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It’s said that the wisest teachers remain perpetual students. Sometimes that means unlearning previous dogma and relying on real-world experiences to draw your own conclusions. Thousands of classes into our teaching careers, many yoga teachers (including myself) have accumulated a list of practices that we’ve ceased doing in the name of helping students and ourselves.
11 Things Many Yoga Teachers No Longer Practice
Here are the most common things we no longer teach or practice as we prepare to teach.
1. Creating a Different Sequence Each Class
When I first began teaching yoga, I believed each class had to be a masterpiece. That essentially meant I tried to come up with a novel sequence of poses and practices that had never before been taught for each class. I wanted to blow my students’ minds—and I placed inordinate amounts of pressure on myself to do so.
It wasn’t long before I ran out of ideas. But I also began to understand that my students didn’t want their minds blown. They learned more from mindful repetition of the same poses than they ever had from something that was included for the sake of novelty. Yoga teacher trainer and endurance and CrossFit coach Jenni Tarma went through a similar experience in her teaching trajectory.
“While I still really enjoy coming up with new ideas and love the ‘light bulb’ moment of inventing a funky new transition,” says Tarma, “I no longer put constant pressure on myself to reinvent the wheel with every class and sequence.”
Many students find familiarity to be comforting. Also, revisiting a pose offers a helpful reference point for where students are at mentally and physically in their progression.
2. Requiring Each Cue to Be Anatomically Accurate
Although cancel culture remains relevant in the yoga world, I think we may have canceled too many cues in recent years. Given the limited amount of time teachers have to communicate to students, clarity is probably even more important than literal accuracy. So even though your lungs are in your chest, I will by all means encourage you to “breathe into your belly” if it helps you send your breath low.
3. Adhering to Old Alignment Rules
Each pose has a general framework to its shape. But the days of detailing the precise angle of flexion in your front knee or degree of directional angle in your back foot might be over. Many teachers, including myself, lean toward suggesting an approximate shape. Yin yoga teacher and trainer Bernie Clark calls this “a functional, rather than aesthetic, approach.”
“I used to be like most teachers: prescribing where to put their feet, arms, hands, etc. based on aesthetic ideals,” says Clark. He has learned, through observing students and refining his approach, to take a much more functional approach. “This requires having an intention for the postures and asking the students to pay attention to their experiences,” he explains. “There are no universal alignment cues that work for every body. Not every body can do every pose.”
Yoga teacher and trainer Angus Knott agrees. “My understanding of variable anatomy (the way our bodies are different at a skeletal level) has drastically changed my approach to how I teach. Once you understand this, strict dogmatic alignment goes out the shala window,” he says. “What’s left behind is a much more person-centered, explorative practice.”
4. Automatically Offering Hands-On Assists
When I started teaching, it was not unusual for a teacher or assistant to spend an entire class providing the standard hands-on adjustments for each pose, moving from one student to the next.
Although some students respond to and value tactile input from their teacher, or even being moved into position, the downsides always outweighed the upsides for me. I have never felt comfortable giving or receiving adjustments, and I’m not disappointed that these days, verbal consent or consent cards are the norm.
I’m not alone. Yoga and Pilates teacher and fitness trainer Kat Heagberg Rebar stated that one of the biggest teaching myths she had to bust was that “hands-on adjustments are necessary for a good class.”
Even those who have used assists as a primary part of their teaching, including longtime Ashtanga teacher Adam Keen, have changed their minds. Keen says the biggest change he’s experienced in Ashtanga in recent years is a rejection of the notion “that you can push a body further than it will go and that will open it further.” He considers that to be an overly superficial rendering of yoga as flexibility. Instead, he and many other Ashtanga teachers focus on each body’s natural limits.
5. Spending Hours Making an Evocative Playlist for Each Class
Many teachers—and students—love the atmosphere that music can create in a class. Some claim that the right track can bring just the right vibe to a pose or sequence. But suffice it to say that if you’re coming to my class for the music, we’re both in trouble!
6. Believing That Longer Practices are Better Than Shorter Ones
There was a time when 90-minute classes were the norm and 60-minute lunchtime classes felt, at best, like a compromise. But since then I’ve met overtired parents, overwhelmed executives, and overscheduled students who would disagree with the need for practices to be that long.
I’ve also experienced times where I was better supported by several shorter practices than sporadic longer ones. The ideal length of time for a practice is whatever allows you to actually do it.
7. Basing My Perceived Value on Class Attendance
There’s a certain vibe—and, let’s be honest, satisfaction—that takes place in a room packed with students who are moving in unison. But that’s not the only way to teach and it’s not necessarily a better way to teach. Sometimes smaller classes allow you to truly teach in response to what you see. This creates a conversational environment in which you can ask students questions that they have time and space to answer and vice-versa.
Just because I spent hours creating a sequence doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing in my students’ lives—or even in their top 10. People have busy and complex lives. Sometimes they can make it and sometimes they can’t. This typically has nothing to do with the teacher.
8. Shying Away From Mentioning Mental Health
It’s easy to talk about the physical benefits of yoga practice. Perhaps that’s why we assume that’s the primary reason students attend class.
But Daya Grant, PhD, MS, yoga teacher, neuroscientist, and mental performance consultant, says “Mental health matters. In my early days, when I taught yoga at a gym and in corporate settings, I underestimated how eager students were to strengthen mental health, not just cultivate physical well-being.”
She learned not to shy away from teaching more advanced meditation techniques and talking about the crossover between yoga and life with such topics as focus and resilience.
9. Trying to Teach “Like Everyone Else”
A large part of a career as a yoga teacher is learning how to express your personality, values, and relationship with yoga while also meeting your students’ needs. For me, it’s enough to let my slightly off-center humor come out at times.
Teaching authentically may be even more powerful for those who don’t feel they fit into the stereotypical yoga teacher mold. Yoga and mindfulness teacher Rashmi Bismark, MD, MPH, says she no longer tries “to fit into commercialized, asana-focused yoga spaces.”
She acknowledges that “I can be an inclusive teacher, share therapeutic aspects of yoga that ring true to its roots, honor the people in my classes the best way I can, and it still may not meet everyone’s expectations.” Most importantly, Bismark understands that’s okay and it doesn’t make her—or anyone else—more or less of a yoga teacher.
Yoga can be expressed in a variety of ways—through movement, stillness, dancing, writing, storytelling, nurturing community, activism, silence, and more “The more we create space for these expressions, the more we can help students understand the wholeness of yoga,” Bismark explains.
Firdose Moonda is a yoga teacher, journalist, and academic researcher who has had a similar experience. “The more I have studied the history of yoga, the more I’ve moved away from offering it as a fix-all and instead using it as a tool to encourage critical thinking,” she says.
10. Taking Photos or Videos While My Students are in Savasana.
One of my favorite photos of me teaching was taken during Savasana as I was basking in the afterglow of what felt like a clear, cohesive, and useful class. But I don’t share that photo anymore. Even though it’s a potent reminder of why I teach, it now feels like a betrayal of trust.
One of the roles of a yoga teacher is to “hold space,” a somewhat nebulous term that includes focusing on the students’ experience and creating an environment in which they can feel safe. Capturing their image when they are at their most unguarded to promote myself is not compatible with that role.
11. Ending Classes With “Namaste”
When I first heard conflicting explanations as to whether the word “namaste” was appropriate for anyone to use at the end of class, especially non-Indian teachers, it became an educational exercise to find less appropriative and more personal ways to close my classes. The change also prompted engaging conversations with my students.
Each teacher has different students, values, and experiences, so this list won’t resonate for everyone. But one quality all teachers ideally share is the willingness to remain students, and that means we should all be open to letting go of what we think we know how to teach so that we can learn to teach it better.
