internal motivation

The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 9: The Teacher Role Isn't My Essence

In ninth and final installment of our interview, yoga teacher Charu Rachlis discusses her deep alignment with and lack of attachment to her role as a yoga teacher, and explores what might be next for her.

Sarah: What is the best part of teaching yoga?

Charu: Oh my gosh, the joy, love, and friendship I receive––this beautiful heart exchange that happens effortlessly. As I said earlier, I’m a shy person. I choose to spend a lot of my time quiet and alone. But when I step into that arena of teaching, I’m not focusing on myself. I feel natural in that role.

Sarah: It seems like you already feel deeply fulfilled. What are you curious to experience in the next phase of your life?

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Charu: That’s my question for myself right now. I’m 62. Since I turned 60, I’ve been noticing subtle changes in my body, manifestations of the aging process. I feel the changes and I see them too. I’m not in a fight with this process. It’s nature. I love nature, and I learn from it.

I’ll see what resonates. I don’t have a lot of clues yet, but I trust that my next steps will make themselves known when the time is right. One idea is to offer yoga classes for people ages 50 and over, so I can share this exploration of the aging process with others. I also imagine living closer to nature and having a dog or two.

Sarah: What do you wish most for yourself?

Charu: I am so honored to have been given the opportunity to teach for the past 25 years and I hope to continue this amazing journey. But if my path changes and at some point I stop teaching yoga, that’s OK, because I know the teacher role isn’t my essence. Ultimately what I wish is that no matter how my life transforms, I continue to open to clarity, love, and truth, more and more over time. That’s my wish for myself.

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The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 8: Machines Spilling Out Teachers

In Part 8 of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis , she discussed her concerns about the trend toward commercialization in yoga training and shared advice for entering the field.

Sarah: How does the need to earn a living interact with the spiritual approach you take to yoga?

Charu: Right now, that is a bit of a conflict for me. I’m not someone who says people don’t need money. Money is energy; money is love; I welcome money. But I don’t like the commercialization and corporatization of yoga.

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Sarah: What is your impression of yoga teacher training? If you could ask for any changes to the teacher training programs you’re familiar with, what would they be? 

Charu: I’ve been invited to be a trainer in some of those programs and my answer has been no. There are many fabulous trainers, but I’m bothered by the machine of teacher-training programs spilling people out after two or three months and giving them the message that they are prepared to go and teach. It takes a lot more than that to form a true teacher. There’s intense marketing to get people to sign up for these training programs. I don’t want to participate in that. People have encouraged me to start my own training program, but I don’t feel called to do that.

Sarah: What advice do you have for people who want to be yoga teachers or who are beginning to teach?

Charu: Being a yoga teacher is so personal. Maybe I’m old school, but I went through a lot of deep searching to be the teacher that I am. Maybe that isn’t the only way. I don’t know exactly. I encourage people who want to become teachers to understand that they are entering a space of great honor. I encourage new teachers to speak from a place of unity, peace, harmony, and truth––not just repeat someone else’s ideas. I encourage them to be true to their own journey.

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The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 7: A Waterfall of Inspiration

In Part 7 of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis , she shared how her own pyscho-spiritual practices keep her grounded and inspired as a teacher.

Sarah: Your classes are often packed. Why do you think that is?

Charu: I feel that people are looking for something more than just the physical practice. They want the same thing I always looked for in a teacher: someone who doesn’t mechanically repeat sequences. I only say things in class that I feel in my heart and that I’ve studied, experienced, and practiced. I’m humbled that this approach resonates for my students.

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Sarah: It must be intense to be the recipient of students’ love and devotion. How do you keep from letting that go to your head?

Charu: I have a very intense meditation practice. I have groups I meditate with and process with. I don’t see myself as a guru or spiritual leader. Teaching is a role, an opportunity, and a responsibility that was given to me. I’m humbled by that.

Sarah: You give the most amazing talks at the beginning of each yoga class, a combination of guided meditation and philosophical reflection. I’m curious if you prepare in advance a theme or topic you want to address.

Charu: No, I’m not in the shower planning what to say. It comes very naturally each time. My teaching is an extension of my personal journey. I’m committed to being consciously aware and to processing what I learn and experience. So when I open my mouth to speak to my students, I’m embodying and expressing whatever it is that I’m reflecting on at that time. What comes out of me when I talk is a flow, a waterfall of inspiration. I’m not interested in holding back or holding on. I think that’s why I’m a teacher. I’m constantly feeding myself and then in turn feeding others.

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Sarah: What do you wish most for your students?

Charu: I want them to understand that this is a lifelong practice. I want them to develop inner strength for whatever comes their way, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I want them to experience the miracle of embodiment. I hope that when they come to class, they can feel more connected with their own hearts. When I teach, the heart is the major target.

Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 8: Machines Spilling Out Teachers

The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 6: Grab the Right Computer File

In Part 6 of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis , she discussed her approach to teaching yoga.

Sarah: What form of yoga do you teach and why?

Charu: I don’t have a specific style that I follow. I’ve studied Iyangar, Ashtanga, and Shadow yoga. I have found what really resonates with me from each of these schools. I always practice,so I feel like I have a body intelligence that naturally filters everything I’ve learned to create my own teaching style. 

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I don’t consciously program my classes ahead of time. I never repeat a class. Obviously I repeat yoga poses—that’s just the nature of yoga—but the way I put them together is always different. What I do in any given class is both in-the-moment and based on my 25 years of experience. And my teaching continues to evolve.

Sarah: How so?

Charu: I’m more and more interested in creating a healing circle, an energy field where others can come to recharge. It’s like a meditation practice for me; my intention is to hold the field without manipulating it. I’m not in charge. Maybe I can explain it by comparing it to a download. Imagine that I have a computer inside me. When I enter the class I feel in my body what pose to guide the class through next, and because I’ve been doing this for so long, I can just reach in and grab the right computer file. “OK, from this pose we’ll move to this pose.” But that computer metaphor is way too mechanistic and linear to describe this creative process, which is magic. My teaching happens at the soul level.

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Sarah: Do you still seek out yoga training?

Charu: Yes. I attend Shadow yoga classes. Shadow yoga is a beautiful and strenuous practice, an inwardly centered experience that really called my name.

Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 7: A Waterfall of Inspiration

The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 5: Yoga Is My Second Child

The fifth part of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis picks up with her move away from Berkeley’s Nyingma Institute. She describes falling in love, giving birth to her daughter, and meeting key mentors on her path to becoming a yoga teacher.

Sarah: Tell me about moving on from the institute. Where did you go?

Charu: I felt I needed to be out in the world, but I didn’t want to go back to Brazil. I told my friend Sue, another student at the institute, that I was ready to move out and get a job. She said, Look no further; my mother needs someone to take care of her. We can pay you in cash. So I moved out, into the basement of a house on Harmon Street in Berkeley with two Polish friends who left the institute at the same time as I did. I worked Thursday nights through Monday mornings taking care of this wealthy 94-year-old woman. Her name was Mrs. Medway. She was a lovely, funny lady from Chicago, who was losing her short-term memory. She’d ask, What is it that you do for a living? I’d say, I take care of old people. She’d say, Oh, they must love you. She would tell me the same stories over and over.

At some point I started feeling very tired of that. I told my housemates I needed to be with people my age and have some fun. One of them said, Why don’t you come with us to this group that meets in Tiburon on Thursday nights? They explained to me that the group focused each week on an aspect of relationships. The attendees broke into little groups, shared with one another, and then meditated. Then a therapist who led the group would play wonderful music and everyone would dance together. I said, sure, I’ll go. My friend Sue, Mrs. Medway’s daughter, said she would stay with her mom while I went and that I could even borrow her car. Later on, I found out that it was an Osho Rajneesh group, but at the time I had no idea.

So anyway, I go with my friend to this beautiful house in Tiburon. When I walk in I see this really cute guy. I mean, there were lots of beautiful young people there, but I saw him. He invited me out. That was my future husband, Sahajo. We’ve been together from that moment to this day—almost 25 years.

With mentor Thomas Michael Fortel.

With mentor Thomas Michael Fortel.

Sarah: You’ve written about your relationships with yoga teacher Thomas Michael Fortel and meditation teacher Leslie Temple Thurston. Tell me about these relationships and how they helped you further develop your practice.

Charu: I went with my roommate from the Nyingma Institute to her friend’s birthday party. The friend turned out to be Thomas, and from that point forward we developed our own friendship based on a mutual passion for self-inquiry. I started taking taking yoga classes from him and he mentored me. Later on, when he moved to Big Sur, he invited me to take over all his classes at Mindful Body. That was the beginning of my career. From then on he continued to open doors for me, inviting me to teach with him at Esalen, as well as in Europe, Alaska, and Mexico. So I have eternal gratitude for him.

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I met Leslie later, in 1994, after I’d left the institute. I attended a darshan that she offered. A darshan is an ancient Indian practice in which a teacher transmits love and peace to their students. I felt an instant connection with Leslie. In 1996 I enrolled in her four-year teacher training program, which focused on non-duality. At that time I was just starting out as a yoga teacher. Like Thomas’s mentorship, Leslie’s training opened my heart. and deepened my studies and practices.

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Sarah: Can you briefly explain non-duality for people not familiar with that concept?

Charu: We live in a dual world in which everything is characterized by binaries: good/bad, right/wrong. To study non-duality is to investigate the aspects of life that are not at the extremes and not rigidified. It’s to see the grey shades between the black and white.

Sarah: Thanks. So you started this training in 1996.

Charu: Yes. I was pregnant at the time. I have always loved the fact that in the same period in which I gave birth to my daughter, I also gave birth to my vocation as a yoga teacher.

In fact, I wanted to have another kid but I didn’t get pregnant again. I came to see this as a divine plan. Yoga is my second child.

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Getting started as a teacher wasn’t easy, though. I was very timid in the beginning. And it was difficult financially because we had no money for nannies. But Sahajo supported my decision to teach. Little by little, it all worked out..

If you had told me when I was 20, during my dark night of the soul in Brazil, that I would become a yoga teacher later in life, I would have said, I think you’re crazy! It took a long time to find who I was. But at one point an astrologer read my chart and said, Everything will come later for you than for everyone else; don’t compare yourself. I was 39 when I started teaching.

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Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 6: Grab the Right Computer File

The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 3: In Exile in My Own Country

In the third part of my interview with yoga teacher Charu Rachlis, she describes jettisoning promising careers in psychology and theater, discovering meditation, and reaching the decision to move to the U.S.

In Exile in My Own Country

S: Where did you go to college and what did you study? 

C: I attended Universidade Gama Filho in Rio de Janeiro and majored in psychology.  

S: What if anything do you feel you gained from that experience? 

C: It expanded my horizons. I took classes in psychotherapy, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. I’ve always liked to study subjects related to body-mind-spirit.

College graduation night. Charu is in bottom row, second from left.

College graduation night. Charu is in bottom row, second from left.

S: Did you ever practice as a psychotherapist? 

C: After I received my college degree, two friends and I started a career counseling service in Rio de Janeiro. We called it Orienta Servicos Psicologicos. We administered psych tests and used the results to help people choose professions. I did that for about 2-1/2 years. But given how young I was, I didn’t think I had enough life experience to be advising people. After a few years I broke down. I cried and cried and told my friends I liked providing a service but didn’t feel authentic doing it. 

I dropped that. My family was upset with me for quitting. I ended up working in the television industry, like the rest of my family. I did production, scenery, casting. But it was a hard, depressing period. Eventually I quit that work too. I was kind of floating, which concerned my family. 

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My father had friends who worked for an insurance company that was half-public, half-private. It provided good benefits. He said, why don’t you take the placement test? I did, and I passed. I ended up working there for six years as a secretary. I earned a good income, so I was able to work part-time. At first I was taking acting classes in the evening. I attended the best acting school in Rio de Janeiro—and it was not cheap. It was a very rigorous program. If you studied there, you had to give it everything you had. I didn’t have enough time to study in the way that I wanted to without falling behind at work.  

I stopped after two years. The teachers tried to convince me to stay. They said, You have real talent; you could be an actress. And I knew I was good at acting, but I also saw that I wasn’t willing to do whatever it took to keep studying. I decided I wasn’t meant to become an actress.  

Looking back, though, I see that acting helped me later as a yoga teacher. Despite what you might think from seeing me teach, I’m quite shy, and all that improv, singing, and dancing taught me how to be in front of a group of people. 

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My secretarial job allowed me to pay the bills, but it didn’t satisfy me. A psychologist friend told me about a meditation course taught by a visiting Tibetan Buddhist from Berkeley’s Nyingma Institute. I was intrigued, because I’d always been fascinated by how we can transform ourselves and become more authentic. I took the course. I thought, this is everything—meditation, Tibetan yoga, lots of introspection. 

After almost a year, I told my meditation teacher I wanted to keep studying. He said, We’re inviting people to study at the Nyingma Institute. It’s a work exchange; we offer room and board, and we’ll pay for half of your plane ticket. It’s a year-and-a-half commitment. I said, OK. A big doorway opened up for me in that moment. I didn’t quit my job at that stage but I took a leave of absence. 

S: How did your family react to the idea of your going to live in the US? 

C: Oh my gosh, it was a big drama. I had some Buddha statues in the apartment where I was living at that time, and my mom took them and threw them in the trash.  

My dad had passed away by then. We had been close. We both loved books and reading, and he had always told me I was a dreamer. But aside from the pull of that relationship, even though I loved my family, I didn’t feel like I belonged in Brazil. I felt like an exile in my own country. If my dad had remained alive, I don’t know if I would have felt the freedom to leave everything behind like that and take on the world. But being invited to Berkeley so soon after his death felt like a sign that it was time to go.

Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 4: Wow, This Is Me

The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 1: Let's Move Around; We'll Feel Better

Once it’s safe to nix the social distancing, I can’t wait to return to Charu Rachlis’s yoga class at Yoga Tree on Stanyan Street, where she’s taught for upward of 15 years. Charu’s teaching always works its magic on me, from her warm, lilting voice as she bathes us in healing words during the guided meditations with which she starts each session, to the clear, kind, and often humorous instruction she provides as we move through each pose.

My fellow practitioners are people of all ages and skill levels. Yet the varying capacities of her students seem to pose the slightest challenge to Charu, who somehow helps each of us work our own edge, always encouraging us to infuse focused effort with mindfulness and self-compassion.

One morning, leaving class, another student glowingly commented, “I feel like I’ve just been to church—a really good kind of church.” I knew exactly what he meant. As we spill onto Stanyan, we collectively exude a sense of grounded joy palpably different from the jittery, fried vibe we entered with 90 minutes earlier. What happens in Charu’s class is way more than a good workout.

So I was happy when Charu agreed to talk with me about the path she has traveled to becoming the extraordinarily gifted teacher that she is. I hope our conversation compels and sustains you while we all wait for the day when we can gather in person.

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Let’s Move Around; We’ll Feel Better

Sarah: How long have you been teaching?

Charu: I started teaching in 1996, a little bit before I gave birth. I had a very intense personal yoga practice. I was in a home birth group with some friends—we’d all gotten pregnant together—and they invited me to teach them. I started to teach formally in 1997.

S: Let’s talk about what led you onto this path. I know you grew up in Brazil—where exactly?

C: I was born in Rio de Janeiro. When I was less than a year old, we moved to Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil, to be close to my mother’s family. Then in 1964, when I was 7 years old, there was a coup d’etat. A military dictatorship was installed and it lasted for the next 21 years.

When you live in a dictatorship, all the freedoms are taken away. You can only imagine how this affects a population. The government censored art, books, music. I loved the music of the singer Caetano Veloso; his music was about integrating yourself spiritually, emotionally, and every way possible. He was exiled in London and could not come back to Brazil for many years. That was a huge blow for me. The dictatorship created so much fear. People were tortured and murdered.

I was still living there as a young woman when democracy returned, and it was beautiful—everyone was in the streets. This moment of great joy and people returning from exile and things opening up again. But my feelings about Brazil were deeply affected by all those years of dictatorship. It was like the dictatorship imprinted itself on me psychologically. Everything that I did there was in some way difficult. When I came to the States, every door opened up in a magical way.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When the coup d’etat happened in 1964, my father (who worked as a piloto de navio, a cargo ship pilot, for the oil and gas company Petrobras) decided we should move back to Rio de Janeiro. That was where his family lived.

S: Why did he decide that?

C:. My guess is that, seeing how the dictatorship was limiting access to opportunities, he felt that returning to Rio and working hard there to advance his career would allow him to make our life as good as possible given the tough circumstances. So we moved back to Rio de Janeiro and he studied in his spare time and eventually became a captain.

S: What was it like for you to move back to Rio de Janeiro?

C: I was extremely close to my mother’s mother, Mercedes. Leaving her was terrible. And life in Rio de Janeiro was completely different. Rio Grande was a tiny, peaceful town and Rio de Janeiro was a big, bustling city, but it was still a nice place to be—not as hectic as it is now.

S: Were you able to maintain your connection with your maternal grandmother after your family moved away from her?

C: Yes, very much so. Our family would visit her every school holiday. Later on, when my brother and sister and I were teenagers, we began to go see her by ourselves.

S: I know from reading your website bio that even as a child, you felt a lot of joy in movement and you developed an understanding of the healing properties of somatic awareness.

C: From the beginning, I felt the need to do some kind of movement. I seem to have come into this world knowing that the body in motion releases mental and emotional tension and balances us, and that we feel better as a result. My mom told me that when I was five or six years old, I’d be on the floor with my legs forward, or out, or all the way over my head. I had a few ways of stretching. She’d ask, What are you doing? I would tell her, I’m calming myself, I’m being with myself. From the time I was 13, even younger, I would walk on the beaches in Rio de Janeiro. I would feel the strength in my legs, and the energy I was receiving from the sand and the sun. I’d breathe in the prajna from the ocean very consciously, even though I didn’t call it prajna. Then I’d jump into the water to cool off and I’d feel a sense of oneness. I would describe what I was feeling to my brother, sister, and friends. I’d encourage them to join me—especially my brother and a good friend, who were a little bit overweight. I’d say, That’s OK, let’s move around, we’ll feel better. When I became a yoga teacher much later, my siblings and my friends from that time said, We’re not surprised one bit.

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S: Who most supported your way of being when you were a kid?

C: My parents encouraged me to be a good student, but the physical training I had to find on my own. My parents didn’t exercise. My brother is a runner now, and my sister likes going to the gym, but no one in my family shared my interest in yoga and meditation. When I was 14–15 years old, I went looking for a stretching class. At that time, I did not find any yoga classes. They were all about stretching. I wanted to find a teacher I’d resonate with, someone who loved what they were doing. I’d visit a class and say, No, not this one. Eventually I found a teacher, a young mother with kids. I saw that she struggled to earn enough money through her teaching, but her class was so filled with love and truth. She didn’t speak about spirit but it was there in her presentation and in her way of caring for her students. I told my mom about it, but it went in one ear and out the other. She said, As long as you like it, I’m glad you found it. She was busy raising my younger siblings.

Next: The Heart Is the Major Target—Part 2: Openness to the Unseen

Educator Wellness Practice #10: Inhabiting the Dignified Stance of "Adequate"

Emily Dickinson comes through with an empowering definition of “adequate” that we need right now. Check out #10 in the educator wellness series here.

The introduction to the series is here.

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Facebook Live Event: A Conversation About the Impact of Saying Goodbye to Students

I loved joining Peter Brunn and Gina Fugnitto of Collaborative Classroom for a conversation about the impact on educators of saying goodbye to students after many weeks of remote teaching due to the global pandemic. I led participants through a short practice I am calling “Saying Hello to Goodbye.”

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Facebook Live Event: A Conversation About the Importance of Self-Care

I was honored to join Gina Fugnitto and Peter Brunn of Collaborative Classroom for a conversation about self-care. We talked about the concept of “beginner’s mind” first named by Suzuki Roshi, the Sōtō Zen monk and teacher famed for starting first Zen Buddhist monastery outside Asia. I then guided participants through a body scanning practice to support calm and centeredness in the face of COVID-19 stress.

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Educator Wellness Practice #3:

It’s all too easy to habituate ourselves to muscling through our tasks and deferring “real life” till we get through the to-do list. But if your list is anything like mine, it’s endless. So what happens to the quality of our days?

The third wellness practice in my series of blogs on educator wellness offers an antidote.

The introduction to the series is here.

I heart Collaborative Classroom for featuring this series!

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Educator Wellness Practice #2: Engaging Wisely with News and Media

Here’s the second wellness practice in my series of blogs on educator wellness is. The introduction to the series is here. I appreciate Collaborative Classroom for asking me to write this series! Anyone who wants to get more deliberate about news and social media intake can check out this practice.

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Educator Wellness Series for Collaborative Classroom

I've been writing about teacher wellness for the Collaborative Classroom blog. Read the introduction to the series here.

Managing to Build Bridges - Part 3: I Felt Pretty Stupid

Nani has a gift for entering others’ cultures in a respectful and sensitive way. That gift, combined with her strong curiosity and sense of adventure, has led to a unique trajectory from her childhood in Indonesia to her current job as a project manager at LinkedIn. In Part 3 of our conversation, Nani describes her initial encounter with U.S. culture and her nascent passion for exercising her analytical skills.

Sarah: What were your first impressions of US culture?

Nani: I was reading an old diary recently and I found observations about exactly that. For instance, I noted that people say “How are you” a lot but, as I learned the hard way, you’re not supposed to pause and really think about how you are—you’re supposed to just say, “Fine.” We don’t say “How are you” in Indonesia so at first I thought people really wanted to know how I was.

I also felt uncomfortable physically. In Southeast Asia, females are supposed to behave in a feminine way, and whiter skin is prized. I’d flunked that test because I wasn’t very feminine and was darker-skinned. Here in the US I had to wrestle with a new projection—I was seen by many as exotic. A lot of people—mostly but not only white men—assumed I’d fit the stereotype they had of Asian women as submissive, weak, nurturing. So I’d gone from feeling unattractive to attractive, but attractive in a way that made me feel objectified, uncomfortable. It took me a long time to develop the vocabulary to understand all that.

On an intellectual level I felt pretty stupid. I remember I went with American friends to see a film and one of them asked me afterward, Well, what do you think? Did you like it? I said, Yes, it was cool. The friend said, Why? I had no idea. My critical thinking skills were still very limited. Under Suharto, critical thinking was suppressed in both the public and private educational systems. You were not allowed to think for yourself. That’s why literature wasn’t offered in schools—literature promotes deeper questioning. Before I moved to the States I had never even heard of the most internationally renowned Indonesian author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. His books were all banned in my time. After I got to the US I sought out Indonesian literature.

Acclaimed Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Acclaimed Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Sarah: What did you major in at SF State?

Nani: At first I declared marketing as my major. I was still enacting the values of my parents and the world I grew up in. After one or two classes I said, this is so boring, I’m not going to do it. But I didn’t know what to replace it with. I had the same old frustration I’d felt in Indonesia—“I don’t know what my skills are; I don’t know what I’m good at.” I went back and looked at my performance at the American Language Institute. I’d excelled in writing and literature. I thought, maybe that’s what I should go for. I ended up double majoring in English literature and linguistics.

After that, I was able to say why I like or don’t like certain movies! I definitely struggled in the lit classes. But I was dating an American at the time. In terms of our communication as a couple a lot was lost in translation, but being with him propelled the speed of my learning. He would help me even with literature stuff, for example if I didn’t understand something I read or when I had to write papers.

Sarah: Why did you want to study linguistics?

Nani: I knew that breaking down the English language—looking at aspects like phonology, morphology, social linguistics—would significantly speed up the process of gaining mastery, which I very much wanted.

All of a sudden I became a proper student. It just proves that if you’re passionate about whatever it is you’re doing, no one even needs to tell you to be disciplined. You just do whatever it takes, providing you have access to the basics (housing, food, etc.), which I did, thankfully. I often went to my professors’ office hours. I would show up with lists of questions I’d prepared in advance.

Next: Dessert Goes to a Different Stomach