Proprioception and Asana
Proprioception is the perception of your body’s movements, positions and actions. We might call this body awareness as yogis.
I know of many yoga teachers who desire to honor the roots and traditions of yoga in their āsana classes, but are not always clear on how to do so. We get swept away by the pressures of business and our need to dazzle our students, and aren’t sure how to create āsana classes that are yoga classes. I think there are actually many ways to do this, and one way is to develop your understanding and inclusion of proprioception.
In a class that makes space for the skill of proprioception, you are encouraging your students to develop awareness of their movements (and lack thereof) as you teach āsana. You are putting their understanding at the forefront of the experience, not attainment of fancy shapes. You place learning front and center.
If you are committed to teaching āsana, teach in a way that aligns with the fundamentals of yoga: it’s a discipline of awareness, a practice of svādhyaya. Essential to the philosophical tradition of yoga, svādhyaya is self-study, self-governance, self-discovery. In order to clarify your consciousness, you need to study yourself.
All the techniques of yoga (the 8 limbed path) are meant to support the discipline of consciousness, this includes āsana.
Yoga teacher trainings emphasize the content of a yoga class, and provide yoga teachers with many techniques to teach. I am often amazed by the abundance of creativity and diversity of āsana (and sort-of āsana) that pops up in my social media feeds. There is absolutely no shortage of variations on āsana to spice up your āsana practice. However, there is rarely an emphasis on how to teach these variations (or even why, though that’s another story). Teacher trainers make an error of over providing content, and under-emphasizing how to teach.
And once we are teachers, we tend to continue with this skewed emphasis.
Here’s an example from my own teaching. I use a lot of props in my classes. A few times over the decades, a newer yoga teacher will take my class, and they get a chuckle at the list of items we’ll use: 2 blocks, a strap 3, blankets, a bolster. Afterwards, they become a true believer (props are the best!) and ask me to offer a workshop on including props. It’s a sincere request, but to me, it reveals the newness of the teacher. Rather than tossing a block into every pose, we need to understand the outcomes of using any prop. We have to become aware of how a pose is constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed.
Obviously, I’m all for including props in āsana classes, but it’s simply a dry, dead-end brainstorm if you don’t understand the impact of āsana on your body. Here’s a quick list:
One Block and Triangle Pose
Under the bottom hand
In the top hand
Under the front foot
Under the back foot
On the side of the skull
Behind the sacrum (or thoracic or skull) and press to a wall
Between the top of skull and a wall
Squeezed between top arm and side of ribcage
I’ve taught (and practiced) all of these variations before. Each has a particular outcome when applied to triangle pose. It’s that outcome that we need to understand.
Which means, we need to develop proprioception.
Proprioception brightens an āsana, and yokes the mind to the body (and vice versa). If adding a block to the bottom hand does not provoke an appreciation for what changes in the āsana, then the block did nothing and it is simply a new accessory.
But, if the block provokes an appreciable impact, then it has guided us to brighten up with proprioception.
I’ve been showing my prop bias here, so let’s look at this from another perspective. If your sequence feels stale, you may be tempted to toss in a shiny new variation. If you regularly include ardha chandrāsana, maybe you’ll try teaching it with the hands in prayer, or with a bind to the top leg. These two variations essentially ask your students to do a more advanced variation. Have your students holistically displayed a need to up-level this balance pose? Do they understand how to do a more pared-down version? Do they individually resolve their issues with balance in any variation of half moon?
I propose we:
Teach āsana as a process, not an outcome.
Uplift understanding over achievement.
Leave a wide margin in every class for our students to practice svādhyaya.
Including proprioception cues and proprioceptive actions in our teaching will center learning and create an environment where students connect the dots within their own practice (which will create a path of progression).
These are great shifts for the students, and you can expect great things in your experience as the teacher. You can relieve yourself of the responsibility to ceaselessly rephrase every cue, hoping your poetry will finally get your students to create a lumbar curve in sukhāsana. You can take the poses you already know and teach, and teach so that your students understand the small actions of these bigger poses.
Adding proprioception cues and proprioceptive actions can be a big shift in perspective for a yoga teacher. In my next post, I’ll share why I decided to make this shift.