This entry was posted on Mar 8, 2023 by Charlotte Bell.
Do you ever get bored with listening to your yoga educating “script?” I do. I’ve been educating yoga since 1986, and generally it hits me that I appear to say the identical issues time and again—and time and again.
That is partly okay. I’ve spent appreciable power crafting my educating language. As a author, I prefer to be concise, utilizing as few phrases as potential to get my level throughout. I additionally prefer to be exact, utilizing simply the suitable mixture of phrases to convey what I’m making an attempt to speak. As a instructor, I’m conscious of the facility of language to encourage or to convey judgment or to venture my perspective onto my college students. It’s a fragile steadiness that I proceed to hone.
I additionally generally discover that I are likely 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 approach to sequence standing poses? In fact not. I not too long ago utterly upended my standing sequence in a pair lessons. The outcomes had been energizing and revitalizing.
Stick to What Works, or Change it Up?
I typically surprise if my college students tire of listening to the identical language. (Most of them have been attending my lessons for 10 to twenty years or extra.) I think about they often do. However I additionally know that listening to one thing repeatedly can finally result in listening to it otherwise in the future. College students have instructed me as a lot: “I’ve heard you say such-and-such many instances, however I simply lastly received it right now.”
However as a longtime Deadhead again within the day, I at all times really feel compelled to vary it up generally. (The Grateful Lifeless by no means performed the identical present twice, and didn’t play their songs the identical method every time.) I prefer to problem myself by tuning into my college students’ wants and letting the sequence movement in stunning methods. I generally take pleasure in not understanding what the following pose will likely be till a break up second earlier than we follow it. Alternatively, plenty of folks like a set routine, a follow they’ll rely on. So which method is greatest?
As at all times, there’s not one yoga educating method that can fulfill everybody. A mix of giving college students one thing acquainted to hold onto, whereas additionally introducing new methods of training appears to strike the suitable steadiness for me.
Find out how to Enliven Your Yoga Educating
Listed here are two strategies for altering up your yoga educating:
- Follow: Conserving your house follow important might be crucial factor I can encourage you to do. Your private home follow 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 educating. Bear in mind, in fact, that for those who’re a flexible or athletic practitioner, that your college students might not be capable of do the “fancier” poses. Use your house follow to provide you with methods to switch poses, utilizing Yoga Blocks, Yoga Straps, Yoga Blankets or Yoga Bolsters. That method, you possibly can provide your college students options that give them the identical advantages because the pose you’re training.
- 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 plenty of yoga writing in my occupation, and I persistently learn directions that use all-purpose generic phrases. “Convey” is among the most typical ones. As a quite simple instance, as a substitute of “deliver your ft to hips-width aside” I‘ will say “step your ft to hips-width aside.” I do know this appears very choosy and trivial, and generic phrases should not unsuitable. College students usually get what you’re making an attempt to say. However taking part in with utilizing completely different phrases and altering your phrasing can generally result in new understanding, each for your self and to your college students.
- Continue to learn: Take lessons from different academics. Hearken to how they impart and be taught new methods of approaching follow. When you stay in an space the place you don’t have entry to academics, look on-line. YogaUOnline, specifically, gives high-quality on-line workshops and programs.
Yoga Educating is an Inward Journey
In the end, efficient educating entails a steadiness between going with what and studying new methods of speaking. You don’t have to surrender the methods that profit your college students. However to ensure that your yoga educating follow to proceed to develop, you need to problem your self. This doesn’t imply you must proceed to follow and educate ever extra “superior” poses. It factors, as a substitute, to experimenting with the instruments you’ve already cultivated. It means wanting inward to find the extra refined results of sequencing. It’s a possibility to play with language, and to contemplate the results of the phrases you utilize.
As Suzuki Roshi famously wrote in Zen Thoughts, Newcomers Thoughts, “Within the rookies thoughts there are a lot of potentialities. Within the professional’s thoughts there are few.” Preserve your thoughts open to new methods of training and educating.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow 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 Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards in 2010.
