Apparently, I’m still full of shit.

With even just a brisk glance at all the stuff I’ve written in the blogopshere over the past year, you’d think I was the gleaming example of the dutiful student with a beautiful consistent, teacher-student relationship. Time and time again I’ve sermonized about the importance of being a student or being a teacher or and the importance of having a teacher and how being a student is important for being a teacher.  And this doesn’t even touch all the times people ask me about how to get started with ashtanga and yep, you guessed it, I tell them to find a teacher.

Perhaps I should try taking my own advice.

Perhaps I should back up bit.

A year ago, I moved a long-enough-drive away from DC and the mysore teacher I’d been working with. I had also undertaken regular trips to see a certified ashtanga teacher. A little over a year ago I spent an intense week of study with him and his community in Philly. One moment as I looked up from sweat-filled eyes between poses (or, trying to act like I wasn’t resting when I was, in fact, resting) he asked:

“Jean Marie, who’s in charge of your practice now?”

“You are!” I gaily crowed back without skipping a vinyasa.

And so began (although truthfully it had already begun) the relationship that fed me and made me want to practice. I made regular trips to Philly and elsewhere to see my Teacher with a capitol T. I supplemented these visits with a consistent home practice. I made occasional and sporadic visits to DC and northern Virginia to practice with some community and receive assists. My system worked particularly well because I’ve been working on the same postures for this entire time. It’s been pretty awesome actually to have this EPIC Pass among mysore rooms– generous teachers who let me float in and out here and there as the “poor girl who practices at home alone” and thus deserves to get a free pass to drop in and visit wherever and whenever she can and wants to.

Before I even saw what was happening, plates shifted beneath me as the fall gave way to winter and when the snow finally stopped in March I looked up at the sun and saw I now had a schedule that freed me to consistently visit one Mysore room and one teacher twice a week, though I still google-mapped my way to DC on occasion. Meanwhile my Teacher was blossoming into a wonderful “Where’s Waldo” international teacher traveling here and there and everywhere with a ferociously paced schedule that combined with my real life (a husband, a child and two dogs) failed to meet in the regular Teacher visits I had, to this point, been able to conjure up.

So what did that make me? I read a blog last week about the importance of the teacher-student relationship. I was the last person to glean — slowly, uncomfortably — that the writer was talking about me. I saw myself through the sheen of see-through yoga pants, and what I saw made me ill:

I am an interloper in your mysore room. I am a healthy smidgen of the unteachable girl I just wrote about:  “At best she’ll humor you as you guide her through poses and alignment, but don’t kid yourself”  — Does that sound familiar to you, JM? Sure, respectful, hard-working, dutiful, faithful giving Mysore teacher, I’ll take your mysore class, but not really. I’ll take your room, your community, your energy, your teaching and use of it what I want, and give you nothing in return. ‘Cause I can, because I’m Me! I’ve got an Epic pass to ski whatever mysore room I want with whoever I want, because I practice at the Shala of Me, as outlined by my Teacher with a capitol T, who isn’t you, so back-the-f-up!

Jean Marie, who is in charge of your practice now?

ME. And, by extension, the practice itself. Because I know everything, right?

Ruh-roh.

I’m a baby in the ashtanga world — my see-through yoga pants may as well be training pants — so I am no expert on how to go about this whole practice. Still, my innocent eyes have seen enough to get that practicing solo is fine and good when it’s the best you can do. We’re all doing what we can do. I’ve connected to countless others who are doing just that — eking out a practice they love with little help. It’s inspiring.

But this isn’t the best that I can do —not anymore. It isn’t even what I want or need. I want consistency, community, a relationship. I want to be a student.

Hidden under the penumbra of my full-of-shit-ness I gathered the courage to write to my Teacher. I chose my words carefully, because it was a tough thing to write, but in my mind, asking him was the only way I knew to honor the practice he had given and taught me. Asking was the only way.

I’ve encountered some who assume that in ashtanga, you become this subservient student just truckling to the power of a paternalistic teacher. Someone tells you what to do and you submit all of yourself. In my experience– and truthfully I’ve been fortunate– the teacher-student relationship is an empowering dialogue among adults. So I was not surprised — though still touched — when much like the mysore teachers I’ve been stealing from with my Epic pass, he responded with selfless, humble and beautiful advice:

“Start building a consistent relationship with one community. But please stay connected to me.”

I’m not sure how this story ends. But it begins with acknowledging where I really am. It seems that how I go about this practice in the larger-view way off the mat is much like how I strive to go about the postures on the mat — it’s all about the set-up, and less about the final posture.

What I said last year is hopefully still true: practice by practice, day by day, the less I’m full of shit and the more I’m full of something real.