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Have you ever taken a yoga class in which the teacher’s cues consistently landed at the exact moment you needed them and not a moment sooner or later? The experience can feel so seamless, so intuitive, it’s easy to underestimate the amount of work it takes by the teacher.
One of the most challenging aspects of learning how to teach yoga is navigating the need to expertly move students from one pose to another. It’s one thing to memorize the anatomical theory and litany of alignment cues for each pose during your yoga teacher training. It’s quite another to take that static theory and translate it to actual cues in a way that’s concise enough to synchronize movement with breath.
Teachers are typically taught to cue yoga poses as static shapes. That means there are yoga cues for the position of a foot, knee, hip, spine, and arm as well as a drishti (gaze point). When you begin to add to this already lengthy list of cues the instructions for breath and movement, you end up cramming too much information into the brief space between an inhalation and an exhalation.
The rapid-fire, stream-of-consciousness cueing that can result creates an erratic rhythm that’s based on the length of your cues and not the length of students’ breath. And that can feel overwhelming—especially for those who turn to the practice as a respite from the headlong rush of life.
How to Cue Yoga Poses Concisely
Several years into teaching yoga, I took a training that taught a simple structure for cueing movement felt revelatory: Breath + Body Part + Direction.
For example:
“Inhale right leg high.”
“Exhale right foot between your hands.”
“Inhale torso and arms lift.”
“Exhale palms plant at the front of the mat.”
Because you have only seconds to cue with each phase of the breath and leave time to breathe yourself, this means prioritizing only the most crucial information, which is what is moving and where. This approach nails that.
To be honest, I didn’t immediately embrace this framework. In fact, I struggled to teach this way. It felt too short, too curt, as if I was barking orders instead of sharing guidance. But when I practiced it in class, I felt calmer and more grounded in my own breath. I also found that my pacing was more even and driven by the rhythm of the breath rather than the amount of information I had to cram in. That was enough to encourage me to try again.
Even though the unaccustomed assertiveness of this style took me some time to adjust to, I felt more confident over time. More importantly, my students seemed more relaxed and more present.
How I Cue My Yoga Classes Years Later
I continue to cue the flow portion of class as concisely as I can in this manner. Of course, not every cue fits this mold. Sometimes it makes more sense to cue in a slightly different order or way. For example “Inhale, stand tall” or “exhale, step forward.”
As a teacher, you learn to continually adjust to the situation. One thing that you need to understand is you can cue for precise and nuanced alignment in a pose and you can cue for efficient movement in between poses. But you can’t do both at the same time.
When your sequence calls for spending a little time building, adjusting, and integrating a pose, let your students linger for several breaths as you share more nuanced alignment cues. Then when your sequence calls for a rhythmic vinyasa, let go of the details and allow movement itself to be the objective.
Like any new skill, this one will probably take some time to learn. And when you make the effort, it will very likely create exactly what your class, and you, have needed.
RELATED: What I Learned About Cues in YTT Wasn’t Working. This Is What I Do Instead.
