Those Who Can, Teach. Let’s Stop Pretending Otherwise.

There’s an old saying, usually delivered with a smirk: “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” In the world of yoga and movement, this phrase has been embraced with worrying enthusiasm – almost as if a lack of skill or deep understanding were a qualification. Let’s be clear from the outset: this is bollocks.

Before anyone accuses me of ego, let’s begin with some self-enquiry. I’ve been teaching movement for over 30 years—strength and conditioning, health coaching, martial arts, and yoga. I’ve changed my mind more times than I can count. I’ve taught things I wouldn’t teach now, I’ve made mistakes, said things I’d phrase differently, and explored poses and methods I’ve later revised or discarded. That’s not a weakness; it’s an essential part of the work. This process of learning and refinement hasn’t stopped. But after three decades of practice and teaching, I also know when something is being passed off as wisdom that simply isn’t.

Every so often, I overhear a yoga teacher explaining anatomy or movement, and I’m struck not by subtlety, but by sheer imagination. Bones rotate in ways they don’t. Joints develop mystical properties. Muscles are assigned functions they have never had and never will. Social media has accelerated this beautifully. A confident caption paired with a badly aligned posture, and suddenly we’re all meant to accept that gravity, structure, and basic biomechanics are just "old paradigms." They aren’t. They’re reality. You don’t need to be a certified anatomist to teach yoga, but if you’re guiding bodies to move, you absolutely should understand bodies—preferably your own.

This brings us to a simple question we seem to keep avoiding: If you’re not very good at maths, why would you teach maths? This question sounds rude only because we’ve grown strangely tolerant of the opposite in yoga. Years ago, when my stepson was learning golf, I noticed something refreshingly obvious: most golf teachers had handicaps between 0 and 9. They weren’t all professionals, but they could play. They understood the game. They had skill. No one found this elitist; it was common sense. Somehow, yoga has decided common sense is optional.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about being the "best" practitioner. It’s not about extreme flexibility, Instagram-worthy poses, or performing spirituality. But a yoga teacher should possess sound alignment, a working understanding of different body types, an embodied relationship with the practice, and enough experience to recognise when something is unsafe, unhelpful, or complete rubbish. Teaching isn't merely reciting cues. Teaching is responding to real bodies, in real time, with real consequences.

This also raises an uncomfortable question about authorisation and certification culture—particularly in Ashtanga. Authorisation was originally meant to indicate a level of personal practice, study, and responsibility. Somewhere along the way, it began to function more like a badge: proof of legitimacy, regardless of how someone actually moves, teaches, or understands bodies in front of them.

Certification, meanwhile, has become increasingly divorced from skill. Accumulate enough hours, say the right things, align yourself with the right people, and you’re deemed “qualified”—even if your own practice is inconsistent, your alignment is questionable, or your understanding of anatomy hasn’t progressed beyond memorised phrases.

Teaching is translation. You take something you genuinely understand and make it accessible to someone else. If you don’t understand it in your own body, if you haven’t tested it, struggled with it, refined it—then what you’re offering isn’t teaching. It’s commentary. And commentary, without the bedrock of personal experience and understanding, is cheap.

Yes, some excellent practitioners can't teach. And yes, some good teachers aren't the most advanced practitioners in the room. But the idea that you don’t need to be able to do something to teach it well is a comforting myth—and a dangerous one.

So let’s rewrite that old phrase properly. Those who can, practise. Those who practise and reflect, teach. And those who can’t explain what they’re doing in their own body should probably stop explaining it to others. A Zen teacher once asked a student, “When you are hungry, what do you do?” “I eat,” the student replied. “And when you are tired?” “I sleep.” “Good,” said the teacher. “Then you understand.”

If you cannot practise, how will you teach? If you cannot feel it in your own body, how will you recognise it in another? Yoga deserves better than borrowed language, imaginary anatomy, and the celebration of incompetence dressed up as inclusivity. As for me, I’ll keep practising, teaching, questioning, and occasionally calling bullshit what it is. That, too, is part of the practice.