Freelance life musing from the Word Butler Journal.

Adam knows his stuff.

15 years of yoga practice and I’ve never felt poses so powerful. A few tweaks and I was tangled up, upside down, legs in the air, holding asanas it would have taken longer –  much longer – to get right alone.

That’s the mark of a great teacher. Making you look at something old in a new way. Adjusting. Pushing your limits that little bit further.

It feels there’s more learning to be done. I’ll be back – when you find a great teacher it’s worth sticking around.

That’s true anywhere – not just yoga. Teachers don’t finish when education does, but they do become rarer and more valuable. If you don’t seek them out, they don’t always turn up. Great teachers are usually busy too.

Notice ‘find great teachers’ isn’t just ‘find teachers’. Not everyone is right. It’s easy(ish) to rehash wisdom from bookshelves. It’s harder to really get it – to have been there and done it and know how to articulate it. Then to give others the space to try it on for themselves.

So it’s worth being patient. When you find the right teacher you’ll know. They’ll speak your language. Or a language that you would one day like to speak.

And if they do, truly, turn out to be great, do what you can to keep them. Exchange skills. Offer time. Pay their fees if that’s the way they do things. Great teachers are worth their weight times ten.

If you’re doing things well, the lift of their praise adds a year to your confidence. If you’re heading down a wrong path, the time they’ll save you can be worth even more.

But really, more than anything, great teachers keep things fun.

Getting it right is great. For a while. But what keeps any journey interesting is the feeling there’s more to come – that things, and we, can get even better.

So find great teachers. Fill your life with them. Always be learning. Then one day, maybe be teaching as well.