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Like quite a lot of new yoga lecturers, I graduated trainer coaching understanding an inventory of “appropriate” cues for every pose. The ft ought to go right here, the knees there, the hips simply so, and the identical for the shoulders, arms, and head.
It didn’t take me many lessons to understand that by the point I’d rattled off the listing of cues, there was no time left to say the breath or present an expertise of quiet stillness for college students within the pose. Even worse, regulars appeared to utterly tune out after listening to the identical directions many times.
That listing that had as soon as appeared so useful started to really feel rote, like a mediocre script to recite fairly than one thing that supplied significant perception to college students.
I used to be pressured to confront one thing that I knew to be true however didn’t know find out how to work round: being a yoga trainer is about much more than repeating memorized cues. In some way I needed to discover a new technique to information college students to and thru poses that supplied key data they might take heed to, whereas leaving house for their very own expertise.
How I Discovered to Cue Yoga Poses
It steadily occurred to me that my common college students knew the poses properly sufficient to return into them with out my cueing every facet. Anybody who was new to yoga or to my class may work out find out how to come right into a pose by others. With that in thoughts, I started to check out a special strategy to cueing.
I break up my listing of most dependable cues into small sections. The primary time college students got here right into a pose, I’d fastidiously cue the decrease physique. After they got here right into a pose on the second aspect, I’d cue the higher physique.
Not solely did pupil alignment not endure, the strategy allowed me sufficient time to incorporate particulars that prolonged past the cookie-cutter cues I had memorized from trainer coaching. As an alternative of instructing college students to “floor by way of your ft,” for instance, I had time to encourage them to “unfold your weight evenly between the 4 corners of every foot and unfold your toes.”
I additionally discovered that if I repeated a pose a number of instances, I may break the cues down even additional. The primary time I cued Warrior 2 (Virabhadrasana II) from a lunge, for instance, I may fastidiously place the ft and legs by asking college students to floor their again heel, align their entrance heel with their again heel or arch, and magnetize their ft towards one another to have interaction their legs. Then I may merely add “preserve your entrance knee bent, and rise to face towards the lengthy fringe of your mat for Warrior 2.” The second time I cued it, I may set college students up extra succinctly by saying “plant your ft and are available as much as Warrior 2,” then hone in on the place of their hips and engagement of their core.
As I started to experiment with my cues, I different my phrases to talk much more to the intangibles I hoped to domesticate in every class. For instance, in an energizing apply, I would invite college students to “stoke the hearth in your core,” “shine your chest ahead,” “radiate out by way of your fingers,” or “brighten your gaze.”
I nonetheless depend on a few of these YTT cues, however they’re not my solely choices. Various my language not solely conjures up my creativity, it conjures up my college students. As an alternative of the well-worn prompts that may change into so acquainted as to really feel like background noise, extra particular cues and inventive language can reduce by way of the muddle. This encourages even probably the most skilled pupil to pay attention, and maybe be taught. And isn’t that, in spite of everything, what we lecturers are attempting to domesticate in a yoga apply?
