A Tale of Two Yoga Teachers: Lessons from Tiger Mom

“Do you feel relaxed? You must be in the wrong place.”

I got a flurry of notes about Monday’s post. This is a short follow-up in the form of a story about yoga. 🧘🏼

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Part I: First Yoga Classes

When I went to yoga for the first time, I knew nothing.

The class was held at a gym that offered yoga and other classes as a side feature, in addition to all the regular equipment. Classes were large and I had the sense that instructors weren’t paid well. (Are yoga teachers ever paid well? I guess that’s another topic.)

I ended up going back to the same class off-and-on for the next four months. The teacher was nice! Maybe a little too nice?

Repeatedly, she encouraged students to do their own practice, in their own way.

A phrase that she used over and over was “Just do what your body needs.” 

I know that she meant it from a place of kindness and accommodation. 

The problem was … I had no idea what my body needed, at least when it came to yoga. Since I was an absolute beginner, I was coming to it from a place of no knowledge.

Also, my mobility was poor—so while I understood that most yoga poses offered modifications, I didn’t really know how or which to choose. Also (also), I tend to struggle with articulating a felt sense in the body. I can tell you what I’m thinking, but it’s harder for me to focus on a physical feeling.

After a while I started wondering: Isn’t there such a thing as good form? And I know we can sometimes go out of sequence, but doesn’t the sequence exist for a reason? Something like hundreds of years of eastern tradition?

So as you can tell, I liked the yoga class, but I would have preferred it to be a bit more instructive. 

Part II: An Evolution of Sorts

A few years later, I ended up in another class at a different gym. I got into a routine of going to this class every Saturday when I was in town, so I experienced it over the course of several months.

This yoga teacher was small in stature, and—I think—originally from Taiwan. She was also hilarious! 

She had almost the exact opposite approach of the first teacher, for whom everything was flexible and came with little instruction.

If you were doing it wrong, my new teacher would tell you—not rudely, just in a corrective way. The vibe of class was “There’s a right way to do this, and I want you to learn it.” 

I took note of some of the phrases she used in the middle of a long flow sequence or set of abs work: 

If it’s not hard, are you really trying? 

Does it hurt? That’s good, it means you’re doing it right. 

Do you feel perfectly relaxed right now? You must be in the wrong place.

I realize this might sound negative or harsh when written out, but the in-person tone was much more comedic. Or rather, it was both funny and serious. As students, we laughed when the instructor said something so unexpected, but we also straightened up and worked harder.

I often went to this class with my friend Stephanie, who christened the teacher “Tiger Mom.” It fit! Sometimes Tiger Mom would give us little pep talks or tell stories about her kids, but these were brief pauses before a difficult sequence resumed.

It was like Boot Camp Yoga—more yoga than boot camp, to be clear, but with an instructor who clearly had no problem teaching something specific.

I left class feeling both tired and energized, in that wonderful combination that the right form of exercise can create. Over time, I also got better at many of the poses I’d struggled to learn properly in the first place. 

Of course, the situation in life is not always so clear-cut. Hard things are good for us, but not everything should be hard.

Perhaps there are times we need the gentle coach who tells us to do whatever we want! (Perhaps we sometimes need to tell ourselves to do whatever we want. I can receive that.)

Other times, however—and perhaps more often—we need the coach who tells us what we really need to hear. The one who encourages us to try. The one who reminds us that discomfort is part of the process, and it will lead to both strength and relief.

So that’s why I kept going back to Tiger Mom yoga. It was better. 

Conversation Starters

1. If you and I were going to yoga, what’s one thing I should know? 

2. A time you initially resisted something difficult but then saw it through.

3. The last class you attended (any kind), and what you learned.

Department of Fun Facts

• 10 years ago I led a team that organized the world’s largest yoga chain in Portland, Oregon. (I didn’t lead the actual yoga, thankfully.) Our record was surpassed by a group in India a few years later.