Part of the beauty of yoga asana practice is that each and every different asana highlights tension and other sensation in the body. Paying closer attention, we also come to detect how the different asanas stimulate different emotional and mental reactions; a certain posture done in a particular way, time, or other circumstance tends to generate its own somewhat unique effects on the mind. Each asana also tends to affect the breath in different ways, however subtle the differences may be. Staying with the breath as we feel it in the body, we come to realize that we can breathe into the body in conscious ways, consciously directing the breath to places of tension or holding, and in this come to experience from inside how the breath transforms bodily sensation, emotional feeling, and mental awareness.  

The evolution of one’s awareness is an integral aspect of yoga as a transformative practice. In Hatha yoga—the big umbrella over all styles, brands, and lineages utilizing postural and movement techniques—this practice is one of more fully awakening and deeply integrating on the path to a more holistic, congruent, and healthy life. Put differently, doing yoga is a practice for awakening to our embodiment as organic humans that happens the moment one becomes present to the experience of breathing and being in this bodymind. For many this is and always will be a spiritual path that is about “being in” (a oneness perspective) or “connecting to” (a dualist perspective) a sense of the infinite or consciousness beyond the bodymind, perhaps (or perhaps not) as a path to transcendence. For others, even if not specifically describing yoga, it’s about fully awakening to the spirit and reality of being alive, finding meaning, as Mark Johnson (1989, 10) proposes, “within the flow of experience t...

Poses are static representations of idealized forms, something models do for cameras in an effort to send an external message. Typically airbrushed and enhanced in other ways, they are anything but real. Asanas, by contrast, are alive and personal; they are an expression of organic human beings exploring, living, and intentionally evolving in the temple of the bodymind. When we appreciate a student through the wisdom of our heart, then we more naturally see the intrinsic beauty already manifest in their practice. From this starting point we come to more naturally sit in the seat of the teacher, giving our students the space to blossom in the fullness of their yoga—even when we apply what insight we might have into the basic architecture, gesture, and mood of each asana as it is uniquely and beautifully expressed in each individual student.  

In giving tactile cues, we are offering students guidance in finding their way to a more stable foundation, to aligning their body safely and c...

Using your hands to accentuate and refine what you are trying to convey with words or visual modeling can make all the difference in a student’s ability to comprehend and internalize whatever you are trying to share. With clearer, more manifold communication comes deeper learning, and with it the promise of yoga—to be healthy, integrated, fully awake—is gradually more fully realized. Touch, which immediately reaches our students in a direct and personal way, can thus be an effective method of directly, simply, and specifically communicating with them. Spoken words and the physical demonstration of asanas are essential ways of communicating with students and should be the starting place—and often the ending place—in teaching asanas. Yet when combined with precise and informed touch, these tools can convey even more: 

• clarifying a verbalized or demonstrated alignment cue 
• highlighting an energetic action 
• giving students a feeling of support 
• bringing awareness to an unconscious
...

Cuing students in the asanas with a balanced attitude of vairagya (letting go) and abhyasa (persevering practice) helps ensure that students feel supported in their practice while feeling free of attainment-related expectation. By conveying this attitude through every aspect of one’s teaching, including in offering and giving tactile cues, students more naturally find their way to their inner teacher, utilizing the intensity of physical sensation and the barometer of the breath to guide their effort in their personal practice. 

Indeed, an essential element of this balanced approach to sustainable and transformational yoga practice rests in the breath. Curiously, although the classical writings on Hatha yoga give primary emphasis to pranayama (from pra, “to bring forth,” an, “to breathe,” and a combination of ayama, “to expand,” and yama, “to control”), pranayama practice—basic yogic breathing—is typically given little attention in many contemporary yoga classes.  As with asana pract...

In communicating with our students to convey insights about how they might best approach and explore their practice in a way that reflects and embodies the principles of steadiness and ease, perseverance and nonattachment, we can tap into a variety of resources—speaking, demonstrating, touching, and for some even singing to evoke the spirit of being fully in this self-reflective and potentially transformational practice. The specific combination of techniques we use in any given situation ideally reflects both our personal sensibilities and our best sense of how the students we’re teaching might best explore and learn in keeping with their own intentions and sensibilities. Indeed, how people learn is closely tied to what Howard Gardner (1993) refers to as “qualities of multiple intelligence,” which vary considerably in any given class. Some students learn well from verbal messages while others need a visual model in order to “get it” in their bodymind. Still others are primarily tact...

At the risk of stating the obvious, in practicing yoga we all start from where we are—this in contrast to where someone else might think we are or where we ourselves might mistakenly think we are. Many teachers have preconceived or ill-informed ideas about the abilities or interests of their students while many students over-or underestimate their immediately present ability. How as teachers might we best navigate these realities?

There is no end to how much we can learn and evolve as teachers. True to the maxim posited by the Greek philosopher Aristotle that “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know,” the further you go in your training, learning, and experience as a yoga teacher, the more you’ll realize that there’s an infinite universe of knowledge and wisdom to bring to the practice. This becomes more abundantly clear as we come to better appreciate and understand our students, which is absolutely essential if we are to guide them well in their practice. To get a better sense of this, let’s look at the practice itself and the basic elements and sensibilities of teaching. 

There is inestimable value and purpose in having outer teachers and in teaching yoga. While with consistent and refined practice students develop the awareness that makes the asanas more understandable, accessible, and sustainable from the inside out, gradually and more clearly feeling their way into sequences that work, nearly all of us benefit from the informed insights of a trained and experienced teacher whose guidance, even just on matters of postural alignment and energetic actions, can make our experience in doing yoga safer and more beneficial. A teacher can also give guidance on techniques and qualities of breathing, mental attentiveness, postural modifications and variations, sequences within and between asana families, as well as adaptations to address special conditions such as frailty, tightness, hypermobility, pregnancy, and interrelated physical, physiological, and psychological pathologies. Put differently, teachers matter; the question is, how do we best teach?  

As...

In doing yoga, the best teacher one will ever have is alive and well inside. In every breath, every posture, and all the moments and transitions in between, the inner teacher is offering guidance. The tone, texture, and tempo of the breath blend with myriad sensations arising in the bodymind to suggest how and where one might best go with focused awareness and action.  There is no universally correct method or technique, no set of rules, no single goal, and no absolute authority beyond what comes to the practitioner through the heart and soul of simply being in it, listening inside, and opening to the possibilities of amazing qualities of being fully, consciously alive. It’s a personal practice, even if one comes to it and finds in it a more abiding sense of social connection or spiritual being.