My unique yoga “parentage” was within the Iyengar system. Identified for its precision, and for inventing the yoga props we use in the present day, the Iyengar system supplies a wonderful basis. In workshops, academics—together with BKS Iyengar and his daughter, Geeta, each of whom I studied with in 1989—provided alignment cues about as quick as you possibly can course of them, and generally quicker. As a hypermobile individual, I usually flopped into flexibility-focused asanas with out a lot thought as to how I used to be working towards them. Iyengar-based yoga cues helped me refine my observe, in order that I wasn’t merely persevering with my unhealthy alignment habits.

However generally, after I’d attend conventional Iyengar workshops, I’d go away with an agitated nervous system. I’m guessing it’s because the velocity with which alignment cues have been being disseminated made it troublesome for me to combine all of them. There merely wasn’t time for me to course of them, really feel them in my physique and make changes based mostly on what my very own physique was telling me. After which there was the truth that many academics “barked” out yoga cues, relatively than sharing them. This technique of educating generally made me really feel pressured to carry out, and generally put me on edge.

I’ve since branched out to check with a number of different grasp academics, most notably Donna Farhi and Judith Hanson Lasater. Each studied within the Iyengar system many years in the past and have since solid their very own paths. Each nonetheless take into account wholesome alignment to be necessary, however their concepts about alignment, and the best way they impart them, are completely completely different from their Iyengar coaching.

Simplifying Yoga Cues

Each Donna and Judith construct their courses round a couple of rules and permit time for particular person exploration. This manner of presenting info is more practical, at the least for me. It’s a strategy I’ve adopted in my very own educating. It is because I consider that our personal expertise in our observe is in the end our greatest instructor. Giving college students time—and silence—to probe for themselves offers college students extra company. It offers them the flexibility to determine what’s finest for their very own our bodies and minds at a given time. In spite of everything, I can’t probably know what’s finest for one more individual.

A Few Concepts for Simplifying Your Cues

This record is certainly not exhaustive. I’m positive that folks studying this may have concepts of their very own that may assist academics cue extra successfully. Listed here are a couple of ways in which have labored for me:

• Determine an anatomical focus to your class. This may be something—no matter is alive for you on the time. For instance, you possibly can arrange a category round alignment for a selected space of the physique, say, the pelvis or the shoulders. Then remind college students to present consideration to what they’re feeling in these areas as you progress by way of your sequence. Spending a whole observe on consciousness of a selected space of the physique offers college students extra time to combine—and bear in mind!—what they’ve realized.
• Cue college students on easy methods to transfer into poses, after which allow them to marinate of their expertise. My Iyengar coaching taught me the significance of cueing college students as they transfer into their asanas. I discover it efficient to cue alignment whereas they’re coming into a pose. After that, I would make a couple of options for the place they may need to direct their consciousness, however I additionally give ample time for silence whereas their our bodies unfold into every asana.

I’d love to listen to from you—academics and college students—what you discover useful in both designing or receiving yoga cues.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Observe and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third guide 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 folks sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards in 2010.