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“How’s everyone doing?”
“What brings you to class today?”
“Anything going on with your bodies you’d like me to be aware of?”
These may sound like simple questions yoga teachers ask at the beginning of class. But sometimes the responses to these icebreakers are waaay more than you bargained for. Whether a trauma dump about a recent heartbreak or a retelling of a verbal altercation over a parking spot, what students divulge—and the personal nature of it—can be flooring.
Students can overwhelm the class with their own emotional needs, treating class as therapy. (Yoga teachers can be guilty of oversharing, too.) When this happens, it takes time and focus away from everyone’s experience of yoga. Yet most yoga teachers have little training in how to handle this dynamic.
“Not allowing someone to encroach on your—or your class’s—energetic and emotional space is an important skill to have,” says Juliana Anastasoff, whose community health program at UNM-Taos trains future health workers in setting boundaries with their clients.
Although it can feel challenging to address these moments with sensitivity, you can empower yourself with strategies that get class back on track with respect for everyone…and help limit oversharing before it happens.
How to Prevent Student Oversharing in Class
Since students’ cultures, families, and personalities can lead to very different ideas about how and how much to disclose about themselves, it pays to establish what creates a safe climate for everyone.
Start With Silence
Is talking *actually* necessary or helpful before class? Agnello advises teachers to carefully consider this. Asking open-ended questions can set the stage for student oversharing, so you can opt to forgo them altogether.
As students file into class and settle on their mats, perhaps you sit or stretch quietly. This can set the tone for class and encourage silence among students.
Give Students Space to Feel
Some students come to class with difficult emotions; that doesn’t mean they need to talk about them. As a teacher, you can find ways to show compassion without opening the door to oversharing.
At the start of class, you can open with a meditation that gives students a chance to silently acknowledge difficult experiences or feelings. Agnello likes to invite students to notice what, if anything, is bothering them. “Maybe we can inhale what we need more of and exhale what we want to release,” she explains. This is also a lesson on pratipaksha bhavanam, or “channeling the opposite.” For instance, you can have students exhale their anxiety, sadness, or anger, and inhale joy, peace, and love.
If you do choose to offer verbal check-ins with students about how they’re feeling, you may want to set time limits—Agnello suggests 30 seconds to a minute—or even a one-word share.
Provide a Safe Framework For Sharing During Trainings
In workshops and teacher trainings, student sharing is often essential. These disclosures can be valuable and even illuminating, broadening the awareness of everyone in the room. At the same time, emotional unloading can feel almost sanctioned in these environments, ultimately burdening the sharer and the listeners.
It’s not that emotions are off limits. “There are some students who can share personal information in a matter-of-fact way,” Anastassoff says. She has observed students skillfully connect their personal stories to the subjects under discussion. The important thing is that contributions benefit and not burden the class, she explains.
Having the class collectively decide upon rules for sharing can help. Anastasoff has students come up with what she calls “agreements.” Since students generate the agreements themselves, they are ultimately accountable to each other. She also values the exercise as a strategy for instructors to model how to share power with their students.
To introduce agreement-setting, Anastasoff starts by reminding students of the topics under discussion. This could be something like, “Today, we’ll be talking about some of the tough experiences that can affect the chakras.” Then, to kick off the brainstorming, she asks, “In order for everyone to feel supported and comfortable, what do we need from each other?” Anastasoff suggests making sure all students are heard. Depending on the size and length of your class, you could try giving everyone up to a minute to speak.
Anastasoff writes students’ ideas down and asks the group what this looks like, a process that can be used to nudge ideas around appropriate sharing. If someone’s agreement is nonviolence (ahimsa), she might inquire what this looks like. Does it mean not interrupting? Not using inflammatory language?
“Inevitably, the things that I might dictate from a place of authority, they come up with on their own,” says Anastasoff.
How to Curb Student Oversharing While It’s Happening
Despite your best efforts to stop oversharing before it starts, class can still be sidetracked by student disclosures that zap time and energy. It can be tricky to halt sharing that is underway, and to know what to say in its wake.
We may feel ungenerous if we interrupt, or move on to a different subject, but Anastasoff emphasizes that boundaries benefit the group. “You are there to serve a classroom of people. And if you’re being distracted, or if class is being monopolized by the needs of one individual, then that’s not fair to others,” she says.
With a few strategies in hand, you can show students you value them while also refocusing class to benefit everyone.
Offer Validation
To help reaffirm a student’s experiences and emotions, validation is really important, according to Agnello. She and Anastasoff suggest teachers express this to an oversharing student by saying:
- “Thank you so much for sharing this.”
- “Thank you for being so raw.”
- “Thank you for trusting us.”
- “It’s taken a lot for you to be here.”
Then you can swiftly redirect the class to the subject at hand.
Take Responsibility
Make yourself accountable for the student’s oversharing. For instance, if a student’s story is encroaching on the class time, Agnello suggests saying something like, “You know what? I’m so sorry; I made a mistake. I wasn’t clear on time limits; in the interest of giving everybody equal airtime, we can only give you one more minute.”
You could even take responsibility for not being clear about your scope, which, as a yoga teacher, doesn’t include offering counseling. “I’m sorry: I wasn’t clear on my scope as a yoga teacher; if we go any farther, I may be tempted to give you advice, which is something I’m not trained to do. But what I can do is teach yoga.” From here, you can seamlessly transition into the practice.
Look Ahead
A class coopted by oversharing is a class that has lost its forward momentum. Bring up what is coming next in the class or training, and, if you can, situate it as something that will benefit the oversharing student.
You could say:
- “I’m hoping today’s practice gives us the chance to process some of the emotions that are coming up today.”
- “Today’s focus is pranayama, which some students find calming.”
- If the student has broached a subject that will be addressed later in your time together, you could assure them, “This is something we will be talking about a little more in our second session. I’ll be curious to know if you find that valuable.”
Offer Self-Care Strategies to the Group
Sometimes support can be offered to the whole group in such a way that no one is singled out. If, while sharing, a student seems to be struggling with their emotions, you could say something along the lines of, “It’s normal to experience fluctuations of the mind; stilling those fluctuations can be so challenging that a host of different yoga techniques were developed over centuries to help. This might be a good time to try one, and see how well it works for us.” Then you can guide the group into meditation or another calming practice.
A grounding technique that the whole group can try is sensory awareness. “Name five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, one thing you can taste,” is a classic approach Agnello recommends.
Next time a student overshares, consider it an opportunity to tune into the needs of the room and choose your reaction with care. The boundaries that create safety will shift depending on the students in the room and other variables. The same strategy probably won’t work every time—and that’s okay. Stay present to understand the needs of a given situation, just as you do in your yoga practice.
Boundary-setting can be a kindness, a way of modeling care for oneself and the community. In fact, by gently drawing some lines, you may even inspire students to draw lines for themselves.
