No magical spell, only awareness.
Words and Proprioception.
For years, I believed that my words made me a better yoga teacher. I did, and still do, appreciate the word crafting of yoga instruction; a blend of poetry and commands, of invoking and inspiring.
What we say in a yoga class is vital. It is how you gather a group and guide them. Word choices create the framework of your classes, and improving your word craft goes alongside your increase in confidence and reveals your understanding of the content you teach.
Newer yoga teachers will take my classes and tell me that they love how I said something, or that they’re going to steal my phrase or instruction (which is fine, please do!). When I take classes, my own ears are attuned to the particular turns-of-phrase that show the character of the teacher and their beliefs.
When I lead teacher trainings, we spend time listening to each other’s words, and do activities to expand our teaching vocabulary. One favorite activity is for each of us to teach the action of shoulder flexion while in tadasana. Everyone has to use a different verb to convey the instruction. The person who goes first has it the easiest:
Yogi 1: Reach the arms overhead.
Yogi 2: Hey, I was going to say that. Um, stretch the arms up.
Yogi 3: No fair, I was going to say that! How about, extend the arms overhead.
Yogi 4: Technically, it’s not extending, it’s flexing.
Me: Does that matter? What do you want to say?
Yogi 4: Flex the shoulders 180 degrees. No, that sounds weird.
Then, we’ll focus on an adverb, to see if that changes or improves the instruction.
Yogi 1: Reach the arms slowly overhead.
Yogis 2-8: Hey, I was going to say that!
We also talk about using the present participle (-ing ending of a verb) versus a command form of a verb. We examine filler, like random instructions to breathe. We get nitty-gritty about editing out the fluff and really focus on brevity. We seek a balance between accuracy, anatomy and accessible terminology. We discuss inclusive language and inappropriate assumptions in our words. We go deep, because your words are vital as a yoga teacher.
However.
All the best word craft does not replace your students’ understanding. Yes: clear language is likely to assist in clear understanding. Yes: communication is the job of the teacher. Yes: better to be thoughtful and determined than reckless and random with words. Yes, yes, yes: words are vital.
The pitfall is this.
Your words are not a magical incantation. They cannot replace an embodied understanding. Your words should not loom so large that your students cannot find an internal experience on their mats. Your clearest instruction to push through the roots of your fingers to make the wrists lighter in downward dog simply does not guarantee that your students one, actually do this; or two, understand it in their own bodies.
Because I’m smart and succinct with language, I’ve attracted many students who thrive in following instructions. These people are called perfectionists, rule followers (I am one of you). Since my classes always include a certain amount of technical instruction (put the block here, place your hand there), people who feel secure with technicalities often find a home in my classes. These students are prone to asking questions like:
Am I doing this right?
Where should I feel this?
I feel this here, is that right?
Last week you said to do it this way, why are we doing it differently this week?
Am I doing it enough?
Though I do not hold a belief in a static, unyielding hierarchy of right v wrong and good v bad in asana, some people have clung to that because of my technical instruction.
If I ask them to turn their leg out 90 degrees, they believe that 85 degrees or 97 degrees is incorrect. Now, I don’t believe that, but I did manage to convey that despite myself (let’s dive deep into the fallacy of alignment in another post). Honestly, it’s an easy assumption to make and I completely understand the need to be right, safe, proper.
But it puts the yoga into an adherence to words, when yoga is an internalized practice of understanding the self and becoming aware.
As I grew frustrated with the above questions these students had, I realized I had to change a portion of what I said. I had gotten so skilled at giving instruction, that my students heard asana as a checklist. As a list of rules or best practices. I could so glibly describe the “how to” of triangle pose that my students couldn’t find triangle pose from an internal awareness.
I challenged myself to get better at centering and uplifting an internalized awareness, not just the ability to follow the letter of the asana law. When I honestly reflected on my teaching, I had to acknowledge that I sidelined proprioception as a skill, because I was more comfortable rattling off the nuts and bolts.
Here are the initial steps I took to make this shift.
I OBSERVED the outcome of my current mode of highly verbal, highly technical teaching. The outcome was that some of my students were heavily reliant on my instruction, almost to a point of disembodiment. They were excellent rule followers, but lacked self-reliance to problem solve or adapt without my validation.
I QUESTIONED this observation. Was this necessarily a poor outcome, did it cause harm? I didn’t think it was harmful, but I felt it led people away from the deeper projects of yoga, those of self-knowledge, self-study, self-determination. I inadvertently conveyed that asana were done by external ideas and not internal knowledge.
I CONSIDERED a new approach. I was not willing to totally abandon a practical and technical approach to teaching, so I challenged myself with a Both/And mindset (also, it’s impossible to radically change some of the fundamental elements of who I am...I’m a nerdy, science-y, technical person). How could I offer BOTH the details of asana AND invoke the deep and quiet inquiry that makes yoga, yoga?
I SET REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS, including that fact that you can’t make people learn, you can only change how you teach. I knew that subtle language shifts wouldn’t be noticed by most students, and that some folks would resist adopting more responsibility for their practice.
I PLAY THE LONG GAME. Not much happens overnight in my teaching, so I gave myself permission to enjoy the long meandering road that is my evolution as a teacher.
I decided to include two elements to create this shift. One would be a change with some of the words I used, to balance the instruction for the pose with a provocation for understanding the impact of the pose on the person. I wanted to be able to include the “how to” and the space for my students to feel the pose in their own practice. I view this from a prescriptive v descriptive position, and also value the role of questions while teaching.
The second would be to include more exercises that actually develop proprioception. Asana are pretty complex, and I wanted to simplify some of the things I regularly teach to create access to a proprioceptive understanding. This isn’t word craft, it’s actually including new and different techniques to amplify asana.
I recently taught a short series of immersions for yoga teachers. In our final session, I really had to put the screws to my students. Our activity was to select a pose we struggle in teaching, then to dial in on what precisely made the pose a struggle. A common choice was high-to-low plank, frequently sighted in vinyasa classes. And, in particular, all the nutty things students will do with their shoulders.
Once we honed in on the pose’s focus, we then needed to come up with an alternate version, an adjacent exercise or some regression of the pose, so that we could teach the shoulder details effectively. Add a prop, do it at the wall, do it from reclining...anything goes, as long as it makes for a more effective strategy. But you know what happened? Everyone kept riffing on how to say it differently. Different verbs, different verbal focus on a body part, different adverbs and adjectives. As a group, we were stuck in the word crafting, the magical spell of scapular stability to cast on our students.
I insisted over and over that it was a wording issue, it was a learning issue. That there wasn’t a “best” way to say it, but a better way to give our students access to an embodied understanding of it. Every time someone spoke up with a brainstorm for how to say it, I had to interrupt and ask them to develop a movement or exercise instead.
In this same group, a student offered a perfect example and had her own “a-ha” moment. She shared how she taught a weekly class in a workplace to a traditionally non-yoga crowd. She wanted to teach them about forward head posture, but had no success with getting her group to shift their heads back in mountain pose. She felt stuck on what to say...I suggested that she try to teach the concept in a different way. Was there wall space to use for tactile feedback? How about pressing the head into a block or hands while standing? Suddenly, it made more sense: she could re-word it a hundred times over, but they just didn’t feel what she was saying. The solution wasn’t a new turn of phrase, but an exercise or movement that required this action.
Next time I post, I’ll share how I approach this issue. I want more yoga teachers to excel at the reverse engineering of complex poses. I want more teachers to see what their students struggle with, and to creatively design classes that elevate proprioception as a practical way of teaching.