Why Yoga Teaches Never Stop Being Students
You know when you feel good after a yoga class? That’s the philosophy of yoga in action.
“I used to be a bit of a couch potato,” Mary Wixted reveals in this conversation about her yoga journey. Studious by nature and attending law school, physical activity wasn’t a big part of Mary’s life until her 30s when she started taking step-dancing classes in California and found that she enjoyed the fun and energizing workout. In search of something even more fulfilling, Mary discovered a yoga studio where she lived in Mill Valley, CA. After a cross-country move to Boston in 2000, Mary’s love for Iyengar Yoga began first as a student and now it deepens as both a teacher and a lifelong student of the subject.
Mary has been teaching for 14 years. Currently a Level II Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher (CIYT), she found the opportunity to be a student this past summer at the week-long Summer Intensive with Lois Steinberg, an Advanced Level II Certified Iyengar Yoga teacher based in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. This experience prompted us to reflect with her on her entire yoga journey – where she’s been, where she’s headed, and her deep connection to the Artemis Yoga community.
Mary moved to Boston with her husband and two children when she was 38. She began taking Iyengar yoga classes at the Iyengar Center in Somerville, carving out time to go to class when the sitter came. After 5 years of practice, Mary recognized the power of the practice in her life. Rather than returning to law, Mary enrolled in an Iyengar Yoga teacher training with Patricia Walden. As a public interest attorney, Mary was dedicated to serving others by being their voice. The physical, mental and spiritual health effects she experienced from her yoga practice inspired Mary to become a teacher to bring these benefits to others. “Teaching yoga allowed me to focus on something I loved, to help others, while also supporting me as a mother,” Mary says. Mary has found that teaching integrates many of the foundational aspects of her personality, and utilizes all of her strengths: the love of learning and her ability to communicate, the capacity for study and discipline, and above all her friendliness and compassion.
As a child, Mary loved learning and couldn’t wait to go to school. In high school, Mary was a debater and as a lawyer, she was a litigator. She has always enjoyed presenting subjects through verbal communication. “The Iyengar Yoga method hones your skills around word choice. What you are saying and how you are saying it are important to a student’s learning and experience. You must ask yourself: Is your presentation adding to their knowledge and bringing a more meditative experience? Also, it’s a never-ending challenge to present a yoga sequence in the context of so many different bodies in a room. There’s a lot of input coming at you from each student, yet you need to keep the class moving, while addressing everyone’s needs.” Mary is incredibly friendly and enthusiastic. Connecting with others is something that comes natural to her and she enjoys bringing that to her teaching.
Beyond the asanas, yoga philosophy inspires Mary to teach. “You know when you feel good after a yoga class? That’s the philosophy of yoga in action,” Mary explains. “Teaching yoga isn’t just physical. Yoga touches all the layers of who you are – no matter what method you practice. As you deepen your practice, you become more aware of how yoga makes you feel. You feel whole or integrated.” In the Sutras of Patanjali, samadhi is the concept of integration or bringing together the different aspects of self – mind, body, and spirit. It’s often referred to as the goal of yoga, a state of enlightenment.
I’ve been teaching at Artemis Yoga for 7 years, and it’s the support and dedication of this community that drives me to keep growing.
Practicing and teaching Iyengar Yoga also challenges Mary to discipline herself. “Discipline is the road to freedom and true transformative states. The deeper you go, the more you understand yourself.” For Mary, practice is the foundation of authenticity in teaching. During the pandemic, she began practicing weekly with Lois Steinberg on Zoom. “Being able to study consistently with Lois filled in blanks in my knowledge and brought concepts together for me. A lot of what I teach now is from her teaching.”
In August of 2024, Mary attended Lois’s Summer Intensive in Champaign-Urbana. During the intensive, Mary was able to take the time to focus on her own personal practice rather than thinking about how to teach the poses. In a room of over 50 Iyengar practitioners, both teachers and students, Mary practiced 2 to 4 hours of asana and 1 hour of pranayama each day. Lois’s teaching is intense and demanding, both physically and mentally, so Mary had the opportunity to observe: “When the teacher says something, do you do it? Do you want to do it? Why wouldn’t you do it? How much should you do it? How do you do it in conjunction with other things? Evaluating your resistance to a pose or an instruction and your willingness to do it is always an interesting process and can increase your concentration in the pose.”
A highlight of the program for Mary was doing a pose she hadn’t been able to do before: Parsva Sarvangasana (side shoulder stand), where the body turns and extends to the side while in shoulder stand. “I have scoliosis which makes this pose difficult because there are different strengths on either side of my body. But during the intensive, it just came together. After years of practice, and certainly as a benefit of an intense weeklong workshop, sometimes a pose will simply arrive.”
The breadth of the workshop over the week was challenging. Mary was able to explore where her practice is at the age of 62: “What am I physically capable of doing? Am I maintaining my energy? Am I still progressing?” For Mary this is an exploration that changes every day, “I want to maintain strength and stamina while being respectful that my body is changing.” For inspiration, Mary refers to a video of BKS Iyengar in challenging poses at age 65 for inspiration.
Mary is excited to share what she learned at the intensive with her students at Artemis Yoga in Watertown, MA. “Any time I deepen my practice, my students benefit. During the intensive Lois taught that to teach advanced poses, you have to understand the interconnectedness of all the foundational poses that open the body and the mind to the pose. If I can understand the advanced poses in this way, this learning will benefit our community at Artemis Yoga. I’ve been teaching here for 7 years, and it’s the support and dedication of this community that drives me to keep growing. I want to take Artemis students further along in their own journey.”
Mary Wixted is a Level II Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher (CIYT). As she contemplates taking on the next assessment level, she wants the process to be holistic. “Preparing and going up for an assessment can be stressful; at the higher levels, I believe candidates should be even more skillful in protecting their body and minds as they move through the process. Understanding the foundational poses, finding the stages of advanced poses that make the poses accessible to diverse students, and not rushing the process is an interesting challenge. It is a process that requires greater understanding and dedication as a practitioner and as a teacher.”
She credits much of her motivation to her students and the community at Artemis Yoga that come from Watertown, Belmont, Cambridge, Brighton, Allston and Newton to practice together. Mary loves the never-ending journey of Iyengar Yoga, “Even after 14 years of teaching, I’ve only just scratched the surface. There’s always deeper to go, and that’s one thing I love about it.”
