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Like a whole lot of new yoga lecturers, I graduated instructor coaching figuring out a listing of “right” 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 checklist 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 fully tune out after listening to the identical directions time and again.
That checklist that had as soon as appeared so useful started to really feel rote, like a mediocre script to recite fairly than one thing that offered significant perception to college students.
I used to be pressured to confront one thing that I knew to be true however didn’t know how one can work round: being a yoga instructor is about much more than repeating memorized cues. By some means I needed to discover a new approach to information college students to and thru poses that offered key info they’d take heed to, whereas leaving house for their very own expertise.
How I Discovered to Cue Yoga Poses
It step by step occurred to me that my common college students knew the poses effectively sufficient to come back into them with out my cueing every side. Anybody who was new to yoga or to my class might work out how one can come right into a pose by others. With that in thoughts, I started to check out a special method to cueing.
I break up my checklist of most dependable cues into small sections. The primary time college students got here right into a pose, I might rigorously cue the decrease physique. Once they got here right into a pose on the second aspect, I might cue the higher physique.
Not solely did scholar alignment not endure, the method allowed me sufficient time to incorporate particulars that prolonged past the cookie-cutter cues I had memorized from instructor coaching. As an alternative of instructing college students to “floor by means 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 realized that if I repeated a pose a number of occasions, I might break the cues down even additional. The primary time I cued Warrior 2 (Virabhadrasana II) from a lunge, for instance, I might rigorously 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 might merely add “maintain 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 might 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 diverse my phrases to talk much more to the intangibles I hoped to domesticate in every class. For instance, in an energizing follow, I would invite college students to “stoke the hearth in your core,” “shine your chest ahead,” “radiate out by means of your fingers,” or “brighten your gaze.”
I nonetheless depend on a few of these YTT cues, however they’re now 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 turn into so acquainted as to really feel like background noise, extra particular cues and artistic language can minimize by means of the litter. This encourages even essentially the most skilled scholar to pay attention, and maybe study. And isn’t that, in any case, what we lecturers are attempting to domesticate in a yoga follow?
