Choosing Yoga Teachers Mindfully

By now you’ve prob­a­bly read or heard about the New York Times arti­cle on the dan­gers of yoga (Jan­u­ary 2012). It trig­gered a firestorm in the yoga com­mu­nity. Yoga teach­ers and ded­i­cated prac­ti­tion­ers found them­selves in the awk­ward posi­tion of hav­ing to explain why they place so much value on doing some­thing that might “wreck your body,” as the arti­cle so provoca­tively asserted.

Despite my feel­ings about the arti­cle’s edi­to­r­ial stance, over time it has had a pos­i­tive impact on my yoga prac­tice.

It caused me to reassess what classes to take, what teach­ers to fol­low, and what prac­tices or styles of yoga to avoid.

I’m now more clear about what’s right for me (and why). This helps me be more authen­tic — espe­cially when I choose not to do a pose or to per­form the eas­ier vari­a­tion instead.

Sadly I now take fewer classes as a con­se­quence of being more selec­tive. The good news: the teach­ers are bet­ter, and I’m learn­ing more — lessons that I can apply both in class and at home.

How to Avoid Injury in Yoga

Here’s what I’ve con­cluded from this reassess­ment process:

• Avoid over-crowded classes where it’s impos­si­ble for the teacher to pay enough atten­tion to each stu­dent
• Avoid teach­ers who lack hun­dreds of hours of teacher train­ing
• Avoid yoga class envi­ron­ments that pro­mote yoga as exer­cise (the lat­est fad­dish work­out)
• Be aware of your body’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and where to pay extra atten­tion dur­ing prac­tice
• Take respon­si­bil­ity for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the teacher before class, to ensure she under­stands what you’re deal­ing with today

Those are basic require­ments to avoid risky con­di­tions. But the choice of teacher is even more impor­tant.

Choose Your Teacher(s) Carefully

It’s taken awhile for me to rec­og­nize this, but it’s incred­i­bly impor­tant to choose yoga teach­ers based on their instruc­tional tech­niques — how well the teacher:

• deliv­ers instruc­tion about the yoga asanas
• demon­strates what she’s ask­ing stu­dents to do
• inter­acts with stu­dents who don’t know how to apply those instruc­tions to their own bod­ies
• rec­og­nizes and clar­i­fies con­fu­sion
• cor­rects or guides some­one into proper align­ment

Hav­ing had the ben­e­fit of sev­eral excep­tion­ally skill­ful teach­ers in small class set­tings, I’m now very aware of the dif­fer­ence between really good instruc­tion and run-of-the-mill classes.

Teaching Methods Need to Improve

Steeped in the ancient spir­i­tual and cul­tural tra­di­tions of India, yoga has been slow to adopt more effec­tive teach­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion styles. The teach­ing tra­di­tion has tended to be one of dis­ci­ples emu­lat­ing their gurus.

Immersed in these tra­di­tions, the typ­i­cal yoga teacher errs by using ter­mi­nol­ogy or phras­ing that is poorly under­stood by stu­dents. The lan­guage is lyri­cal, evoca­tive, full of beau­ti­ful imagery — but sadly, too ambigu­ous and easy to mis­in­ter­pret.

This beau­ti­ful stone trac­ery, seen dur­ing a recent visit to La Alham­bra, reminded me of my expe­ri­ence of a typ­i­cal yoga class: poetry and grace in motion, strength, bal­ance — but with lan­guage that means lit­tle to the unini­ti­ated.

Here the cal­lig­ra­phy is inte­gral to the design but con­veys noth­ing to an Eng­lish speaker. Let’s be hon­est: the same is true of San­skrit pose names when used with begin­ning stu­dents.

Even when teach­ers stick to Eng­lish, prob­lems emerge when the lan­guage is ambigu­ous, as with these instruc­tions:

• “Open your heart”
• “Set your foun­da­tion”
• “Snug your shoul­der blades against your back”

I’ve been prac­tic­ing yoga for 3 years, but it has taken me that long to rec­og­nize the risks of not under­stand­ing the opti­mal bio-mechan­ics of key poses. It took a few thank­fully minor injuries to reveal how much I still need to learn.

So I’ve returned to classes for begin­ners, those led by excep­tion­ally clear teach­ers with supe­rior com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. I want to mas­ter yoga’s foun­da­tional asana prin­ci­ples before resum­ing classes with teach­ers whose guid­ance is bet­ter at con­vey­ing the spir­i­tual aspects of yoga rather than the phys­i­cal asanas.

Where Are the Best Teachers?

Today the teach­ers I find most help­ful have hun­dreds of hours of teacher train­ing, and at least as many hours of actual instruc­tional expe­ri­ence. They are highly attuned to how well their stu­dents are actu­ally learn­ing and putting their lessons into prac­tice.

Some earn their liv­ing via “body­work,” so they have a deep hands-on under­stand­ing of anatomy and the prin­ci­ples of body mechan­ics.

Some are excep­tion­ally gifted at know­ing how to demon­strate a pose or key aspects of a con­cept. They link their poetic instruc­tional lan­guage to unam­bigu­ous demon­stra­tions, slow­ing down the motion or pose dynam­ics to make it crys­tal clear what they mean. They keep the class focused on prac­tic­ing this approach until we have a taste of what it feels like to do it prop­erly.

The teach­ers I seek out today know how to help stu­dents move toward the opti­mal mus­cu­lar-skele­tal align­ment, com­bined with the breath. They see when I’m out of align­ment, or fail­ing to bal­ance “effort with ease”; they know how to help me under­stand what I need to adjust.

Com­bined with my own improv­ing mind­ful­ness, it’s teach­ers like these who will help me min­i­mize my risk of injury — and ensure the bless­ings of a life­long prac­tice.