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I’ve at all times loved words. At all times been in awe of the best way just a few short lines on a page can crack my heart open. After I was younger, I got down to turn out to be a author, not a yoga teacher, but at some point I discovered myself on the mat doing backbends and forward folds, releasing silent tears from a source unknown, and this also cracked my heart open. It was poetry in my body. And it modified every part for me.

My love of language was not wasted. Words are a useful currency for those of us who facilitate the practice of yoga. They’re essential tools of communication as we endeavor to assist students know what to do with their bodies.

Yet we are able to achieve this rather more with our words than that. We will ask practitioners to turn out to be present with their full selves. We will ask them to navigate by their breath, to listen with their skin, to anchor awareness into their bones and muscles, to perceive the subtle flow of energy, and to permit the currents of thought and emotion to maneuver through their selves.

Words hold power. Our voices carry not only our words however the meaningful experiences that we intend to transmit to students. We would like to encourage communion inside and without. We try and uncover an expanded sense of self that far exceeds the scope of any hand or foot position. We aspire to elicit an experience of yoga.

Expand Your Vocabulary

As facilitators, we purposefully use our words to evoke different energies, that we hope will touch practitioners in distinct ways. How many alternative ways could we prompt someone to lift their arms?

We’d say:
Raise
Extend
Sweep
Reach
Stretch

Or reference:
As much as the sky
Toward the ceiling
Past your ears

Each approach could possibly be a successful cue in a yoga class, although each resonates barely in a different way. Sometimes something short—Arms up!—is the proper cue. Other times something more elaborate—Paint the space together with your fingers, sweeping your arms overhead—can more accurately evoke what it’s we’re attempting to convey. As teachers, we’d like to cultivate an expansive teaching vocabulary to attract from so we are able to effectively teach the scholars who’re drawn to our classes. We bring life to the practice of yoga through our language.

Depend on Strong Motion Words

As in writing, spoken verbs—motion words—might be powerful agents. They convey movement and life to the party.

Plant your foot.
Push your thighs back.
Pour more weight through your heels.

Teaching asana means engaging with words and meaning in an embodied format. It’s a creative art with profound implications. A robust verb evokes a certain quality in and of itself, allowing you to convey more while saying less. Once we teach, an approach of less clutter, more potency is frequently desirable, especially during a dynamic class when economy of language is a necessity.

RELATED: 72 Ways to Say “Calm down” in Yoga

Speak to the Senses

We will use words to call on the eyes and the ears and the organs of touch. We will stimulate proprioception, our sense of where our body is in its surrounding space, and interoception, or feeling ourselves on the within.

One strategy to do that is by incorporating words of description that help practitioners see, hear, smell, taste, or feel. Words like brilliant, sweet, swoosh, undulating, elastic, solid, cool, springy, curved, infinite, etc. Drink sweet breaths in, filling all of the strategy to your collar bones. Release the load of your body to the cool floor.

We may invite the practitioner into sensory inquiry by balancing direct instructions with words that encourage introspection. Questions are an excellent strategy to do that, drawing awareness to concrete qualities including pressure, texture, temperature, scent, sound, vibration, and so forth.

What sensations are you feeling?
Shift your weight to the various parts of your feet. How do your feet feel meeting the ground?
What’s the standard of your body-mind at this moment? What’s the sensation of being you?
Can you are feeling your glutes contract, drawing your knee toward the periphery of your foot?
As you get up your spine, is there more fluidity? Is there more room to maneuver?

By incorporating words that talk to the senses, we help practitioners ground themselves within the moment, supporting the a part of yoga that’s about being and experiencing moderately than doing and performing. Consider engaging the senses as a mindfulness hack—scanning, sensing, feeling, being receptive to what’s.

If the body is a doorway to presence, then the senses are a key. Find words for this and you’ll help your students right into a felt sense of home.

Use Figurative Language (Sparingly)

Drawing on creativity and including figurative language may help students connect on a good deeper level.

Remember similes and metaphors from English class? A simile likens one thing to a different, often using the words “as” or “like.” A metaphor flat out says something is something else, equating two sometimes surprising things with a view to illuminate one other dimension of the very first thing.

A metaphor could possibly be calling the breath a wave. The body fabric. Likening the spine to a snake or river or luminous pathway. Comparing the pelvic floor to a trampoline. Referring to the center as a fountain or home or breath-fed embers.

Lift your heart like a fountain.
Trace the pathway of your spine together with your breath.
Stretch your wings even further, as if to the touch the perimeters of the room.
Are you able to breathe all of the strategy to the perimeters of you.
Light up your complete constellation of your body together with your breath.

When it really works, metaphor is something that resonates deep inside us. A practitioner may not immediately understand when you say “move your spine in lateral waves,” but saying “move your spine in lateral waves like a snake,” conjures an innate knowing in our body.

This shouldn’t be to say that we have to be Shakespeare or engage in flowery language simply for the sake of being fancy. Use metaphor as you’ll a strong spice—it must make sense within the given context and a little bit at all times goes a great distance. Keep the vast majority of your cues easy and direct, using metaphor sparingly to counterpoint understanding.

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Explore Themes

The theme of your class may also help encourage and shape the language you select to make use of. There are verbs to support any theme, even when your theme shouldn’t be explicitly stated.

Water-Themed Class
You would possibly brainstorm verbs that bring to mind a fluid aspect and weave just a few of those in together with your regular cues, corresponding to cascade, pour, ebb and flow, slide, stream, spring, drink, soak, ripple, pulsate, swell, undulate, wash, trickle, pool.

Stability-minded classes
You would depend on words corresponding to fix, firm, engage, anchor, activate, rotate, enliven, grip, strengthen, secure, support, activate, balance, co-contract, stabilize.

Anahata (heart chakra)
This calls for verbs like radiate, offer, welcome, receive, befriend, hold, hug, gift, expand, amplify, bloom, resonate, harmonize.

Self Care
You would possibly include words corresponding to nourish, attend, attune, rest, listen, give, permit, allow, appreciate, thrive, reboot, sustain, take time, decompress, unwind, enjoy.

Along together with your selection of verbs, consider layering in metaphor and focusing your language to be certain that that you simply’re not sharing conflicting imagery or overwhelming students with rhetoric.

Edit and Refine Over Time

Like every skill, using words to invoke a felt sense in others is something we’d like to practice and refine. Strengthening our capability to make use of language requires that we turn out to be relentless in our self-editing. We must distill our words. Cut away the unnecessary, including filler words, cliches, and that “just” or “um” before anything.

If it doesn’t have to be said, don’t say it. If it doesn’t add anything, leave it out. As you experiment and begin to hone your use of language, pay attention to the words, phrases and metaphors that actually land. How do you understand if it lands? You’ll feel it. You’ll feel the room collectively feeling it.

A couple of selection words can greatly enhance our offerings, opening up a lot potential to encourage, connect, and move.

Be Authentic

It takes work and practice to grow your language skills. Although ultimately, we wish our command of language to now not feel like work. We would like to get to the place where we are able to step right into a room to show and our words flow intuitively.

Where do you discover these words? Inspiration can come from anywhere. Get in your mat, drop into your body, and move. Keep pen and paper at hand and write reflections as they arise.  How does it feel, what it’s like? While you sweep your leg into three-legged dog, is it like moving through honey or slicing through space? How would you describe the rise and fall of your diaphragm as you tune in to the sensations of breath? While you root down through your hands in plank, what does it remind you of?

Contemplate and brainstorm. Use a thesaurus. Turn to poetry and lyrics for that special turn of phrase. Open your ears once you attend other teacher’s classes, noting language that strikes a chord for you.

Adding even just a few conscious word decisions can greatly enhance a category, especially when supported by other elements of  your class, including the sequence, an introduction, music when you use it, readings, or the rest you select to share. Just as you intend the opposite elements of your class, brainstorm and contemplate your words and work together with your cues on paper.

But once you go to show, put all of that aside and let the words be birthed from your individual body. Words possess creative power, and that power is amplified by the energy you transmit as a facilitator. There’s something behind your words, whether you call it belief, embodiment, or knowing. It’s you. Your authentic experience.

Ground yourself in your individual body, fully present, fully there in relationship to the individuals in front of you. Speak out of your gut, your kidneys, your third eye. Speak from the place in you that knows. Trust yourself as a channel and let your language flow.

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About Our Contributor

Leta LaVigne is a Seattle native and the founding father of yogaROCKS studio in Finland.  She draws from a wide range of traditions to craft intuitive yin and yang classes, gently guiding awareness through the body to the inner landscape. As a long-time student of Paul Grilley, Leta embraces a functional approach to teaching. Find her reflections on yoga, motherhood, and life as a transplant within the country of rye bread and reindeer at @leta_lavigne.