Touch! Such a treat in a yoga practice, to receive the gentle confident, guiding touch of a teacher. I call this The Art of Compassionate Touch when
working with teachers. The confident guided touch of a yoga
instructor has more then just a temporary effect in the practitioners
body. It is often associated with what I like to call an Aha moment. I
am then able to really process and understand what is taking place in
my body while in the asana with a deeper awareness.
I am a practitioner of Thai Yoga and love to use
it while I teach. It is a fantastic way to help find the extended
extension in the asanas allowing for greater ease. I am not a fan of
forced adjustments as the intention of my touch is not to move your body
into what I think looks right but to help student become aware of the
area of the body I touch, observe, learn and hopefully understand the
dynamics of the asana and free themselves up to begin to explore the
asana further. Each time I do an asana, I must fall back on the
lessons of the previous practices, being mindful not to repeat any
action that does not work for my body. If I felt the echos of a
previous practice it is important for me to really be mindful and learn
from the pain or discomfort I created. Iyengar call "Analysis in
Action" your guide. Your practice is essentially a trial and error
process where you see what works for you today based on what did not
work for you yesterday or because of what worked for you yesterday.
This then becomes "wise action" and you will find the effort decreases
as you begin to move the body in the correct direction.
There is some debate in the yoga world on when
to inner spiral and when to outer spiral, well I say the yoga world, it
is actually at my studio. I used to be hung up on correct form and
would teach absolutes. One being inward spiral of the thighs in a wide
legged forward fold. One of my teachers would come to my class and she
would get so frustrated because the inner spiral created an echo of pain
immediately after her practice and I was pretty insistent that it was
the correct way to do it.
I was so convinced because it worked in my body
and I had been taught that, so yes it must be the correct way. This is
no longer my truth and I now give my students the options to choose
which direction works best for them, this is wise teaching and wise
action for the practitioner. If you find yourself as a teacher getting
hung up on form, your students are going to be your best teacher.
Listen to them. GIve them the freedom in class to explore both
physically and verbally the asana. Remember it is a practice. When I first started my yoga practice, I
attended Bikram. There was a women who always sat in front and she
never came out of the asana exactly on que. How frustrating it was for
the teacher and the students. So much so they even addressed it with
her. Bless her. She was merely listening to her body and it was not
always ready to move when the instructor was ready for the class to
move. She was engrossed in what was happening in her body. Is that not what we as yoga guides want? For
our students to get in touch with their bodies? Why then do some
instructors feel the need to control? Why would anyone feel the need to
be in such a class? Lack of knowledge, awareness, understanding of
what yoga is.
"When wise action comes, you no longer feel the effort as effort - you feel the effort as joy." BKS Iyengar
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Categoriesasanabalance breath chakra injury karma, meditation patience perception practice touch yoga yoga alliance yoga, accountability |
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