Episode 7: The Power of Mythology: How to Use Stories to Amp Up Your Classes

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In this episode, I talk about the power of yoga mythology and why mythology is one of the most important tools you can bring into your practice to help you and your students transform psyche and soul. We’ll cover what mythology is, and why yogic mythology is so important to our practice. I’ll tell you some of my most favorite stories from the mythology of yoga and how to weave them into your classes.

We dive into and unpack a lot in this episode. Mythology is an enormous topic and I share more of it with you on this podcast.

Mythology is powerful because it gives us context. It allows us to see how we might heal, transform, change, or move through a sticky situation.

So, let me give you a quick definition of myth. And I’ll preface it by saying that this is pretty much almost impossible to do. Many people think of Greek mythology when they hear the term mythology, but really the term mythology expands to cover any and all spiritual religion or belief systems that human beings have held for all time. So every culture throughout history has had its own mythology. Every group or tribe has had its own mythology. It elevates to the level of religion when it becomes organized, has a body of clergy that helped to run it, and places of worship.

As you study mythology more, you see that a lot of the stories point to the same human truths that we all have. You understand that all mythology is asking us to do is be a better person and find a sense of connection to ourselves, to our source, and to each other. While mythology is very largely based on location or the time in which they were practiced or different cultural beliefs, at their heart most mythologies have the same fundamental principles: Be kind and do no harm.

For all of your students who come to class, perhaps they’ve abandoned their native mythology, perhaps they’re just looking for something different. Telling them stories like this helps to inspire them in their everyday life to see what they are capable of, to forgive themselves for bad behavior and to know that they are empowered from within with all of the qualities of the deities they’re hearing about. For us as yogis, there is no out there, out there. All of the stories we tell in our yogic mythology describe things inside of us, describe things that happen to us and show us ways through otherwise difficult and challenging circumstances. This is one of the greatest powers of mythology and why it’s so necessary for us to be fluent in the language of mythology to inspire our modern day students, particularly those of whom that come to us without a mythology.