On Student / Teacher Exchange
1 Jan, 2025
The following is an exerpt from an interview with my teacher, Senior Intermediate Iyengar Yoga instructor Aretha Mckinney (owner of Chestnut Hill Yoga, an Iyengar Yoga center in Nashville, TN), about the transformative power of these student-teacher relationships.
Transcribed and edited for clarity; full interview not published.
My teacher, Mary Dunn, was the first person who mentioned India to me and said, “You should go,” and so I kept that in the back of my mind. Then, in 2005, Guruji came to teach in Estes Park. I didn’t really have an opinion on going but, again, everybody said “You should go,” so I did, and it was a pretty magical time actually. He was so interesting. I thought, “Oh, definitely I should go to India.” And so the next year I went, and even when I got off the plane the smell felt familiar. It was like the smell of food, incense, and pollution all mixed together—kind of sweet, and thick, and just immediately familiar, like I had been there before. The next morning I began classes at the Institute in Pune.
You once told me that Geeta Iyengar was the kind of teacher who made you want to be a better person. What was it like meeting her?
That first class I had to be in the front of the room because I’m short and can’t see. We were standing in tadasan and she came over and put her fingers right beneath my naval and pulled up. She said, “You need to learn how to lift from here.” I had not told her, but after I had my daughter, I had herniated L4 and L5 and it was still kind of an active weak link in my low back. When she made that adjustment, I could feel some space where the muscles were really tight. It was like the adjustment of a lifetime. But more than that, it was someone who saw me. I didn’t say a word and I had only been in front of her for five minutes and she just went right for my weak link and adjusted it. That was a profound experience, to realize that she was so skilled that she could read a body type and make an adjustment that quickly.
At the end of class, people were putting away props and she was sitting in the corner and some voice inside my head said, “You need to go and kneel in front of her to offer your thanks.” I didn’t even know what that gesture meant. I almost shied away from it, because I’m a reserved person, and I’m not one for grand gestures, but I just went. I put my knees down on the floor in front of her, put my head down, and thanked her. When I looked up, she nodded back at me and that was that. It felt like a powerful teacher-student exchange in that teachers are meant to see students, but there’s also a reciprocal gratitude and acknowledgement of “Thank you for seeing me.” That was the first time I had had that kind of interaction, that kind of exchange.
Also, I was 30, and there was something about the way that she was commanding the room. I hadn’t seen a woman own a room like that before. She was in complete control, just unapologetically in command of her space. She was not mousy, she was not mean, she was very assertive. There was something deeply comforting and safe about that. Watching a female do that was a really powerful experience.
The feeling of being near her and wanting to be a better version of myself... You know, every time I was around her I left feeling that way. She was so authentic. All I can say is that she was so authentically herself that it brought the desire to be that way in you to the surface. I had never been around anybody like that. It radiated off of her—her authenticity, and truth, and fearlessness. You couldn’t help but be inspired by it. And you paid attention in her class. Damn, you paid attention.
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