Change Up Your Yoga Cues

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

Final yr, I posted a weblog on methods to simplify your cues to present college students some quiet time as nicely to permit them to tune into the current expertise of every asana. At the moment I’d wish 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 scholar who’s been attending my courses for 30 years instructed me that I stated one thing within the class that fully remodeled her observe. I used to be shocked—and happy. The cue was one thing I’ve stated 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 scholar understood one thing she hadn’t gotten earlier than.

Our college students fluctuate not solely of their responses to visible and verbal studying. In addition they fluctuate of their response to totally different phrases. Altering your language simply would possibly give even your most stalwart college students a brand new means 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, after I’m instructing a category. However it’s doable. Listed here are just a few methods to discover increasing your yoga vocabulary.

A Few Recommendations

• One of the best ways to reword your yoga cues is to replicate on what you’re about to say forward of time. You would possibly be capable of do that on the fly, particularly should 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 method to convey what you’re about to say? Possibly the cue you’ve all the time used actually is one of the simplest ways to get your level throughout. However it will probably’t harm to strive one other wording.
• If it’s simpler, you may discover altering up your cues while you’re not instructing. Make an inventory of your most typical yoga cues. Almost definitely, your most popular wording will come to thoughts first. Write it down. Then take into consideration the way you would possibly phrase it in a different way.
• It may be actually instructive to document just a few courses. Then take heed to the way you talk your yoga cues. Are you able to provide you with inventive methods to convey the ideas you wish to share, with out shedding readability?

I discover developing with inventive wording to be a good way to juice up my instructing. It not solely helps me attain extra college students, however it additionally retains my very own instructing recent. Instructing yoga is an ever-changing course of. Altering up your yoga cues might help you evolve as a trainer.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third e book 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 folks sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards.