Eric had come from the Netherlands to Santa Fe to learn to be a yoga teacher. He had read it was a place where many teachers lived and taught. His plan was to attend every class to evaluate his experience and then pick the teacher he felt was the ‘right’ one for him. After a few weeks and more than a dozen classes, he decided.
Eric showed up in my class for the second time and informed me that he chose me to teach him to be a teacher. I was honored but informed him I did not offer a teacher training and to please check in the future. He continued to attend weekly classes.
After about six months Eric came to me and asked if I will now be offering a teacher training course? I thanked him for his patience and said to please check back. This scene repeated itself a couple more time until it became clear, Eric was not going away and I would eventually have to offer a teacher training course.
It took some more months to put together the basic outline, find the right space and begin to promote the course. It was all new. I learned to be a teacher in quite a different situation. I was living at the ashram in Miami and attended the class most evenings. During the day we all went to work and returned for dinner and our evening yoga class. After a couple of months, the head of the ashram announced during dinner I would teach the class tonight. That’s it. I was a teacher. It was a crazy time and things like that we’re more common.
So my first teacher training course began in Santa Fe, around 1993. We had sixteen students who all participated and learned how to be teachers. It was a wild, exciting and important step. A few years later when I moved to Europe, I began a teacher training course about two months after arriving. That is another story.
Eric displayed the quality of persistence. His mind was set and he did not accept anything less than a successful outcome for his wishes. A friend of mine used to say we walk on two feet, one is persistence and the other is patience. And it is one foot after the other.
