Elements of an Approach: Prescriptive vs Descriptive
Through the two decades I’ve taught yoga (primarily asana), I’ve evolved from a highly prescriptive approach, to include descriptive elements. All thanks go to Kofi Busia for using the prescriptive vs descriptive dictionary analogy in a class I took in January 2022 to inspire these thoughts.
As I started out as a yoga teacher, I was most comfortable offering instruction that was pretty standardized. This was how I was taught to teach, and it was how my own teachers taught. If I was teaching utthita parsvakonasana, there was a prescribed way to do it: your feet should be 3’ to 4’ apart, heel-to-arch to line up the feet, etc.
This is a prescriptive approach. It conveys the idea that an asana is a stable, unyielding set of instructions. The new teacher is charged with learning these instructions, and being able to spot the yoga student who isn’t following them. If you’re getting better as a teacher, you can then offer a variation, like a block for the bottom hand, some stability at the wall.
While I no longer teach (or practice!) in this way, and I no longer spend much time with teachers who do, I think this is a really brilliant way to train someone in 200 hours, the duration of most yoga teacher training programs. In 200 hours, there is not enough time to dive deeply into the vast ocean of yoga history and philosophy, it’s modern application to social issues, an undergraduate program in anatomy, physiology, biomechanics and kinesiology, the pedagogy of yoga classes, scope of practice...
Especially as someone who started teaching quite young (23 years old), my first steps on the path were really about building confidence to stand in front of a group of people, staring at me, waiting for me to tell them about the poses. The tapas of the process was full of misgivings, but obviously worthwhile. It was useful to have the content prescribed, so that I could burn my way through the jitters and self-doubt.
If you’re a newer yoga teacher (23, or 73 years old), the most self-sabotaging thing you can do at first is try to be remarkable and innovative. Just get through the first part of being on-stage, being a group leader and learning all the nuances of that process. Creativity is following you in hot pursuit, but you must learn how to teach first.
These days, with 20 years of teaching experience, I lean towards more of a descriptive approach. Let’s be clear: I do not teach from the assumed sensory experience of the pose, I do not describe what you ought to feel in a pose, as this is not inclusive and is too subjective to your experience. While I want my students to tune into the feel of a pose, I won’t dictate this for them.
What I mean by a descriptive approach is that I guide my students to appreciate the how of the pose: how does your body move, and not move? How do other body parts respond to moving other ones? How does it feel to add or subtract this action? How does this relate to something else you know about your body, your injury, your mental state?
These how questions are indeed preceded by detailed and specific instruction. If you’ve taken my classes you know that I don’t teach a random, free-for-all asana party: In any class, I’m teaching a specific skill. My job is to convey an idea about movement and asana. What my students can take on, if they choose to, is a process of self-inquiry that begins with the things we do on a yoga mat.
I often say in my classes that the hamstring stretch or the rhomboid strength exercise is not the yoga: the yoga is your relationship to it.
In the prescriptive approach, you risk leaving your students with the impression that an asana is a checklist, that you can do it correctly or incorrectly. You might infer that by placing your feet in heel-to-arch alignment, that achieving that position means you did yoga. It might only mean that their learning style syncs up with your instructions, and that their body happens to accommodate that particular shape or move.
As for me, I threw heel-to-arch alignment in the garbage years ago, as it caused me knee pain. I only got there when I asked myself about the impact of that particular instruction. I’m fully capable of performing that prescription, but from a descriptive approach, it’s of no use.
I’m clearly advocating for the descriptive approach, but I do so with a few conditions. The first I’ve already mentioned: if you are a new teacher, it’s really fine to spend time saying words that generally guide a group of humans into asana. Learning how to say instructions is step one.
If you are a newer yoga student, it may also be useful to stick with prescriptive teachers. Your learning style and comfort in a new endeavor could be well-served by doing yoga in a step-wise approach. That’s how I encountered asana: in a system that said: first this, then that. I’m pretty linear, and came to yoga without other body experience. If someone had asked me to sense the impact of hip extension on my ribcage, I would have wondered WTF a hip was.
For people who have clocked in miles and miles in classes with teachers who prescribe asana, and you feel uninspired, ask yourself if learning and performing prescriptive yoga is relevant to you. If not, don’t turn your back on asana, but look for spaces where the how questions are being asked.