Yoga Cues: Easy and Efficient

My unique yoga “parentage” was within the Iyengar system. Identified for its precision, and for inventing the yoga props we use at this time, the Iyengar system offers a positive basis. In workshops, lecturers—together with BKS Iyengar and his daughter, Geeta, each of whom I studied with in 1989—provided alignment cues about as quick as you may course of them, and generally quicker. As a hypermobile particular person, I typically flopped into flexibility-focused asanas with out a lot thought as to how I used to be practising them. Iyengar-based yoga cues helped me refine my apply, in order that I wasn’t merely persevering with my unhealthy alignment habits.

However generally, after I’d attend conventional Iyengar workshops, I’d depart with an agitated nervous system. I’m guessing it’s because the pace with which alignment cues had 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 lecturers “barked” out yoga cues, quite than sharing them. This methodology of instructing generally made me really feel pressured to carry out, and generally put me on edge.

I’ve since branched out to review with numerous different grasp lecturers, most notably Donna Farhi and Judith Hanson Lasater. Each studied within the Iyengar system a long time in the past and have since cast their very own paths. Each nonetheless think about wholesome alignment to be essential, however their concepts about alignment, and the way in which they convey them, are solely completely different from their Iyengar coaching.

Simplifying Yoga Cues

Each Donna and Judith construct their lessons round a number of ideas and permit time for particular person exploration. This fashion of presenting data is more practical, a minimum of for me. It’s a technique I’ve adopted in my very own instructing. It’s because I imagine that our personal expertise in our apply is in the end our greatest trainer. Giving college students time—and silence—to probe for themselves provides college students extra company. It provides them the flexibility to determine what’s finest for their very own our bodies and minds at a given time. In any case, I can’t presumably know what’s finest for an additional particular person.

A Few Concepts for Simplifying Your Cues

This record is not at all exhaustive. I’m positive that folks studying this may have concepts of their very own that may assist lecturers cue extra successfully. Listed below are a number 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 may manage a category round alignment for a specific space of the physique, say, the pelvis or the shoulders. Then remind college students to offer consideration to what they’re feeling in these areas as you progress by your sequence. Spending a whole apply on consciousness of a specific space of the physique provides college students extra time to combine—and bear in mind!—what they’ve discovered.
• Cue college students on tips on how 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 getting into a pose. After that, I’d make a number of solutions for the place they could wish 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—lecturers 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 instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply 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 people sextet Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards in 2010.