Born Teacher

I have so much anger right now and I don’t know what to do with it.

How many people out there openly ask the world to kill them… and yet here they are. They drink too much, they drug too much, the eat too much, drive too fast, sleep too little, stay out too late. They don’t even move. They can’t even move.

And YOU have a heart attack? You?

You who I once saw hold a back bend for over 5 minutes.

You who promoted meditation and self care. You who LIVED what you talked about?

Where’s the logic? Where’s the justice? Every day I see people whose behavior screams ‘KILL ME!’

and the Universe took you.

It’s all bullshit then. All the namastes. All the deep breath. All the pseudo philosophy we throw out in class straining to be profound. 

We’re empty, aren’t we? 

If this can happen then none of it’s real. We’re deluding ourselves. Worse, we’re deluding the students who trust us.

You’d say no. You believed. You believed 100%. You Loved it. You lived it.

And yet here we are.

I want to believe again…

If you believed so much I wish you’d show me. Enlighten me. Please.

Teach me.

You, my favorite teacher. I didn’t realize it until someone told me you were gone. Please, one last lesson. How could everything we believed in fail you so utterly?

No pithy quotes about loving yourself and living a full life. You lived that, you said those. 

You’re still gone. We’re heartbroken.

I didn’t cry when my own Mother passed but I cried like a baby after I got the call about you Sunday night.

I didn’t cry about Mom for years. Not until that moment in Teacher Training when my mind went to that dark place it would go whenever I thought about her. You, my teacher, were trying to assist me and I backed you off. Not politely.

‘What’s wrong?’ you asked.

I can’t remember what I said after that. All I remember is that you INSISTED I get in front of the class and teach at that moment.

‘Use whatever it is. Now.’

Teach from your heart. That was just a pithy quote before you.

And so I began to teach. At first I was going to bullshit my way through it, not share what was really on my mind, but something in the way you looked at me made me certain that you would see through it. And I knew you’d keep me up there until it came out.

So I began teaching a yoga sequence. And I spoke about how my body felt locked up because my mind was in the dark place. I had been using yoga to push through it. I admitted to the class that it had been years since Mom passed and I couldn’t cry. 

Then the tears came. 

And I pushed through sobs to complete the sequence. I sat down. We stopped. You stood in front of the class.

‘That was the most powerful, heartfelt, thing I’ve ever experience in a yoga class,’ you said.

My face was covered in tears but I had never felt like more of a Man. The dark place was gone forever.

You brought that out of me. 

That and a hundred moments like it make you the best teacher I’ve ever had.

So many students would agree. The ones who you took time to teach over Skype, or on a Friday night after work because we weren’t ready to teach yet, but you saw something inside of us.

And everything we believed in somehow failed… You were in your prime. Your beautiful kids are teenagers. You had more lives to change.

It was not your time.

This doesn’t make sense. One more lesson or it all meant nothing.

Breathe, you’d say.

Relax, you’d say.

Use whatever this is, NOW.

I’d say I LOVE YOU. Like you were FAMILY.

And I’d say everyone needs to come to my next class because I had a teacher who LOVED me and made me feel amazing. She was there for me through tough times and amazing times and I need to SHARE THAT.

PLEASE! 

I’ll come early. I’ll stay late. I’ll listen. I won’t judge. I’ll offer what advice I can. I’ll see through your excuses. I’ll make you uncomfortable until you have your breakthrough.

I’ll tell you that no matter what is wrong you’ll never feel worse about it after class.

Please let me share this LOVE.

Then I can believe again.

RIP Aida Bielkus.

Mother. Daughter. Sister.

Born Teacher.