The teaching has lost its way

FROM ANCIENT WISDOM TO MODERN TEACHING: THE VALUE OF AUTHENTIC YOGA EDUCATION

(by Sita Chia and Adriel Jonathan H)

There was a time when people spoke about yoga as something that changed their lives. They spoke of liberation, inner alignment, freedom, transformation, and even transmutation ..

That has changed.

When? It’s hard to say.

… definitely though, around the time that “Athleisure” became its own distinct style of dressing

… and probably around the period where every major shopping centre “needed” hipster yoga studio in its retail mix.

.. the stories we hear now are different.

It’s about the sweat. The calories. The weight loss. The perfect handstand. The advanced yoga posture they pulled off which increased their Instagram followers tenfold. Touching your toes. Looking good in leggings. Looking good without leggings. Naked yoga. Beer Yoga. (Kill me now).

Yoga has become something you do to improve your body, rather than something that might fundamentally change your life.

The old stories were different.

They spoke about transformation.

They talked about becoming stronger, calmer, more resilient, more self-aware. They talked about how yoga changed their relationship with their bodies, their minds, and, sometimes, their lives.

You hear less of that today… (if ever)

Perhaps that is because yoga has become a victim of its own success. In the modern proliferation of yoga studios, teacher trainings, boutique classes and social-media personalities, yoga has become more accessible than ever. But accessibility is not necessarily the same as quality.

The uncomfortable question is this:

Are today’s yoga teacher training programmes actually preparing people to teach yoga?

In many cases, the answer is: not adequately.

The performance of teaching

Many teacher training programmes place considerable emphasis on class choreography, sequencing and verbal cueing.

These are important skills. A teacher needs to know how to structure a class and communicate clearly. But they are only part of the job.

The danger is that teacher training can become focused on the performance of teaching rather than the practice of teaching.

A trainee learns how to stand at the front of a room, demonstrate a sequence, deliver cues and move a group of people from one posture to another.

But teaching yoga is not fundamentally about performing in front of a class.

It is about observing.

It is about understanding.

It is about adapting.

And it is about knowing when the person in front of you needs something different from the person beside them.

A yoga teacher is not simply a person who knows how to perform a series of postures. A teacher should be able to help another person acquire those postures safely and meaningfully, while using movement and breath to support a healthier body and a calmer mind.

That requires a fundamentally different skill set.

The body is not one-size-fits-all

One of the greatest shortcomings in many modern teacher trainings is insufficient attention to the individual body.

Human bodies are different.

People have different skeletal structures, proportions, ranges of motion, muscular development, previous injuries, physical limitations and movement patterns. They also arrive with different levels of fitness and different histories.

One student may have spent twenty years as an athlete.

Another may have never exercised regularly.

One may be highly mobile but lack strength and stability.

Another may be strong but have limited range of motion.

One may have an old shoulder injury.

Another may have chronic lower-back pain.

Another may simply be anxious, self-conscious or fearful of movement.

These differences matter.

Yet many teacher trainings do not sufficiently teach trainees how to see them.

The ability to observe a body is a fundamental teaching skill. A teacher should be able to look at a student’s movement and ask:

What is this person’s body actually doing?

Where are they compensating?

What are they capable of?

What are they avoiding?

What is restricted?

What is unstable?

What might be causing discomfort?

And, crucially, what does this particular person need from the practice today?

To be clear, we aren’t referring to diagnosing medical conditions. Yoga teachers are not doctors or physiotherapists or therapists, and we don’t hold ourselves out to be.

It is about developing enough anatomical understanding and observational skill to recognise limitations, identify when a movement may be inappropriate, offer sensible modifications, and know when a student should be referred to an appropriate healthcare professional.

That distinction is critical.

The missing skill: individualisation

A good yoga class is not simply a room full of people doing the same thing at the same time.

It is a room full of individuals.

A competent teacher must be able to teach the group while still seeing the individual.

This requires two levels of observation.

First, there is the class as a whole.

Is the pace appropriate?

Is the room becoming fatigued?

Are people struggling to follow?

Is the sequence too demanding?

Is the energy of the class changing?

Then there is the individual.

Is someone’s knee collapsing inward?

Are they forcing a range of motion their body does not have?

Are they holding their breath?

Are they consistently avoiding one side?

Are they compensating because of an old injury?

Are they physically capable of the posture but psychologically uncomfortable with it?

These observations should inform the teacher’s decisions.

The best teaching is therefore not merely about delivering a predetermined class. It is about responding intelligently to the people actually in the room.

Yoga should be therapeutic in its thinking

This does not mean every yoga teacher needs to be conduct therapy. Being a therapist and yoga having an overall holistic therapeutic effect are different things.

There’s a reason why the primary series of Ashtanga is called Yoga Chikitsa (which means “yoga therapy” in English). What does this imply/mean?

It means that yoga teaching should have a therapeutic orientation.

The teacher should understand that the practice is intended to serve the practitioner—not the other way around.

A good teacher should be able to offer bespoke guidance based on the student’s physical characteristics, movement capacity and experience, while remaining sensitive to their mental and emotional disposition.

That might mean giving one student a deeper variation while encouraging another to reduce intensity.

It might mean changing the emphasis of a posture.

It might mean using a prop.

It might mean asking someone to stop.

It might mean recognising that today’s appropriate practice is not the same as yesterday’s.

And sometimes, the most responsible instruction is knowing when not to instruct.

What many trainings leave out

Many teacher training programmes are strong on the mechanics of putting together a class.

But they can be comparatively weak in teaching trainees how to deal with the messy reality of actual human beings.

They may not adequately prepare teachers to:

• Work with common injuries and physical limitations.

• Recognise when a student should not perform a particular movement.

• Modify postures for different body types and proportions.

• Identify compensatory movement patterns.

• Adapt practices to different levels of strength, mobility and fitness.

• Observe individual students while simultaneously managing the class as a whole.

• Understand how previous athletic or sedentary backgrounds affect movement.

• Recognise the difference between discomfort, challenge and potential injury.

• Adjust instruction to a student’s confidence, fear, anxiety or psychological disposition.

• Provide genuinely individualised guidance rather than generic modifications.

These are not peripheral skills.

They are central to teaching.

(…to be continued)