AY:A2

I. Letter of Introduction
II. Q+A
III. Assignment #1

I. LETTER OF INTRODUCTION

Last week at a stop on Ghost Town Road in Yermo, California, I was ruminating (as one does) on the old ashtanga school in Mysore: the AYRI. My favorite name it ever had. The all-caps RESEARCH INSTITUTE era of our lineage. When ashtanga was weird science.

Meantime, this trip out west has been a time for naming and renaming, beginning with my request that everyone in Zion read Eliot’s poem on the naming of cats, followed by training everyone there to remember each other’s names and home towns. (We used the classical Method of Loci, of course.)

So, back to Yermo. I’m out here to teach teachers, as the first step forward after my year of grieving. This is a sort of official act. The funerial services in Mysore in November were not for grieving, but the recognition of the end of grieving. Literally: the light at the end of the year.

What is emerging now is another arm of my work that tends to teachers beyond our shala in Ann Arbor. What came to me in Yermo is that this is RESEARCH. That the shala is, it seems, reaching that fourth level of the yoga pedagogy scaffold, wherein one can safely contribute to knowledge without running so much risk of watering the thing down. But this is not a definitive move. It is aninterpretive move. It is reseach.

So AYA2 has a new school inside it, a Research Institute, and obviously its name is ARIAA.Or, ARIA for symmetry.

The first offering is, primarily, for my longterm students. And students’ students. Locals and beyond. It’s called How To Teach Yoga To One Person. Criteria.

1. Applicants must have ten years of practice.

2. From the moment you hear about the course and decide to apply, that longtime practice automatically converts to a daily practice. That’s right. In this now moment. Shazam. You practice every day. Doesn’t need to be a lot of asanas. But it must be a morning ritual that makes you examine what comes up when you no longer have an out. Your sadhana becomes Thing One. Very basic for a teacher.

3. You must have one person who wants you to teach them. The relationship must be clean, and you must both understand that they are teaching you how to do this. They are doing you a favor. Not two people. One, single person who wants you to share this with them for the duration of the course. You two set the schedule for that person’s classes.

4. Classes will be Saturdays 9-12 Eastern, May 2 – June 20. Attendance is required. In person is strongly preferred. Zoom is permitted beacuse I don’t want anyone cancelling your family vacations. If you’re remote, make an effort to be here for as much of the course as possible. If this means choosing between teaching your own person on zoom (because they live in your town) or being in person in Ann Arbor, maybe figure out a mix of both. Do not compromise on your own teaching schedule. That’s where the learning is at.

5. There will be no Yoga Alliance certification. That’s like “putting the sign in the window” to quote PM Carney, quoting Vaclav Havel. Nope. No Yoga Alliance. But I will totally put my hand print and a signature on a piece of paper if your student comes to me and successfully demonstrates that you have taught them successfully. This is what Krishnamacharya said was the criterion of being a teacher. You must be able to help one person heal. That last word shall be very broadly construed 🙂

6. I have never, ever charged for apprenticeship, mentoring, or training teachers. Everyone just pays shala fees like everyone else. To put a number on my own lineage would be a kind of desecration, and even a kazillion kazillions would be a cheapening. Can’t do it. But I have devised a workaround in this case, to channel a fee for this course towards AYA2’s astronomical operating expenses. I’ll explain later. It’ll be anywhere from $400 – $2000 for the course. 

7. This course is already fully formed in the field of Mind. You know that I beta test everything, but not this. It’s absolutely excellent material, and the ideal way to learn it. The wohle thing is as obvious as a flower growing on a desert cactus after the rain. It’s baked into our lineage, and a tribute to it. I also don’t want to do it again anytime this decade. The is this year, or you can catch me sometime in the 2030s.

Please hold your questions. An upcoming posting should answer them all. For now the thing to do is set an intention if this is for you, convert your sadhana to a daily ritual starting now, confer with your person, and get those Saturdays on the schedule in case your application is approved. I will set a cap on the course if feels full, and will ask you to wait til the 2030s if I have a doubt about your application now. 

This is the hard decade. The decade of delusion and war. We will live to see peace again. Until then, some can escape into the unequal fruits of the fascism. But in this particular orbit, many but many are called to take action. Learning and sharing a technology for inner peace, with tremendous conscientiousness and no attachment to any fruits of our action, is a real way to choose strength now. To choose SEVA.

I’ve gotten this message from my longest-time students, whose neighbors and families and co-workers have been asking them for yoga for years, while I turned away from this need in favor of mentoring a tiny number of Mysore Style apprentices. I hear you, and your urgency at this time. You have to show up strong for this training, and if you do it I will help you figure out how to share a little bit of what you know. Not as it applies to you, but as it applies to the one person in front of you.


II. Q+A

Did you really get those dates right, Angela?

Saturdays 9-12 Eastern
7-8 Weeks, May 2 – June 20 (New Moon May 16; a possible rest day)

And the numbers?

Yes. Cost – 400-2000 USD depending on enrollment. The total revenue of the course will pay for the large increase in shala operating expenses over all of 2026-2027. So the individual cost depends on enrollment numbers. I will break it down into two rates: serious financial need, and normal. Maybe a scholarship rate, but I doubt this will be necessary.

You can opt in to whatever rate. If you’re only interested in this course if it’s kind of cheap, no. Do not apply. If you’d do it for literally any price, low or high, we will somehow figure out how to get you through. A serious energy/time investment is what gets my attention, as you probably know.

Applications open Feb 1, and I will let everyone know the rates by Feb 15 so you can decide if they are doable for you.

What if I want to teach my spouse or SO?

Unlikely.

If the relationship is exceedingly stable over a long time, and it is the spouse or SO’s deep and original desire to learn yoga, not just to help you learn teaching, then say this in the application. It’s maybe fine in this case, and you could adapt your answer to the final pre-requisite in this light. But if you’re called to teach, I imagine a less complex relationship in your life may be suggesting itself to you for this teaching experiment.

What if the person who wants me to teach them is only available for half the term? Can I teach two people? What if the person isn’t sure they want to stay with it for 8 weeks?

No. Do not apply. When the teacher is ready, the student will appear. And it will be clear. This disorganization is what it feels like if you’re forcing it.

I have been practicing for 12 years but I took a year break in the middle.

Ehhhhhh…. Sutra 1.14, ya know? Long time, without a break. Talk to me if you deeply want me to consider you as an exception to the standard I’m requesting. Could happen; maybe not. I promise to tell you straight.

I’ve been practicing for 8 years but it feels like 10 because I’m SUPER into it and do it every day.

You. You are the one who must wait. Take that yoga identity, put it on the shelf, and and redirect this enthusiasm to building self-awareness, compassion and–most importantly–a life outside ashtanga subculture.

You never want to be in a situation in which you have sunk costs in a subculture you can never interrogate or step back from because you didn’t build a whole life on the front end. That’s the socioeconomics that turns subcultures into cults.

Take time to know in your bones that postures buy you no credibility, no authority, and no right to rank others based on their discipline. This is why people who teach too early can become forces of subtle elitism.

Teaching too soon also does the enthusiast a terrible disservice: one tends to build an identity based on half-baked knowledge, forgets how to know nothing, and all too often ends up with a case of arrested development for ever.

How many hours is this course?

It begins with 80 hours over 8 weeks. A steady 10 per week. Three with me in the classroom, four with yourself and your notebooks, planning and walking through your lesson plan alone. And three-four with your student. No meeting with your student should ever exceed 90 minutes. Never overwhelm them with too much experience or information.

When we conclude in June, you will have the option to extend your course through a full 200 hours over a total of 19 months – more than double the spring time investment. This is because those of you who wish to continue on the path will come to want more support, and will come to realize that you know nothing. Congratulations in advance.

So, I have the first 120 hours of continuing study already sketched out for you: some of it is self-directed, some of it is directed by me, and some of it is with other educators I trust.

Do not think about this now. Just know that there is a larger plan in place for the integrity of your learning process. The way I tack it down will be shaped heavily by how I see you learning and growing in May-June.

Why limit this to 200 hours? Only because I have to cut you off somewhere, and nudge you onto your own journey of the Billion Hour Teacher Training that is life itself. And to troll the Yoga Alliance, which in its colonialist, neoliberal, corporate delusions decided that anyone with money can opt in to a YTT and come out certified in the blink of an eye.

When can I start teaching?

It’s great you’re excited to get rolling. Your first class with your student will be soon after Class #1, preferably that same weekend.

You will have 7 or 8 clear lessons, spread across 8 weeks. This is a formal arrangement with a clear start and finish. Your student needs to learn! So, this requires practice. For most, I expect you will have one lesson each week, with an agreement from them that they will practice the material 2-5 other times each week to reinforce each lesson. You are more than welcome to hold space for them and answer questions outside of your one formal lesson each week. We will discuss pacing and content volume in the early weeks of the course as you learn to pace and lead with your individual person.

Your course with your student ends after 8 weeks. Your curriculum with them will have a clear beginning, middle, and end. If they decide at the end of June that they want to learn more, it’s likely you will know then what to do, and I will be available to discuss as well. Do not plan that far ahead. Our practice is about taking a single step towards balance. Big schemes invite the narcissism of grandiosity.

Is there a payment plan?

Yes, same as always at AYA2. It’s called “Manage your Accounts Religiously!” I delegate this matter to each of you, within the container of trust that our relationship has already established, same as always at the shala. If your balance is complete anytime before Dec 31, 2027, we are good. But it probably would not be religious / reverent at all to wait until that date to pay the full sum.

I really want to come in person, but I’m in a country with travel restrictions to the US or can not possibly afford it.

Let’s talk. Politics and economy are valid reasons not to come in person sometimes.

But I need to understand your priorities, and need to know you will move mountains to support your own dharma. Tell me what other mountains you have moved, and will move, to fulfill your need to service. Help me understand that your will to serve is adamantine and cannot be deterred by small matters like geography. Make me understand that your show-up will be 200% even if it’s through the interwebs.

If you have a lot of stories about why you are limited in your ability to pursue your path, and not a lot of faith in that path, let’s have a look at that and consider working on the relationship with obstacles prior to undertaking the heavy responsibility of teaching.

What if I don’t have a good place to do the teaching?

Let’s make one, then. Select and consecrate a sacred space. It can be a park, a living room, a back porch, a hallway. It is important that the space not change from week to week (within reason). You will need to clean, set up, and meditate on the space both before and after each session. Find a space, in collaboration with your student, so you both have it in your mind. In Class One we will get in to various ways to do this, depending on your personal belief system.

Ann Arbor Locals: I hold the lease on the AYA2 shala and will make that beautiful space available to you at no charge, if you do not have other options. There will be an organized schedule in place, and keyholding duties assigned. I will ask local keyholders taking the class to help with this.

What would failure of this course look like?

Either fail assignment one (it’s at the end of this document). Or give up on your student partway through the course.

It’s important to have both merit-based criteria for entry, and merit-based criteria for success. That is how we know this is education, rather than pay-to-play. The removal of merit-based entry standards and qualifications has been key to the colonial digestion and commodification of yoga.

Removing standards did not create equity. It created a commodity.

I’m an authorized teacher or student of another senior teacher, and I have significant teaching experience, but I still want to do this.

This could be a match. Can you tell me why you feel drawn to this, and what sort of a heart and teacher-student connection you feel with me? Is that connection with me already demonstrated to be sustainable; and is it a strong support to the rest of your lineage, with no contradictions at all? I’m interested to learn.

If this would represent any kind of break with your first teacher or mentor, it’s a no.

But if the conditions are right, I can see how this course could be a foundation for a teaching residency in Ann Arbor down the road.

What if I already teach ashtanga here and there?

Two paths here.

First: if you teach within the container of a lineage and student-teacher relationship, excellent. Like the prior question, let’s talk personally about if it supports you or complicates your dharma to learn my take on the beginners’ material. If you’re reading this, it’s probably a yes because we are already in a healthy relationship. Or, if you’re the student of any of my students, I also see perfect coherence in your joining this course – by the transitive property of lineage relationships, it is all good. In fact, I can probably help take some load off of your teacher by ushering you through this foundational material we already agree on.

Second: if teaching ashtanga is something you’ve felt entitled to do on the basis of a YTT, without serious time in India, and/or without any accountability structure, please go on about that business without involving me in it. I’m probably not qualified to help you through the kinds of incoherence or ethical complexity you’re already facing. Surely there are mentors who can help with this – I just don’t have the goods.

Rather, this course is for the person who would feel uncomfortable teaching a lineage-based practice without merit-based qualifications and complex structures of accountability.

And, I anticipate an exception here. For someone who has started on the teaching road, and gotten the ache in your gut that told you that you had to stop. Something was not right about it, even though the Industry told you everything was fine. Isn’t that interesting? I want to validate this common shape of the path. We should talk – and that is what the interview is for. Maybe you’d get more by waiting this session out in order to get to a place of feeling fresh and excited about it down the road.

Will this course equip me to teach in a yoga studio?

Sure, but why would you want to? I do not intend to train you to go out and be cheap labor for the yoga store. I would prefer to ruin you for the yoga store. If you still feel that you have a role to play there when you finish this course, please listen to your heart. I’ll take an interest and would love to hear about it.

In my own experience, I have worked a little bit in yoga stores and did find it fascinating and extremely positive. It was also grossly exploitative of my time and expertise, as it would be of yours. My own strategy to preserve the dignity of my training and labor in these settings is to donate all “payment” for such work to charity, and let the studio know that their “remuneration” cannot make a dent in my living expenses but is valuable to the wider world in the form of charity. A sort of nonviolent protest in the face of capitalism’s weak effort to commodify sacred teachings.

Beyond such situations, I see this course more as giving you techniques and an ethical container to share a little of what you know. With neighbors, with family, with the YMCA, with co-workers, with the person having a panic attack on the airplane. Go forth and be legitimate. Know you have me backing you if you get in a pinch.

That backing is the reason this course is designed for people who personally require such accountability and lineage grounding by your own internal ethics. Someone who does not feel that way, who would just as happily teach on the basis of a 200TT that cannot be failed and provides no ongoing relationship with a guide, is more likely to get into situations I where I’m very far out of my depth as an adviser. Those of you working within the container of this course will very naturally encounter technical and relational learning opportunities that I can anticipate and help you address.

THE THREE PRE-REQUISITES

The application exists to ask you for your word that you will complete the following pre-requisites, which exist in perpetuity for all teachers at AY:A2 and every apprentice I have ever trained.

1. Heal your lineage immediately.

Any weird beliefs or feelings you have with previous teachers, that will be the shape of your own relationship with your student. Any disowned teachers, name them and weave them back into your lineage now instead of editing things down to a simplified story that conforms to a nonexistent ideal of the path. Go thank everyone, credit them, prepare to name and cite them in your work if you are drawing on what you learned with them.

Your students deserve a teacher who has done this! Go to the resented or disowned person, sacrifice your ego, heal the threads of connection.

This is not a mental activity. Peace making is an action. Not an idea. You have to take acton to make peace. Just thinking nice thoughts about the disowned person is a cope. And it’s most likely a spiritual bypass.

The exception is if clinical abuse has happened. In such a case, you have to figure out a way to heal that is safe in a literal, clinical sense. Talk to me. Consider if you may need more time and support before you teach.

Teaching will not heal prior lineage trauma. But it might repress it.

2. Commit to continuing your daily practice without a break.

Now, your practice does not belong to you only. This, right here, is a major threshhold not to be crossed prematurely.

If you teach, the fruits of your practice belong not to you, but to everyone your teaching touches. Your practice becomes a part of your accountability structure and your medicine for steadiness.

Your morning ritual does not always need to be very physical through every season. But it needs to be highly predictable and consistent, so it steadies both your lifestyle and your deep mind.

3. Commit to having no romantic or sexual relationship with your student, or future students.

This course will train you to build a single professional, karmic relationship. It is not there to meet any of your foundational psychological or primal needs. Your apex need to give of yourself with no attachment to results is the only one it fulfills. This is a basic criterion to learn professionalism and how to hold the transference and counter-transference of teaching relationships with grace and equanimity.