Yogaground Blog

How to describe movement is a favourite topic for many of us yoga teachers and each teacher has a particular take on the subject of how to give directions.

This can create a lot of confusion in the minds of yoga students, many of whom go to several different teachers. So, on Monday you may told to hug the muscle to your leg bones and draw the outside knee to the hip in trikonasana (triangle pose). On Tuesday you’re told to stay with the breath and let it all come from the hara centre in trikonasana. On Wednesday you’re told to build the pose from the feet up and on Thursday you’re told that it all comes from the spine.

On Friday, well, probably our hypothetical student is somewhat confused and they can just about manage directing their eyes to the TV, thumbs pointing forward to the remote control and other hand firmly wrapped around a tub of ice cream.

Which raises an interesting question: how come there are so many different opinions in yoga about what how to move and what the key areas are?

Well, some of that is just that there are so many valid and interesting ways to view the human body. It’s impossible to do all the areas justice within a yoga class and so every teacher picks when they think of as the priority. Which raises an even more interesting question: what do most yoga teachers think of as a priority in movement?

There seems to me to be several different schools of thinking about movement.

There is a school of thought, influenced by Iyengar yoga among other approaches, which builds the pose by giving lots of detailed instructions about the body. An example is:

“Take your shoulder back and tuck in the shoulder blades and back ribs. Keep your elbows straight. Keep your heels in line with each other”

Then there’s the school which says that you just have to relax and breath and you will naturally find yourself in alignment.  An example is:

“Standing on the back of your heels your weight sinks slowly down. If you stand long enough, while the lower part of the body, from waist to the heels, gravitates, you will discover that the upper part of the body becomes light, free and straight”.

Fans of the detailed approach tend to view the big picture approach as being somewhat vague and woolly. Of course, fans of the big picture approach tend to view the detailed approach as being somewhat obsessive and tending to miss the woods for the trees.

Within these approaches there are different focuses to achieving alignment. Some people prefer working from the ground up, some people prefer working from the centre out and some people prefer working from a particular body part like the spine.

Assuming that proponents of both are working to empower and enable the student to be their own teacher, which is the best approach?

I did my early bodywork training in the Alexander technique. The Alexander technique is all about subtle directions to the whole system, so I tend to favour approaches which give over views and then go into details when needed.

When I go to classes and listen to directions, I’m hoping that some of the following will be present:

• If the detailed approach is favoured, I’d like an occasional explanation as to how the part being discussed relates to the whole body. I.e. ‘Keep your elbow straight so that the energy flows more easily from your back to your finger tips’.
• If the over view approach is favoured I’d like an occasional explanation of what details need to present to achieve the overall effect. I.e. ‘Expand your heart by releasing your shoulders from your back to your finger tips’
• There is some acknowledgement by the teacher that the unseen and the unsaid are if anything more important that what’s said. A lot of what is happening in in the poses is at a wordless / intuitive level.

In the end, you’re going to end up with a teacher who speaks to your condition and often that’s nothing to do with the approach but everything to do with rapport between student and teacher.