Can a yoga teacher be fat? I could not help thinking about this, when a fat teacher, sort of obese, taught a class at a yoga ashram in India. He was supposedly the guru and the face of the ashram. The class was okay, but I was not used to this style. He was mostly seated on a chair and he walked around once or twice. Before he taught this class, I was told many times that this guru was going to teach on this particular day and the energy of the class was going to explode. We were primed up to this class. I felt no explosion of any sorts.
I wouldn’t ask for my money back for the class, that’s just about how much I liked the class. I like my teachers lean and inspiring. That way, I know they are practicing their yoga, they are grounded and in touch with yoga and are not just talk. Isn’t the body a telltale of one’s yoga practice?
I would not trust a UI designer whose website looks so bad, who has never bothered to spell check the sample writing or when the links do not work correctly. The website of UI designer or a writer has to be simply good. That is what they do and I expect a high quality product from them.
On similar lines, I think a yoga teacher cannot be fat, essentially because all teachers are students forever. A serious yoga practice needs to be done with mindfulness and the bandhas. Practice with bandhas lead to good muscular control and the body tends to get lean. Unless the teacher is injured or suffering from some health condition, there is no way, a serious student can get fat.
The classic yoga texts are a great help in taking one’s practice from a beginner level to an advanced practice, which an asana teacher must be doing. The astanga yoga in the yoga sutras says clearly that greed is something one must conquer to get serious about yoga. Greed of food and anything else is to be avoided. Moderation is highly recommended.
Sri Krishnamacharya’s Yoga Rahasya also discusses food and its moderation.
Āhara means food. But the root word har is to kill. You eat food to kill the hunger. If you do not take care, it can kill you in excess. Eat only when you are hungry and always in moderation.
Hatha Yoga Pradipika goes into such details about the diet and how it must be followed to gain a mastery of pranayama and asanas.
What do the readers think? Can a yoga teacher be fat? Or, am I wrong in expecting a teacher to be lean?
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Yoga teacher fat?? is very bad. Why not do a very good asana invented in US of A? Is called liposection-asana. Very nice! My wife do it, and she not yoga teacher.
As many modern studies have shown, fat does not always equate unhealthy — or, more importantly, unable to practice and share yoga. None of us are perfect, which is why, as you said, teachers are students for life. Perhaps this teacher has not yet excelled at balancing his nutritional intake, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any valuable insight to share, or that he shouldn’t be a teacher. Additionally, a fat exterior doesn’t always give credence to the muscle tone below.
You may even take it to be a mental challenge to overcome: why is it that you prefer your teachers “lean and inspiring”? I certainly agree with inspiring, but it seems to me that “lean” is just a visual preference. After all, if you were blind, would it really matter? I understand if you experienced disappointment with a class that had been so talked up, but it seems to me like your opinion on a the quality of a teacher should be judged on the teaching, not simply appearance.
Inspiring is good. As long as I know my teacher (lean or not) is practicing yoga, I am okay. I do not like bogus advice without facts. Or a teacher gets famous and then their self practice is reducing or almost nil. I would like to hear advice from them as to how they have gone ahead in their yoga practice. I agree, everyone is in a different stage of yogic evolution.
The yamas of yoga sutra say that asteya, brhmacarya and aparigraha (all of them talk about various shades of greed) need to be adopted by the student of yoga. Of course, this is a life long experiment and takes time to be in control of all these. We can only hope to achieve to do these things to an extent. My thought was that if one does follow these teachings to an extent, then naturally the body tends to get light over time.
I agree with you in part. If a teacher is fat and does have considerable insights, the person would be a valuable teacher. I have definitely come across my share of lean teachers with whom I could not connect. Maybe they are too much into their leanness or the acrobatics than with the teaching.