Understanding Intention
Reaction Vs Reflection
By Denver Clark, C-IAYt
We’ve all had
Moments just before teaching that can easily throw off our focus. A disruption in the space, a difficult discussion, bad news…..
Recently, I had a student that was so triggered by an external circumstance that they felt the need to yell at me moments before class began in front of everyone. “I heard you the first time!” This person yelled angrily. And the room fell silent.
I was frozen. Locked eyes with this student, running through a thousand potential responses…… wait for an apology? Explain myself? Ask them to leave?….. a few seconds of silence and eye contact later (which felt like an eternity to me) this student came at me again in the same tone and volume with “what, do you want to have a staring contest!?”
I broke eye contact, I stood up and moved myself to the opposite end of the front of the room, I closed my eyes, took a breath and began class.
What was the theme of my class, you ask?
Intention
We never know what the motivation is behind someone’s behavior or words. What we see is the outer expression of a much deeper seed that has been planted. Whether it’s an uncomfortable moment of conflict or a posture we’re observing in our student’s body - our job is not to attach to the external, but rather to connect to and clarify the internal. When we see a foot turned out, the origins of that motion are deep within the hip socket, involving pelvic floor muscles and hip ligaments that all have to coordinate in harmony to create the external rotation of the hip …… we see the foot but the foot is NOT in charge.
In that moment, my student was NOT in charge of their emotions….. their behavior was the result of their deeper motivation to protect, driven by fear or defense or whatever number of other past stories they’ve lived through.
In that moment, I could have let my own fear and defensiveness kick in and reacted to their action, further escalating the conflict and further muddling my own motivation. But any response I could have had would’ve been lost on this student. They were deep in the trenches of reaction, not in the space to reflect. And so, I did what yoga has taught me to do…. I practiced the pause. I settled into silence. I closed my eyes. I left space for the moment to land. I reconnected to my breath and I focused on one thing I could control….. the job at hand.
I taught my class.
I used that moment as my theme to teach myself and others in the room that our driving motivation in body and mind creates the external manifestation of ourselves. This gave me my power back, reconnecting me to a healthy motivator and guiding my students through a mindful practice instead of keeping us all in an uncomfortable and unhealthy space of conflict.
I didn’t hear from that student after class but a friend did say they heard that person say “that class was great” on their way out.
I have no clue if they knew my class theme was inspired by their actions , or if they were even aware of how intense that moment was for myself and others. It’s also likely that they didn’t even notice it. Unaware of how their internal story fanned the flames of external conflict, as many of us do when we’re living in react mode, rather than reflect mode.
Either way it doesn’t matter.
That moment became an opportunity to open the conversation about what’s driving us and practice from the inside out, rather than the outside in.
