Leadership does not only amplify our worst tendencies. It can also call forth our highest qualities.
I often think of a moment I witnessed in Sharath’s shala in Mysore.
A student arrived carrying something heavy and unresolved, the kind of inner turbulence that often manifests as distance, defensiveness, or behavior that frustrates those around them. The student kept others at arm’s length, declined assists from everyone except Sharath, and created a tension that rippled through the room.
Students who had traveled great distances and devoted years to practice felt confused, disappointed, and at times hurt by the dynamic.
Sharath responded in a way I have never forgotten.
He neither dismissed the student nor allowed the behavior to become a template for how others treated them. He continued teaching. He continued working directly with the student. He never shunned them. He never made them an example.
It would have been easy to do otherwise.
One word from him and the community would have followed. One withdrawal of attention and the student could have been effectively exiled.
That is how normalization often works. Not through dramatic declarations, but through subtle permissions. A gesture of exclusion. A withdrawal of care. A collective decision about who belongs and who does not.
Sharath refused that path entirely.
He did not pretend the difficulty was not there. He did not excuse the behavior. But neither did he allow the community to organize itself around rejection.
He simply kept showing up.
He kept teaching.
He kept making space for whatever the student was moving through.
What he modeled in that room was something rarely discussed but deeply essential to yoga: compassion does not require perfect behavior from its recipients.
A teacher’s steadiness is not tested by those who are easy to love. It is tested by those who are contracted, defended, and difficult.
He did not teach that lesson through philosophy. He taught it through action, quietly and consistently, in front of all of us.
## The Practice of Discernment
A wise leader expands the field of possibility for kindness, courage, restraint, integrity, and truth. Through action far more than words, they remind us that strength and compassion are not opposites. Dignity does not require domination. Real power is measured not by how many people submit to it, but by how many people are protected, uplifted, and allowed to flourish within its presence.
Such leaders exist. They always have.
They are often quieter than those who demand our attention. Their influence moves differently. It does not leave people smaller, more fearful, or more dependent. It leaves people more fully themselves.
This is why the question of who we admire is never trivial.
The qualities we celebrate in others are often the very qualities we begin cultivating within ourselves. The voices we follow eventually become the voices we hear inside our own minds. Every teacher, parent, politician, artist, spiritual guide, and public figure participates, whether intentionally or not, in shaping the collective nervous system.
Yoga asks us to bring the same attention we devote to breath, bandha, and alignment to a more subtle inquiry: what is shaping us?
Where is your attention dwelling?
What are you repeatedly placing before your eyes, your mind, and your heart?
In an era of accelerating narratives, where speed is often mistaken for clarity and reaction is mistaken for wisdom, I have had to learn, slowly and imperfectly, to let discernment take its time.
This has not been easy.
We live surrounded by curated images, carefully crafted stories, and streams of information designed to move faster than reflection. The pressure to form immediate conclusions can feel relentless. We are encouraged to choose sides before understanding complexity, to react before observing, to judge before listening.
My own practice has become resisting that pull.
I try not to rush toward condemnation, nor toward uncritical defense. Instead, I try to make space for the full complexity of being human. I remind myself that none of us will move through life without stumbling. Character is rarely revealed in a single moment. It emerges through the accumulation of choices made over time.
Truth does not ultimately require our protection. Given enough time, honesty, and attention, it tends to reveal itself.
This does not mean abandoning discernment. Nor does it mean postponing judgment indefinitely.
It means grounding discernment in observation rather than projection, in patience rather than reactivity, and in a willingness to keep looking long after first impressions have formed.
The practice of discernment is not confined to the meditation cushion.
It lives in the ordinary choices of daily life.
Who do you follow?
Who do you trust?
Who do you defend?
What do you celebrate?
And what do those choices teach you about the person you are becoming?
The people we admire shape us more than we realize. The communities we participate in influence us more than we know. The qualities we repeatedly place before ourselves gradually become part of our own character.
Choose wisely.
You are always under construction.
And whether you know it or not, you are always handing the tools to someone.
