Change Up Your Yoga Cues

As yoga academics, we face totally different learner varieties in each class we train. Some individuals are visible learners. Demonstrating poses clicks in for this group. Others reply to handbook changes. (There’s additionally a considerable quantity of people that choose to not be manually adjusted, particularly with out permission. However that’s one other publish.) Nonetheless others are verbal learners. For that group, we use yoga cues.

Final yr, I posted a weblog on easy methods to simplify your cues to provide college students some quiet time as properly to permit them to tune into the current expertise of every asana. In the present day I’d prefer to tune in a bit extra to language.

Why Change Up Your Yoga Cues?

I’ve been blessed with many long-term yoga college students. Not too long ago, a pupil who’s been attending my lessons for 30 years informed me that I mentioned one thing within the class that utterly reworked her observe. I used to be shocked—and happy. The cue was one thing I’ve mentioned numerous instances earlier than. (Do you ever get bored with listening to your self give the identical yoga cues? I do!) Anyway, on this latest case, I modified the wording a bit, and in that second, my pupil understood one thing she hadn’t gotten earlier than.

Our college students differ not solely of their responses to visible and verbal studying. Additionally they differ of their response to totally different phrases. Altering your language simply may give even your most stalwart college students a brand new manner of experiencing their observe.

As a author, I’m consistently striving to make use of phrases which can be extra descriptive and fewer generic—with out changing into overly flowery. That is more durable to do on the fly, once I’m educating a category. Nevertheless it’s doable. Listed below are a number of methods to discover increasing your yoga vocabulary.

A Few Ideas

• The easiest way to reword your yoga cues is to mirror on what you’re about to say forward of time. You may be capable of do that on the fly, particularly when you train a slower-paced, non-vinyasa-type class. Earlier than you end up about to talk your tried-and-true yoga cue, cease your self for a second. Is there one other solution to convey what you’re about to say? Possibly the cue you’ve at all times used actually is one of the best ways to get your level throughout. However it might probably’t harm to strive one other wording.
• If it’s simpler, you’ll be able to discover altering up your cues if you’re not educating. Make an inventory of your commonest yoga cues. More than likely, your most popular wording will come to thoughts first. Write it down. Then take into consideration the way you may phrase it otherwise.
• It may be actually instructive to document a number of lessons. Then take heed to the way you talk your yoga cues. Are you able to give you inventive methods to convey the ideas you need to share, with out shedding readability?

I discover arising with inventive wording to be an effective way to juice up my educating. It not solely helps me attain extra college students, but it surely additionally retains my very own educating recent. Educating yoga is an ever-changing course of. Altering up your yoga cues will help you evolve as a trainer.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware 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 people sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.