Reflecting on Time as a Teacher

"There is no substitute for time."

I often share this mantra with students in my yoga classes. It's a nugget of wisdom that has been a hard-earned lesson, and I must remind myself of it often.

On and off the mat, I am often tempted to try to control time. To speed up some things and slow down others. Under the guise of efficiency, I ponder how to get the most benefit in the least amount of time.

To make every moment "productive."

In my practice, that has often looked like pushing the envelope. If I try harder, explore intense variations, if I practice A LOT, maybe I'll reap the rewards in less time.

Yoga doesn't work like that. Few things do.

I learned this through my restorative yoga practice. In a burst of sudden clarity, I recognized how futile it is to try and rush rest; to force it to happen on my desired timetable. Any time I tried to speed things up, I felt less of a release.

In trying to hurry, I never truly settled into the experience.

This idea - that the greatest teacher and change-maker is time - doesn't apply only to minutes or hours, but also to months and years.

I've been practicing yoga for over a decade. Looking back on the journey, I can see clearly the ebb and flow of progress, growth, and wisdom.

The years where I was laser-focused on progress were the years I was the least connected to my practice.

I was moving through the motions of poses, but I wasn't feeling them. I've grown more into my own as a practitioner and teacher in the past year than I had in the previous decade, all because I've let go of trying to control the process.

There's a passage from The Heart of Yoga by T.K.V. Desikachar that describes the process of learning the sutras. While it relates directly to study, it’s an apt description for the power of time:

"As yoga study and practice develop, the message of the Sutra takes on a deeper resonance and becomes more relevant, more revealing. There can be no haste or exaggerated effort to gain its understanding; it must be a natural process."

To me, this encompasses so much of what I've learned from the practice. That yes, effort is required. And also, patience is an essential part of the recipe.

There is no substitute for time.