This entry was posted on Mar 8, 2023 by Charlotte Bell.
Do you ever get bored with listening to your yoga instructing “script?” I do. I’ve been instructing yoga since 1986, and generally it hits me that I appear to say the identical issues again and again—and again and again.
That is partly okay. I’ve spent appreciable power crafting my instructing language. As a author, I wish to be concise, utilizing as few phrases as doable to get my level throughout. I additionally wish to be exact, utilizing simply the fitting mixture of phrases to convey what I’m attempting to speak. As a instructor, I’m conscious of the ability of language to encourage or to convey judgment or to challenge my perspective onto my college students. It’s a fragile steadiness that I proceed to hone.
I additionally generally discover that I are inclined to get caught in a rut in the best way I sequence asanas. For instance, I’ve discovered that sequencing standing poses in a sure order makes structural sense. Every pose prepares the physique for the following one. However is that the one solution to sequence standing poses? After all not. I just lately fully upended my standing sequence in a pair courses. The outcomes have been energizing and revitalizing.
Stick to What Works, or Change it Up?
I usually surprise if my college students tire of listening to the identical language. (Most of them have been attending my courses for 10 to twenty years or extra.) I think about they generally do. However I additionally know that listening to one thing repeatedly can ultimately result in listening to it in a different way sooner or later. College students have informed me as a lot: “I’ve heard you say such-and-such many occasions, however I simply lastly obtained it in the present day.”
However as a longtime Deadhead again within the day, I all the time really feel compelled to vary it up generally. (The Grateful Useless by no means performed the identical present twice, and didn’t play their songs the identical means every time.) I wish to problem myself by tuning into my college students’ wants and letting the sequence movement in shocking methods. I generally take pleasure in not understanding what the following pose might be till a break up second earlier than we apply it. However, numerous folks like a set routine, a apply they will rely on. So which means is finest?
As all the time, there’s not one yoga instructing approach that may fulfill everybody. A mix of giving college students one thing acquainted to hold onto, whereas additionally introducing new methods of working towards appears to strike the fitting steadiness for me.
Find out how to Enliven Your Yoga Educating
Listed here are two solutions for altering up your yoga instructing:
- Apply: Retaining your own home apply important might be an important factor I can encourage you to do. Your property apply is the place you possibly can experiment with altering your sequencing. That is how you will discover out what works and what doesn’t, to your personal physique. Then you possibly can take what you’ve discovered into your yoga instructing. Bear in mind, in fact, that when you’re a flexible or athletic practitioner, that your college students could not have the ability to do the “fancier” poses. Use your own home apply to provide you with methods to switch poses, utilizing Yoga Blocks, Yoga Straps, Yoga Blankets or Yoga Bolsters. That means, you possibly can provide your college students options that give them the identical advantages because the pose you’re working towards.
- Play with language: As a author, I’ve skilled myself to search for alternative ways to say issues. I like to make use of phrases which might be exact and descriptive. I edit numerous yoga writing in my occupation, and I persistently learn directions that use all-purpose generic phrases. “Carry” is among the commonest ones. As a quite simple instance, as an alternative of “convey your toes to hips-width aside” I‘ will say’d counsel saying “step your toes to hips-width aside.” I do know this appears very choosy and trivial, and generic phrases aren’t fallacious. College students usually get what you’re attempting to say. However enjoying with utilizing totally different phrases and altering your phrasing can generally result in new understanding, each for your self and to your college students.
- Continue learning: Take courses from different academics. Take heed to how they convey and be taught new methods of approaching apply. In case you reside in an space the place you don’t have entry to academics, look on-line. YogaUOnline, particularly, presents high-quality on-line workshops and programs.
Yoga Educating is an Inward Journey
Finally, efficient instructing entails a steadiness between going with what you understand and studying new methods of speaking. You don’t have to surrender the strategies that you understand profit your college students. However to ensure that your yoga instructing apply to proceed to develop, you should problem your self. This doesn’t imply it’s important to proceed to apply and train ever extra “superior” poses. It factors, as an alternative, to experimenting with the instruments you’ve already cultivated. It means trying inward to find the extra refined results of sequencing. It’s a chance to play with language, and to think about the consequences of the phrases you employ.
As Suzuki Roshi famously wrote in Zen Thoughts, Novices Thoughts, “Within the learners thoughts there are lots of potentialities. Within the skilled’s thoughts there are few.” Preserve your thoughts open to new methods of working towards and instructing.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third e-book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards in 2010.
