For the Love of Teachers

Teachers come in many forms. Family members and significant others are definitely among the greatest teachers in our lives (Who hasn't learned an incredible amount about one's self, relationships, kindness, and love from their parents, siblings, or partners?). As is nature--animals, cycles, and weather, for example (Does not a great thunderstorm humble you? Or the patience of the heron, quietly waiting and watching, inspire you?). Pain, heartbreak, difficult circumstances, and loss are our teachers as well (Do you not come out of pain with some kind of greater understanding of yourself and the world?). Really, when we pay attention and are receptive, everything in our lives teaches us something. But specifically I want to focus on the importance of what I will call our "intentional teachers", the ones who we ask into our lives and pursue relationships with because of the way that they make us expand and evolve. I truly believe this is one of the great tasks we have as human beings--to have intentional teachers in our lives. Ideally, always. Who I think of when I think of my intentional teacher is my beloved, and first, yoga teacher and mentor, Karen Sprute-Francovich.

Between my sophomore and junior year in high school, I moved to Coeur d' Alene, Idaho from an active and thriving social life in Bellevue, Washington. Needless to say, it was hard. I had been a dancer since I was eight, and with very few dance options in Coeur d' Alene at the time, my mom somehow discovered Karen at Garden Street School of Anusara Yoga and got me signed up for a session with her. Fortuitously, she had just recently started up the studio after moving from Boise, Idaho. Karen, and yoga, immediately touched something deeper within me than I had known before. Looking back, I recognize that feeling as being touched by Grace. Yoga literally supported me through my last two years of high school (I could have slumped and slouched my way through two years, but instead stood tall and found a niche, albeit very different from my niche in Bellevue, that has truly paved the path of my life--in no small part due to yoga, and of course, Karen).

Then, I went away for college. After one year and a handful of emotionally very difficult circumstances, Karen called me. I'll never forget...I was on the beach in Santa Cruz with my friend Claire, talking about my future and what to do with myself. And probably boys (we did a lot of that). Then Karen called and asked me to come back to Coeur d' Alene for a year and participate in her first immersion, "Beauty School," and to start a mentorship with her. I went. Full heartedly. I won't go into the details about that year, but I will say it was far and away the most transformative year of my life. My kula, or my community of the heart, were (and still are) indescribably important to me. I became extremely attached to Karen as a mentor and as a motherly figure. She taught me a lot that I am still processing--and know I will continue to throughout my life. As she once told me, it's impossible to really understand a teaching until one has had a direct experience of that teaching, and to no surprise, that's exactly what I have found. The seeds of wisdom that she planted in my heart have steadily taken root over the years.

19-year-old me and my beloved teacher, Karen.

My lovely Kula at HeartSong in 2005.

Since then, I have lived in Costa Rica (where I stayed and worked at a beyond incredible sustainable living center and sanctuary, Rancho Mastatal), Lolo, Missoula, southeastern Utah (not really lived, but explored for two months with an amazing field-based education organization, The Wild Rockies Field Institute), East Glacier Park (where my husband is from), Coeur d' Alene again, Missoula again, East Glacier again, Missoula again, Yellowstone briefly, East Glacier again, and finally at the present, I am living happily in Lolo. I've finished an undergraduate degree and a graduate degree, gotten married (including the overwhelming consumption of falling in love and the oh-so-common loss of balance that accompanies it!), been a nanny, a produce clerk, a waitress, worked a few other odd-ends jobs, lived in a tent, lived in a camper, and am now a full-time youth worker at Hellgate High School. The only thing that has really stayed steady is my loving, supportive family. But for now, we're pretty much here. And amidst all of this moving I have taught yoga, stopped teaching, not had a local teacher, fallen out of yoga for short periods, and been somewhere kind of in between all of these things.

Through all of the changes, I have yearned for a teacher, and missed my teacher deeply. But I have not tried very hard to find a local teacher (honestly, I have resisted it). And for the most part, I didn't pursue yoga much at all for a few years. Now, however, I have shifted back--maybe it's the stability of a regular job and not moving around as much, or maybe it was just a commitment that I made to myself, but I have slowly become more immersed in my spiritual life, and yoga, again. And it's different now--I have "grown up" in a sense...and I have most definitely changed. I am in a place where I know that I need a teacher, or teachers, in my life more regularly. I have been "seeing other teachers,"mostly at workshops, and learning more than I could have imagined from them. But Karen is still my teacher, the one who I think of with deep gratitude on a daily basis. It is in my intentions to see her more often, and I will. I am eternally grateful for the amazing beauty that Karen has brought into my life, the way I have grown and continue to grow because of her loving care for me, and the way our relationship continues to evolve and change with time. I am so grateful that she came into my life when she did. And I am grateful for all of the teachers I have had and all of my teachers to come.

Me and Karen. Photo by Terri Simmons. Spring 2011.

The moral of the story (if there is one), is to be grateful for your teachers. And, to have a teacher! We all need an intentional teacher. I really believe this. It's too easy to become stagnant without one...we need an honest mirror to reflect back to us both our life-denying and life-enhancing habits...and we cannot reach our full potential through our own limited understandings alone. So if you need a teacher...put out the intention, find a path that you truly want to pursue, and (as I have been told by some teachers of my own), you and your teacher will inevitably find one another.