April 17, 2021
Vision for a Private Yoga Teaching Practice Part One: Biomechanical Modalities
About this episode: Jeff discusses various biomechanical modalities adjacent to yoga, whose influence can be an important factor in the cultivation of the vision of a yoga teaching practice, particularly in the one-to-one setting.
Recorded in the backyard on a rainy day.
Links mentioned:
www.yogaonetoone.com
Your Yoga Consultation Cheat Sheet
More links in the body of the show notes.
OVERVIEW/SUMMARY:
Most yoga teacher training programs focus on teaching in the group setting.
Over the past couple of decades, the number of yoga practitioners has exploded to now 40 million people, and so have yoga teacher training programs, in response.
The old-fashioned way, however, was for one yoga teacher to teach one student at a time.
This began to change when Sri Rama Krishna directed Vivakananda and others to take the yoga practices into the world, which led to yoga being introduced to the West.
B.K.S. Iyengar and Swami Yogananda had a tremendous impact on yoga practices in the United States over the past century.
How can a teacher come out of a yoga teacher training, which may have focused on group classes, and prepare themselves specifically to teach in the one-to-one setting?
Open your mind to, not only other lineages of yoga than the one you have trained in, but in other biomechanical modalities that may be adjacent to the yoga practice. This is part of claiming your own practice and keeping the beginner’s mind.
Additional modalities may include Pilates, the Alexander Technique, the Trager Approach, Feldenkrais, energy practices, and others. The private yoga teacher will benefit from personal experience with these modalities to expand their toolkit for working with students with a variety of needs, backgrounds, and abilities.
How does the yoga teacher begin to discern what modalities might be valuable in their teaching practice? They must implement these modalities in their own personal practice and test their value that way. A teacher should not bring to a student what they have not experienced themselves.
In addition to the modalities listed above, biomechanical pioneers/pioneering ideas of the 20th century worth investigating:
Ida Rolf (developer of the Rolfing technique).
Upledger Institute (craniosacral practices)
Muscle activation techniques
Doug Keller
Thomas Myers (Anatomy Trains)
Erik Dalton
Dr. Timothy McCall
Dr. John Sarno
The Bates Eye Method
Related disciplines of body/voice and speech/movement/dance instruction are valuable, such as:
Kristin Linklater
Cicely Berry
Voice and the actor : Berry, Cicely : Free Download, Borrow, and Streami...
Includes index
These alternate modalities can open the door to the more subtle aspects of the yoga practice.
The most important component of the private yoga teaching practice, however, is loving your students.
Seek beyond your own confirmation biases, remain curious, challenge what you know.
Work directly with massage therapists, physical therapists, and chiropractors. Learn what works and what doesn’t. Integrate your experience.
On a practical level, your connection with these other practitioners can develop into networks that can serve your students, yourself, and these other practitioners through referrals.
To sum up: have a beginner’s mind, seek beyond your confirmation bias, remain curious, be grounded, engage in daily practice (awareness, discipline, self examination grounded in biomechanics), connect with practitioners of other modalities and experience them, communicate in terms of the biomechanics and allow that to integrate into more subtle, deeper, broader practices.
