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 present, the Iyengar system supplies a fantastic 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 may course of them, and typically sooner. As a hypermobile individual, I usually flopped into flexibility-focused asanas with out a lot thought as to how I used to be training them. Iyengar-based yoga cues helped me refine my follow, in order that I wasn’t merely persevering with my unhealthy alignment habits.

However typically, after I’d attend conventional Iyengar workshops, I’d go away with an agitated nervous system. I’m guessing it is because the pace 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 primarily based on what my very own physique was telling me. After which there was the truth that many academics “barked” out yoga cues, quite than sharing them. This technique of educating typically made me really feel pressured to carry out, and typically put me on edge.

I’ve since branched out to review with plenty 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 think about wholesome alignment to be necessary, however their concepts about alignment, and the way in which they convey them, are completely totally different from their Iyengar coaching.

Simplifying Yoga Cues

Each Donna and Judith construct their courses round just a few ideas and permit time for particular person exploration. This manner of presenting info is more practical, not less than for me. It’s a strategy I’ve adopted in my very own educating. It is because I imagine that our personal expertise in our follow is finally our greatest trainer. Giving college students time—and silence—to probe for themselves offers college students extra company. It offers them the power to determine what’s greatest for their very own our bodies and minds at a given time. In spite of everything, I can’t presumably know what’s greatest for one more individual.

A Few Concepts for Simplifying Your Cues

This listing is on no account exhaustive. I’m certain that individuals studying this can have concepts of their very own that may assist academics cue extra successfully. Listed below are just a few 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 present consideration to what they’re feeling in these areas as you progress via your sequence. Spending a complete follow on consciousness of a specific space of the physique offers college students extra time to combine—and keep in mind!—what they’ve realized.
• Cue college students on 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 getting into a pose. After that, I would make just a few options 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—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 started 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 ebook 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 received two Emmy awards in 2010.