Conscious Choice: The Student-Teacher Relationship

September 2002 | Body & Mind Health

The Student-Teacher Relationship

by Darlene Paris

When the director of the Kriya Yoga Meditation Center in Rourkela, India, talked about Kriya yoga at the Indian Cultural Center in south suburban Park Forest early this year, I knew that I wanted to study with him.

Dressed in a bright orange jogging suit and black high-top sneakers, Paramahansa Atmanandajee discussed the benefits of Kriya yoga, a spiritual path to self-realization, and demonstrated some of the postures used in this method to keep mind, body, and spirit in balance.

Atmanandajee, a neurological physician who began teaching this ancient practice in 1974, said something during his presentation that caught my attention. He promised that if we practiced Kriya yoga on a regular basis, we would live happy, healthy, and harmonious lives.

Before attending Atmanandajee’s presentation, I had never considered learning Kriya yoga. In fact, I didn’t know much about this meditative method until after I heard Atmanandajee speak.

During his thirty-minute discussion, I learned that Kriya yoga was first introduced to the West by a man from India named Paramhansa Yogananda. I knew that Yogananda was the author of the book The Autobiography of a Yogi, but I never knew that he was a proponent of Kriya yoga.

I’m not sure whether it was Atmanandajee’s presentation, his medical credentials, or his look of divine bliss that made me want to become an initiate of Kriya yoga. All I know is that after the presentation was over, I approached this gentle giant of a man and told him I wanted to learn more.

Atmanandajee smiled, nodded his head twice, and told me that he would be initiating students in the next few days before heading back to India. During that moment I noticed his simplicity and profound stillness — stillness unperturbed by the activity surrounding him. A stillness so deep that nothing seemed to penetrate it. A stillness, and a silence, I wanted and needed in my life.

During the days leading up to my initiation, I could not get Atmanandajee’s image or his message out of my mind. For years, I had researched different traditions of yoga to determine which one I should practice, but I had never bothered to collect information about Kriya yoga. Yet, there I was — ready to become an initiate.

The connection I felt to this yoga master was incredibly strong. He said that if I practiced Kriya yoga on a regular basis I would be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted in life — to be happy. I knew that I had finally found my yoga teacher.

When I share this story with other yoga practitioners, they recall similar stories about the magical moment in which they met their first yoga teacher or the teacher who had the most influence over their practice.

Although it took me about three years to find a yoga teacher, it doesn’t have to take you that long. But be warned. According to Per Erez, an instructor at Eight Limbs Yoga Center located in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, the first year of yoga is usually all about finding the right yoga teacher.

"The best advice I can give someone who is looking for a yoga teacher is the same advice my first yoga teacher gave me several years ago — shop around," says Erez, who also teaches at Chicago’s East Bank Club.

"Take five classes from one teacher and then take five classes from someone else and then take five classes from someone else," Erez advises. "It’s important that you find a teacher that resonates with you — not necessarily because of the style of yoga — but on an intuitive level," he explains.

Renee Garrick did not have to enroll in many classes to find her yoga teacher. She says that when she decided to take a yoga class fifteen years ago at the Discovery Center in Chicago, she knew that she wanted to learn Kundalini yoga, a tradition of hatha yoga that involves meditation, postures, and breathing exercises to unblock energy centers in the body for a heightened sense of awareness.

"I didn’t know much about Kundalini yoga, but the description in the catalog suggested that this form of yoga connected the mind, body, and spirit," says Garrick. "Since that’s what I’m all about, I decided to enroll."

That’s when she met her first yoga teacher, Sat Tara Kaur Khalsa. After about two years of studying with this teacher, Khalsa paid her student the highest honor. "She asked me if I would teach her women’s yoga class when she became pregnant," Garrick says. "She saw something within me that I could not see within myself, an ability to teach yoga," says Garrick.

Garrick, an education administrator with Chicago Public Schools, credits her yoga teacher for giving her a jumpstart into a brand new career — holistic health.

"My yoga teacher’s confidence in my ability to teach yoga was the impetus for me to learn more about mind, body, and spirit wellness," says Garrick, who also runs a holistic health center called Star Born Wellness Center in South Suburban Matteson. "My relationship with my teacher not only deepened my yoga practice, it changed the direction of my life," Garrick explains.

Erez says that his teacher, Hannah Hederick, also influenced his career. "Most of my background in yoga came as a result of this marvelous first teacher," he says. "If I had a guru, she would be it."

Erez explains that Hederick’s background in yoga is an amalgam of yoga styles. "She has studied Iyengar, Ashtanga, Bikram, and Kripalu yoga." Erez himself has also studied many styles of yoga, but like his first teacher, his mainstay is Kripalu yoga, which is sometimes called the yoga of consciousness.

"When I first began doing yoga, I was lucky enough to find a teacher who knew about many different styles ... and that’s what worked for me, but I might have found an Ashtanga teacher, too, that I really resonated with, and that would have been the thing that connected us," he explains.

According to Erez the success of your yoga practice depends upon the connection that you feel with your teacher. "That’s ultimately what develops you as a student of yoga. It’s not the postures, per se; it’s that student-teacher relationship. It’s about finding the teacher who knows what you need," he says. "And that will be different for different people."

Although my yoga teacher is back in India, I still practice Kriya yoga on a daily basis. Sometimes I meet with other Kriyabans (Kriya yoga initiates) and we practice together.

When I talk with members of the group about the reasons they got initiated into Kriya yoga, they say that they too felt a strong connection to Atmanandajee.

The bond that I feel to this man and his message has totally changed the direction of my life. And it keeps my feet moving slowly but steadily along the path of yoga and meditation.

Darlene Paris is a freelance writer, teacher, Reiki Master, and the author of Healthy and Natural Living in Chicago: The Best Alternative Resources in the City and Suburbs (Chicago Review Press, 1998).

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