Yoga Teacher Column (4): Knowing the Answer, Why Won't Students Change?

What Is Hardest to Release Is Not the Student
It Is One's Own Expectations

You see it so clearly,
seeing the student's relationship loops,
seeing her emotional momentum,
seeing her repeatedly harm herself.
You have accompanied her right to the edge of the answer,
yet after a while,
she slides right back.

Back into that depleting relationship,
back beside the person who wounds her,
back into choices known to be misaligned,
back into the exact patterns you analyzed countless times.

Then a wave of helplessness surfaces,
perhaps even mild irritation.
Your mind cries out:
"Why?"
"You already know this!"
"I have guided you all the way here!"
"How many more times must you fall?"

If you have ever felt this way,
take heart:
this does not mean you lack love,
it means you genuinely care.

Yet what Lapis Light wishes to illuminate is this:
so often, the source of a teacher's suffering,
is not that the student has not changed,
rather, it is that we want her to change.

These two things look similar,
yet they are entirely distinct.

Because the moment we desire someone to change,
our mind has already formulated an answer:
a direction we deem superior,
a persona we expect them to embody.

And when life fails to unfold in that direction,
suffering is born.

There is a vital observation within the Lapis Light System:
awareness does not equal readiness for change.

Many teachers mistakenly believe:
once the student sees it,
things will transform immediately.

Yet life does not operate this way.

Some need to hurt three times,
some need ten times,
some need twenty times.
Not because she is foolish,
but because her body,
is not yet ready to let go.

Intellectually grasping a truth,
takes three seconds.
Somatic trust and surrender,
often requires three years.

So you will notice,
many students already know everything.
They know they are compromising,
they know they are escaping,
they know they are unhappy,
they know they deserve better.

Yet knowing,
does not mean being capable of doing.

Because change was never merely cognitive;
it is an issue of somatic structural conditioning.

Lapis Light consistently reminds us:
when someone repeats a pattern,
it is not because she relishes suffering,
it is because it is her familiar safety zone.

Some are habituated to pleasing.
Some to self sacrifice.
Some to grievance.
Some to rescuing.

Even when painful,
it remains familiar.

And familiarity,
is often more magnetic than happiness.

A truly mature teacher,
gradually comprehends one fundamental truth.

Your purpose,
is not to change the student,
but to illuminate the student.

Transformation,
is life's own prerogative.

You can accompany,
you can remind,
you can demonstrate,
you can share.

Yet you cannot choose for her.

Because each soul,
walks to its own rhythm.

The greatest cultivation for a teacher,
is truly this:
trusting life.

Trusting that even if change does not bloom today,
the seed has nonetheless been planted.

Trusting that even if she walks out of the studio,
the words once spoken,
the sensations experienced in the body,
the tears wept,
will one day sprout in her life.

Perhaps not today,
perhaps not next year.

Yet in life, no step is ever wasted.

Sometimes,
what a student truly needs,
is not a guide frantic to pull her ashore.

It is someone who, even seeing her fall,
still believes she has the power to rise again.

Lapis Light Reflection

A mature teacher,
is not the one best at changing students,
but the one who most deeply reveres life.
Because true presence,
does not push another toward what you deem correct,
it holds faith when they are not yet ready:
trusting that one day,
she will walk into her own light.