As we let go of the illusion that someone or something is going to fix us, we are liberated.  The hand-carved Ganesh is not going to leap off the altar and fix our lives any more than 108 Sun Salutations.  In my experience, what does work is infusing our respective practices with intention, breath and authenticity.  If we mindlessly move from pose to pose and prayer to prayer, what we will experience in return is the product of our distraction.

As a person working in the healing arts I have seen all sorts of things – students showing up drunk, smoking crack in parking lots, teachers dating students, teachers and their husbands dating the same student, people taking final relaxation in the middle of class, students doing random Kudalini while I’m teaching inversions, throwing blocks, taking phone calls, texting.  I have also been privileged to witness incredible things – a pregnant woman (with twins) in down dog on the wall, students going through and recovering from cancer, students getting off meds of all sorts.

Like any physical practice, yoga has its benefits and pitfalls for both the teacher and the student.  And as in ALL professions, there are both wonderful and hideous people involved.

I start each class by taking injuries.  Sometimes I demonstrate the modifications for injured students and sometimes I help them modify as we go along.  I take responsibility for the knowledge that students give me.  But it is also true that the student is ultimately responsible for practicing in a healing way and for doing the modifications.

For example, what I say to the students who lay down in the middle of class is that it’s dangerous. If you lower your core temperature and then pop up into a pose, you risk injury.  So then we come up with a modification that is heat building but also possible for the student.  This is often very liberating for the student and an interesting teaching moment.

But William Broad’s article addresses something else: the overzealous student.  For example, I had a student come to class with a bruised rib.  I checked in with him pose by pose, asking him if the poses we were doing were causing pain.  The practice was feeling good until he pushed up into down-dog.  He said, ‘That hurt.’  To which I responded, ‘Don’t do that anymore.’  And as I turned to help another student, I watched him press up again into downward dog.

I bring this particular example up because it is very common. I call these students the Struggle Junkies.  They tend to be in constant pain both on and off the mat, they look very healthy in the superficial sense (in that they have athletic bodies) and they harbor a lot of repressed rage.  Often there is addiction attached.  They injure themselves both in their exercise regime and in their day-to-day with regularity.

It seems I’ve got two choices with the Junkies: I can become a teacher who addresses that kind of self-destructive behavior, or I can ask that student to leave.  The interim step – to ignore the students who seem determined to injure themselves – is not what I want for myself or those students.

This kind of student does not need to be told what to do; they are busy ordering themselves around 24/7.  What I find works, especially in the first few classes, is kindness, compassion, clarity and firm boundaries.  I look for ways to let them know I see them and that I’m not going anywhere.  I look for ways to let them know they can push back, but that it has no impact on what’s going to go down in my classroom.

So I’m grateful to this unfortunately-titled article for reminding me what’s at stake (and reminding me that sometimes students feel so betrayed and ignored they just may act out very publicly and write a piece for the New York Times.)  As a teacher it’s time for me to write a new teaching oath and get really clear about the kind of students I’m prepared to take on and recommitting to teaching them well.

To my regular students who are reading this, I encourage you to get honest with yourself about the way that you practice and the way that you move through the world.  It’s the same thing.  Observe yourself in class and notice if you are doing what is being asked or if you are doing a practice you learned from someone else.  Get really curious about how you operate and disobey the parts of you that want to stay stuck in boring/destructive behaviors.  Know that you will learn a deeply healing sequence of poses in my classes.

Yoga, like all fundamentalist movements has to evolve and we must learn how to take really good care of ourselves on the mat.  And the next time you are in a blind rage in my class, consider it a gift. Don’t waste your time projecting it onto me. Instead use your breath and the pose to move that through you and out.  Take advantage of what the practice has brought to light.  It’s not all pretty.  And that’s OK.

Be your best advocate and rock on wich-ya-bad-self.

Megan is a regular contributor to the hyde blog and can be found at lalitahealingcollevtive.com