of
the body and mind and figured itout.
And now modern Western science is catching up with it and
validating these things. And more and more is just every
year there's new things coming out of, oh, did you know, like
this non sleep deep rest or whatused to be called yoga nidra,
(06:40):
but now we call it non sleep, deep rest is incredibly
beneficial for this, this and this, just like they said in the
punished shots thousands of years ago.
But we didn't want to listen to it then because it was just
pseudoscience. But now we've got the empirical
science. So it's true, right?
So there's a very much a Westernmindset of like, if it's not
scientifically proven, it's not real.
(07:02):
And the Vedic tradition and the what Eastern tradition is.
Here's what I found. Try it yourself and you'll see,
you'll experience it. And that's what the Upanishads
talk about. That's what the Yoga Sutra is
like. Here's a map of what to do.
Practice the limbs of yoga. Do this and you will get some
pretty amazing results. And some of it is like very
(07:25):
spectacular things. They say like you'll conquer
death and all this. I think some of it is
metaphorical, like you'll overcome the fear of death, you
overcome your insecurities, things like this.
But it's all there in the past. And this tradition doesn't pass
down teacher to student, teacherto student for thousands of
years. And we just got to step into
(07:46):
that flow, that that frequency, that that current that's already
moving, that river that's already going.
We step into it by finding a teacher who is also in that
current and that river in that stream and receive that wisdom
and is passing it down. So that's what I'm sharing here
on the podcast. Probably 70 to 80% of what I'm
(08:07):
sharing is basically things I'velearned in the past from other
teachers. And that's something one of my
early mentors said, too, when I asked him for advice is like,
what do you suggest? You know, I just finished my
first teacher training. I was about a year in the
teaching. What do you suggest I do?
And he said, just go to as many classes as you can, learn from
(08:29):
as many teachers as you can, because the things that you end
up saying as a teacher yourself will a lot of times be things
that you've heard from other teachers.
And that's so true, including what I just said right there.
So it's just this continual stream and you add new things to
it. And as I started teaching
myself, first I was repeating a lot of things I'd heard, but
(08:49):
then I would test things out andkind of uncover things myself
and land on certain observationsmyself.
I think of it more as observations rather than
discoveries or inventions because as I'm observing what's
working for people as I'm teaching and what's working for
me as I practice now, I have newways of speaking about it and,
(09:11):
and sharing those things and practicing those things and
teaching those things. And one of those for me is what
I call these 10 core competencies.
I chose that phrase. But again, I didn't invent this.
I'm just observing it and just finding that it's what has
worked really well for me and for other people.
And the first one is mentorship.I put it first because it helps
(09:32):
everything else tremendously. If you don't have a mentor,
again, you can kind of figure some things out and kind of end
up going down a lot of blind alleys, wasting a lot of time
and energy and money, really just trying things.
And that's a worthwhile pursuit if you feel called to it, If you
don't feel called to a mentor, Iget it.
(09:53):
That's how I felt with music. It's like I didn't want somebody
just telling me this is the way to do it.
It's like I wanted to just kind of figure it out on my own.
And ultimately, it was very limiting and I wouldn't change
it. I don't have regrets really.
But if I were going to Start learning any new skill now, I
would look for a mentor, somebody who has those results
(10:14):
that I want, that I can learn from and I can build upon,
rather than starting from scratch.
And another one of my mentors said that basically he wanted me
to stand on his shoulders and take yoga to a place that he
couldn't in his path. And one of those things is
teaching online. And he doesn't really teach you
online. But that's a big part of what I
(10:35):
do and big part of why I startedon my path too, because I
actually went to a class, had anamazing teacher, one of my first
classes. And three classes later, she
said, OK, I'm moving, leaving. This was 2008 or so.
And I asked her if she had anything online.
And she said she might try to start something, but she didn't
(10:57):
know. So I set this spark in me like,
oh man, if she had online classes, I'd be practicing every
day. I really like her class.
It feels so good and all this. So it kind of became a mission
for me that once I could share yoga if I, I didn't know I'd
ever take a training or what. But once I started to take my
trainings, like I want to put itonline.
I want that person like me in the middle of Minnesota who
(11:20):
doesn't have a good teacher nearby to have a good teacher
they can go do online. So that was a big motivation for
me of sort of gap of not having a teacher there.
But that inspiration, the ability to do it all came from
working with teachers in depth over a long time and my first
two years of teaching and then having these explicit
(11:43):
relationships where I ask somebody, will you be my mentor?
And let's just talk about what that looks like.
And there is a few of those veryimportant relationships for me.
So if you have some money in your life that could play that
role, I recommend you just ask them.
And as the person now on the other side of that, it feels
great to be asked and it's an honor and privilege to get to
(12:05):
share in that more intimate way.So don't be afraid to ask.
And the worst thing that happensis they say no, but they might
refer you to someone else and they don't have anything to lose
really by asking. So if there is somebody you feel
inspired by and you want to workwith on a deeper level, you can
just ask them. Or more common now, teachers are
(12:25):
creating these programs where they offer this sort of thing.
And I started offering that as well because of my positive
experience of my mentors. And that was part of first
teacher training. I was in then mentorship
program. And then just just personally
explicitly asking somebody to have that role for me because I,
I really needed that at the time.
(12:47):
I was going through a lot of changes in my life and it's so
valuable. And a lot of times for me, that
relationship was very simple, like maybe a short conversation
every now and then and it just just enough to like steer me on
the right path. And what Ioffer is a lot more
thorough and in depth in that. But sometimes it can be that
simple, just like 1-5 minute conversation and it just steers
(13:11):
you on the right path, helps youavoid a bunch of mistakes.
It's just such a sense of ease and trust and safety knowing
like they've been on this path, they've been at this point
before, they've had to make similar choices and they've
worked out a lot of the deep thinking stuff that you would
have to spend hours, maybe yearsdoing yourself.
(13:31):
And it just helps you save so much time.
So you want an honest relationship with a mentor.
You don't want somebody who justsugar coats things, just tells
you what you want to hear. You want somebody tells you the
truth. You want somebody who you can
trust to be honest with you. You want somebody who has
experience doing the things you want to do, right?
If you want to teach Vinyasa andthey only teach restorative,
(13:53):
that's not the right mentor for you.
If you want to teach vinyasa, find a vinyasa teacher.
Or if you want to teach restorative, find a restorative
teacher who has years of experience and has done things
that you want to do. If you want to leave retreats
and they've never LED retreats, that's not the right mentor for
you. If you want to leave retreats,
that's all you want to do and that's all this other person
does. That's a great person to reach
out and say, hey, I'm looking for a mentor.
(14:16):
Do you offer anything like this?I'm open to how this could look.
You know, I'm not asking for a lot here.
I just like maybe once a month we could check in for a few
minutes so I can buy you lunch, you know, make it very easy for
them to say yes and not a big burden or big responsibility for
them if it's not something they currently offer as like a
service. And a lot of times like just
(14:37):
offering to help out goes a longway too.
Like if somebody's already running retreats and you know,
social media marketing, you could say, hey, I'm looking for
a mentor and here's what I couldoffer in return for like a 10
minute meeting once a month. Like I could help you with your
promotion for your retreats. And here's an example of my
(14:58):
work. Here's what I would do for you
as an example of what I would dofor you.
That kind of approach, if you'regoing to reach out like that,
that's actually do the work and show them like or hey, I'm an
audio engineer, I edited your podcast and added some music.
Here's an idea of what I could do for you.
Let me know if you like it. If you do, I could offer to do
your editing in exchange for some sort of mentoring role,
(15:21):
like maybe 20 minutes a month and we have a little check in
and Ioffer, I asked for support in my path as a teacher, this
kind of thing. So make it an easy yes for them
if it's not something they're currently offering because
they're probably busy and probably getting offers like
this. So just take that into
consideration and they might sayno and that's OK.
(15:43):
Every no is just closer to more aligned yes.
So it's not personal, it's not ajudgement and it's not the end
of the world. You have to hear no a lot as a
business owner of any kind or anentrepreneur of any kind.
If you want to improve your business skills as a Yogi, then
as a yoga teacher, then you're going to need to get comfortable
with hearing know a lot and and just putting yourself out there
(16:05):
a bit and taking risks as part of the deal.
And that's something we'll talk about more and one of the other
core competencies about the business of yoga, which will
come much later. But I wanted to start here with
mentorship because it sets the stage for everything else.
Because next we're going to talkabout energy, the energetic
anatomy of yoga, the subtle stuff, and that stuff,
(16:27):
especially kundalini, Like it was said, like you, you
shouldn't learn kundalini yoga unless you've done this
different numbers, like 1929 years of hatha yoga with a
teacher and the teacher decides,OK, you're ready.
Now I'm going to teach you this energetic, subtle stuff, and
that's the old way. And we've evolved a lot as a
society and just in the universea lot since then.
(16:50):
Everything's speed up tremendously.
So the accessibility to things like chakras and kundalini is
way more accessible than it's ever been.
So you don't need to necessarilygo through decades of training
before you're ready for it. But that principle is a pretty
sound one that it helps to have a teacher who can help you know
when and where you're ready for certain things and not overload
(17:13):
you with things you're not readyfor and not overwhelm you with
things, but also help you guide you in the direction of what you
are ready for. So hopefully here in this
podcast, I am in some ways playing this role of mentor for
you and guiding you on your path.
And if you find it helpful, justleave an honest review, an Apple
podcast, share with a friend andcheck out Quiet Mind at Yoga,
where I guide you through hundreds of practices.
(17:36):
And the most common styles of yoga is classes for all requests
in their low back pain, shoulderpain, strength, flexibility,
balance, whatever you're lookingfor, it's probably in there.
And a class that I've put a lot of thought and care into in the
Quiet Mind Yoga membership at Quiet Mind dot Yoga.
And you can practice along with me there.
And look forward to sharing morewith you next time in this
(17:58):
series on the 10 core competences of yoga.
Talking about energetic anatomy on the next episode.
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