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It’s not unusual for yoga teachers to have a couple of crutch words in our vocabularies. We frequently depend on “um” or “so” when looking for the following thing to say. A crutch phrase I are likely to say loads is “you recognize.”
Whereas these might be considered benign fillers, there may be one other crutch word that I catch myself using loads that may even have a harmful effect on students.
The word is “just.”
When Good Intentions Go Awry
In an try to be inclusive and invitational, yoga teachers commonly, and maybe unknowingly, slip within the word just when cuing more intense add-ons in a pose. This normally takes the shape of offering students the choice to “just stay here.”
For instance, in Prolonged Side Angle Pose (Utthita Parsvakonasana), after I cue students to take the highest arm alongside their heads, I’ve heard myself say, “Or simply keep your arm reaching to the ceiling.”
After I cue students to take their top arm in a bind in that pose, I’ve often said, “Or simply put your hand in your hip as an alternative.”
My intention is to be helpful. But for people who find themselves unable or unwilling, for any reason, to practice the alternate version of the pose, my words will be demeaning.
The word just also can occur once we’re offering students the choice of taking an alternate pose during a sequence. For instance, I even have also made the error of offering alternatives for Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand) by saying “Or simply do Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana)” and “Or simply practice arms overhead.”
In each of those instances, I had thought I used to be being conscious and thoughtful. Our intention may come from a spot of sensitivity, but when we preface pose options with just, our teaching can go from accessible to hierarchical real quick.
Jivana Heyman writes about yoga teachers’ good intentions backfiring in his recent book, The Teacher’s Guide to Accessible Yoga. “Sometimes we overcompensate and infantilize our students, especially older adults, by speaking in overly concerned or frightened tones. An example of that is using the word just as in ‘just raise your arms up in front of you,’ though chances are you’ll be saying it to sound sensitive. It may come across as belittling.”
“It may seem to be just is an effort to make the motion sound easy,” Heyman later explained in a conversation. “But when the motion is definitely hard or not possible for the scholar then it will probably really be offensive.”
The shortcoming to perform or perfect also can uncover a wide range of uncomfortable psychological layers for some students, says long-time teacher’s teacher and the founding father of SmartFLOW yoga, Annie Carpenter. “Just is commonly received as a comparative request, which triggers deep, and infrequently old, ego responses. It cues us to position ourselves within the ‘Oh, that’s easy’ group, or alternately within the ‘Something else that’s hard for me’ group.’”
Some students might even see just as an invite to stay within the establishment of their practice, says Jocelyn Gordon, yoga teacher and the creator of HoopYogini. Gordon works mostly with women and moms and notices the tendency for this population to play it small in each their practice and their lives through the use of just of their self-descriptive language to diminish their abilities and accomplishments.
“The word just is diminishing. Like, when someone says ‘I’m only a stay at home mom,’” says Gordon. “‘Give yourself more credit! You’re a human managing a household—that’s beyond CEO-level output’!”
You’re Not a Bad Teacher If You’ve Used “Just”
Allihopa Accessible and Adaptive Yoga founder Rodrigo Souza had an experience with just while teaching at a rehab center for newly injured spinal cord injury patients. “Through the class, I asked everyone to ‘just spread their fingers wide after which close them again,’ making a claw-like movement in synchronization with their breath,” he explains. “Nevertheless, I noticed that two out of the ten students were unable to perform this movement.”
Souza felt terrible. “My superego got here in judging my behavior. “So I kindly brought myself back and used this as a learning curve.” His efforts include not using the word just and making an effort to get to know his students as much as possible before each class. “I would like to be sure that my students feel included, secure, and most significantly, seen.”
Liza Fisher, (known on Instagram as Limitless Liza), also believes we are able to change our languaging while being compassionate with ourselves about past errors. Fisher began to teach yoga months before a life-threatening bout with long COVID took away her ability to walk. Having experienced life in a wheelchair transformed each her yoga teaching and her practice.
“A lot of cueing for modifications comes from the lens of the physical capability of the person doing the cueing. It takes a variety of work to remove that, let alone tackle the lens of another person,” says Fisher. “Especially for those who’ve never come into contact with their perspective.”
She has since relearned to walk. “I used my yoga practice to achieve awareness of my body while learning to adapt. It did help to have formal training in adaptive yoga and chair yoga, but I can now try this alone and don’t need an instructor necessarily to cue. Many disabled people undergo their very own version of this journey. We all know our bodies and we are able to adapt higher than anyone can tell us.”
Tamika Caston-Miller, director of Ashé Yoga, has been working hard to remove just when cueing breath, especially because the pandemic. “Folks have all different relationships with their breath and lung capability. Saying just as referring to breath alludes to respiration being a standard and straightforward experience to people, and that just isn’t all the time true.”
Lately, Caston-Miller tries to be less prescriptive of individuals’s exact breath by cuing in the next way, “Inhale, for so long as feels good and if it feels best for you today, add a tiny pause at the highest of the inhale. Exhale for so long as feels good, and if it feels right today, add a tiny pause.” In this manner, she is empowering students to find out their unique capability, while still practicing similar respiration ratios as a gaggle.
The best way to Stop Using the Word “Just” When Teaching
Once we come back to our “why” as yoga teachers, it’s to carry a secure and welcoming space for college kids. This implies selecting our words as rigorously as we decide the poses we provide. It’s also all the time helpful to remind ourselves that we’re there as space holders somewhat than maestros.
Fisher agrees that there’s a big difference between being a guide and a taskmaster. “Guiding requires the challenge of the teacher removing themselves from the instruction and being guided by the energy and bodies within the room,” she says. There’s nothing more symphonic than a bunch of humans doing what’s individually right for them. There are a lot of incremental adjustments you may make to provide help to ditch just out of your teaching vernacular and help create that have for college kids.
1. Have a look at Your Why?
First, consider why you might be offering an option. Are you giving options as a spot for people to explore their practice autonomously? Or are you implying that there’s a mandatory sequence for college kids to follow?
For instance, Child’s Pose (Balasana). Many teachers cue the pose as a spot of rest, but for a variety of people, this pose is much from restful. Moderately than insisting students do the form offered or that they simply discover a modified version, if we remember our intention is for the scholar to have a moment to rest, we are able to say “Or take any shape that feels restful to you.”
2. Make It an Inquiry
Carpenter encourages teachers and students alike to make every little thing an inquiry. She relies on asking questions. For instance, as an alternative of telling students to “just keep your arm reaching overhead,” she prefers to ask “can you are taking your left arm overhead?” That empowers the scholar to be their very own expert on what is true for them that day.
Approaching our practice from a spot of curiosity also takes the pressure off of getting to do something appropriately. When every little thing is an experiment, then every little thing is precisely accurately.
3. Encourage Awareness
Interoception is our ability to feel our body’s internal sensations, resembling hunger, pain, discomfort, etc. Souza believes that encouraging this awareness greater than alignment is crucial to creating class more inclusive, accessible, and trauma-sensitive.
“Removing the word just will give your students more agency,” says Souza. “By doing so, they are going to feel encouraged to explore their abilities and develop higher interoception and body awareness, which is able to ultimately make your class more inclusive.”
Souza gives the instance of “Raise your arms any amount that’s comfortable for you when you inhale.” The emphasis becomes on the scholar’s comfort somewhat than how high they will lift their arm.
4. Offer Logical and Empowering Variations
In support of not needing the word just, you may offer variations which are empowering and possibly even exciting. Moderately than all the time suggest students come into the identical poses—namely, Child’s Pose or Reclining Certain Angle (Supta Baddha Konasana) during more complex shapes, think in regards to the anatomical and energetic intentions of every pose you teach and be prepared with alternatives that provide the identical effect.
For instance, with Bakasana (Crow Pose). That is an intense and exciting pose, but people may not give you the option to crouch to the bottom to play with the preparatory steps or linger in a squat.
As a substitute, you may practice the pose in your back by rounding your spine and hugging your knees toward your upper arms. When you are in a chair and unable to get to the ground, you may place a block between your thighs and pull your elbows down by your sides while contracting your tummy.
You can even visualize the pose without moving your body in any respect, which neuroscience shows lights up the identical parts of our brain as if we were doing the movement.
These variations help to make it clear to students that there isn’t any “full expression” of a pose or “final” pose in the category. When it becomes clear that we’re not working toward anything, nobody will be left behind. We’re simply exploring different movements and cultivating different sensations.
5. Let Your Students Teach You
Souza encourages teachers to all the time maintain a beginner’s mind. “Stay humble and be a student,” he suggests. “Allow your students to be the teachers as an alternative. This approach fosters compassion and kindness, making your class more human-centered.”
Souza finds this approach particularly helpful once we inevitably slip and blurt out things we didn’t intend. Allowing yourself to be a student first means “you are not any longer within the position of being the teacher who knows every little thing and feels the pressure of that role,” he says. “As a substitute, you may simply smile, regroup, and check out to not make the identical mistake again.”