We spent a lot of time exploring useful and nurturing language during our weekend of teachers’ training. Not being a particularly verbal person (symptom of or trigger for my introverted tendencies?), I marveled at all the potential words that could be used during a yoga session. The words included words specific for yoga asanas (postures), body parts, encouragement, location, feelings, and others. We talked about when to use concrete language and when to use metaphor. Of course I immediately started listening more carefully to Michelle and each of the students as we took turns “teaching” an asana. In class this morning I continued my focus on recognizing the way that accurate words must be used to get the hoped for (expected) results.
This is how life has always been. While lying awake last night, I thought about how words and their usage is so dependent on who is listening or reading. Thirty years ago I took a graduate ecology seminar and quickly learned that writing in the colloquial speech I had acquired as a young mom was not going to “cut it.” To this day I rarely use “it” when I’m writing. Then later in life I took classes in social work and found a whole new language that needed to be learned. Each role that I’ve assumed has seemed to be accompanied by its own jargon and usage standards. Recently while “instructing” a fellow student on a pose, I slipped into the language I was currently using with my visiting two year old granddaughter…”sit.” Not particularly yogic.
When discussing this topic with my massage therapist, I was challenged with the notion that as we become more authentic to our true self we also become more authentic and universal in our speech. We shall see.
