Acharya means the one who practices and lives what he or she teaches.
Yoga is not simply information that the teacher carries and disseminates, information that is left in the classroom or studio at the end of the workday. What is being taught in Nithya Yoga is a state of being, a way of living. A teacher can lead the student only as far as he himself has gone. He can point a light only into places that he himself has been willing to go. He can empathize with the student’s personal quest, and the issues that may arise during that quest, only because he himself has embarked on such a journey. For this reason, it is difficult to separate the professional life from the personal life of the yoga teacher. So, first and foremost, a great yoga acharya should be an example of how life should be lived, regardless of the style, school, or tradition from which the yoga practice originated.
In the field of yoga and inner sciences, your integrity and authenticity to be an empty channel for cosmic energy makes you an acharya. It is not how many books you have read, or how many hours of training you have taken.
A Nithya Yoga acharya is one who practices the science of completion and Saptanga Yoga. Only then will he radiate the space of high consciousness and awareness, be able to enrich people around him and be the cause for people to cause their reality.
A small story:
Once, a lady went to the doctor’s office with her son who ate too many sweets. She asked the doctor, “Please tell my son to stop eating all these candies!” The doctor replied: “Come back in a week.”
One week later, the mother came back, and this time, the doctor sat with the son and told him: “Stop eating candies, it will ruin your health.”
The mom was surprised. She asked the doctor: “Why didn’t you tell him that a week ago?”
The doctor said: “A week ago, I was also struggling with my habit. Now that I quit, I’m able to tell him to stop!”
An acharya shares his experience. That is why, when an acharya leads a class, his words come spontaneously from his inner experience. When an acharya tells you to inhale bliss and exhale bliss, he is also experiencing that space, and takes you to the same experience. At the beginning of a class, when the acharya tells you to drop any incompletion and be complete, he is also doing the same. When the acharya takes you into the deeper space of meditation, and tells you “be-unclutched”, he is also experiencing and radiating it.