Ego, me, mine

In Greek, the word “egó” means “I.” (It’s pronounced eh-GO and written εγώ.)

I just completed a week-long yoga retreat on a Greek island. (Yes, it has been as wonderful as you might imagine.) Learning to let go of the ego is an important concept in yoga, so it seems like the perfect time to think and write about it — and apply it to tango.

The basic definition of “ego” doesn’t refer to it in the “big ego” sense, implying conceit or an inflated sense of self. It really just means the self, one’s conscious identity, or sense of self-worth.

Everyone has an ego. It’s an essential and healthy part of our psyche, but it can also get in our way. Specifically, it frequently interferes with our learning process.

On this retreat, more than half the group of students, including myself, were teachers. Some are at the beginning stages of teaching and some have been doing it for years, even decades. And all of us followed our Montreal teacher to Greece for a week of intense practice and learning (and to soak up some Mediterranean sea and sky, of course).

I wish I saw more of this kind of openness in tango. Advanced students continuing to take regular classes. Teachers taking classes, even with fellow local teachers. Particularly in Montreal, the number and caliber of teachers is impressive. Yet we rarely take classes from our colleagues. (We do, however, have the advantage of working together with other teachers and thus exchanging feedback, hopefully with humility.) I would like to see students appreciate that their local teachers have a breadth of knowledge to share, years of study and experience under their belts and the ability to follow up throughout their students’ development.

So many dancers abandon local teachers early on, thinking that once they’ve learned the basics they are above studying with someone who doesn’t have an international reputation. But I’m not convinced that students get that much out of a couple of classes with a guest maestro who drops in for a short stay, teaches something fancy and then moves on to a new community. I am not saying the world-renowned teachers aren’t good; some of them are great. But they don’t know the students’ history and can’t offer much by way of follow-up.

There’s also the weirdly common attitude that Argentinian teachers are somehow automatically superior to all others. Again, there are many great Argentinian teachers out there; I, too, have studied with many and I’ve been to Argentina several times. But not every teacher from the homeland of tango is excellent and plenty of teachers from other parts of the globe are.

Once a visiting dancer called my studio to inquire about what classes we were offering that weekend. I told him what we had on offer, which included some particularly interesting advanced classes. He seemed interested, until I told him the classes were taught by our local instructors. “Oh, I only take classes from Argentinians,” he replied, as if he were somehow above learning from lowly locals, no matter their skills or credentials. To me, this story is an example of someone missing out on a learning opportunity because his inflated ego got in the way.

Our ego can also get us stuck in a rut. When our learning process stagnates, there are a lot of things we can do to kickstart it, but most of them involve checking our ego at the door. Paying more attention to details like posture and movement technique, or even going back to square one to review our basic walk, can improve our dancing enormously and actually be quite satisfying if we decide to enjoy the (admittedly difficult) process. But it’s an idea to which many people have an aversion, either because they fear it will be boring or because their egos get in the way (“I already know how to do ochos.”)

Our self-image can so easily block the learning process by creating a fear of inadequacy, leading us to resist change by putting self-importance above receptivity and growth. Especially as adults, it’s hard to admit we don’t know things about our own bodies, so it’s easy to get defensive when an instructor points things out that we didn’t know we were doing wrong, or that we thought we had resolved long ago. If we can notice that tendency and let go of it, bringing some humility to the forefront, we just might learn more as students and listen more as dance partners.

Which brings me to the oft-addressed topic of “teachy” or “blamey” partners. These dancers’ egos are too big for them to see that they might be the problem. Dancers who truly understand the importance of good technique do not blame others for their mistakes or weaknesses. They understand that it is everyone’s responsibility to improve their own dancing. So when something goes wrong — in class or in the milonga — we should pause for a second and let our ego take a step back. Then we might understand that, regardless of where the “fault” for the mistake lies, we potentially possess a big part of the solution. We can go slower, be clearer, calmer, listen more, and dance to our partner’s level. If we do that and it works, then it might even give us an ego boost!

There’s a couple who sometimes frequents classes and events where I teach. The guy has a bit of a knack for dance and learns faster than his partner. The problem is, he doesn’t respect her learning pace. He constantly corrects her, often impatiently, when they dance. I remember once sitting next to her at a práctica and she turned to me with tears in her eyes and asked, “Why can’t it ever just be fun?” After a months-long absence, he recently attended a práctica on his own, but even without his regular partner to criticize, he couldn’t hold back. I overheard him more than once instructing the women he was dancing with on what they were supposed to be doing. Meanwhile, his sense of rhythm needs work and his embrace is so tense that he often restricts his partners’ movements at the same time as he’s using too much force to try to lead them. At least one person who danced with him that night said to me, “Never again.” If a guy like that could only keep his ego in check he would become a more enjoyable partner as well as a better dancer.

Dialling back the ego can make space for more self-awareness. Students occasionally come to me with a complaint that goes something like: “I think I need to be put in a higher level because I can’t dance well with any of the students in the class, but when I dance with the teacher I have no problem.” I always laugh a little inside as I explain that, in fact, if they can only follow the teacher, it means not that they are too advanced, but that they are not advanced enough. They feel they dance well with the teacher because the teacher can lead or follow anyone. As teachers, we are used to dancing with people of all skill levels and we know how to adjust and compensate for our partners’ weak points. If you only dance well with teachers, it is because you are not doing your part, and if you don’t get that, your ego is getting in the way. 

In yoga philosophy, ego isn’t something bad, but a natural function of the mind that can become a distortion when it over-identifies. While it is useful for functioning in the world, it works against us when it convinces us it’s the whole of who we are.

In yoga or tango learning, ego creates obstacles by telling us things like, “I already know this,” or, “If I ask, I will look incompetent and that will threaten something real about me.” A student who is gripped by ego isn’t really in the room with the material; they’re defending a self-image. Letting go of the ego means being willing to be unsure about or even visibly bad at something in front of others; taking correction without making excuses or explaining why we actually already knew that; and staying curious instead of comparing ourselves to the person next to us. We don’t have to erase our sense of self, but if we loosen the grip a little, we’ll create space for new information to make its way in.

Teachers have egos, too, and sometimes they also get in the way. Those with problematic egos need to impress their students and be the smartest person in the room. They feel threatened when a student improves fast or asks a question they can’t answer. Instructors whose egos aren’t running the show understand that their job should be about transmission rather than display.

Teacher, student, or dancer, it’s OK to have a sense of self, even a strong one, but if we forget to keep it in check and let it take over, it will get in the way of our ability to learn, grow and dance to the best of our potential.

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Did you know: “Ego” is also the word for “I” in Latin, and the origin of the English word. It was apparently one of Sigmund Freud’s translators who put it into the popular vocabulary.

If you want to know more about my teacher, Josephine Vittoria, or her Montreal yoga school (where I also teach) or retreats around the world, visit yogaessentiel.com.

If you’re a yoga practitioner and thinking about visiting the island of Paros, Greece, the hotel where we stayed in the relatively quiet town of Alikí is the Aliki Panorama Hotel. Josephine from Montreal takes groups there every year and the hotel also runs retreats of its own. Visit aliki-panorama-hotel.com

Buy my book, 25 Tango Lessons