13: Obstacle As Path with Guest Teacher Cyndi Lee

I am so excited about today’s episode because I get to bring you the wisdom of the founder of my own teaching lineage (OM Yoga) , Cyndi Lee! Cyndi is the first female Western yoga teacher to fully integrate yoga asana and Tibetan Buddhism in her practice and teaching.  In 1998, she founded OM Yoga Center in NYC, and that is where I took my first YTT in 2005.

In this interview we talk about what makes a good teacher, how to continue to evolve as teachers and what we can learn from the Buddhist principle of Threefold Logic: working with the ground, the path and the fruition.

Cyndi recently became a formally trained Buddhist Chaplain under the guidance of Roshi Joan Halifax and much of her work there centers around using yoga and meditation as resiliency practices. We talked about what it’s like to find refuge in our bodies, no matter the circumstances, and how we can offer that kind of teaching to our students.

In this episode we also talked about:

• how some teaching principles are universal, no matter what you are teaching
• Cyndi gives some advice for teachers who want to deepen their teaching skills
• what it takes to have confidence in your teaching
• having a growth mindset vs a fixed mindset
• taking refuge in a body that has a lot of pain 

Trainings, Retreats and Online Workshops with Cyndi:

Cyndi’s Website
Very Special Teachers Retreat in New Mexico
Online Restorative Teacher Training
Meditation Teacher Training coming summer 2018