As yoga teachers, we face different learner types in every class we teach. Some people are visual learners. Demonstrating poses clicks in for this group. Others respond to manual adjustments. (There’s also a substantial number of people who prefer not to be manually adjusted, especially without permission. But that’s another post.) Still others are verbal learners. For that group, we use yoga cues.

Last year, I posted a blog on how to simplify your cues to give students some quiet time as well to allow them to tune into the present experience of each asana. Today I’d like to tune in a bit more to language.

Why Change Up Your Yoga Cues?

I have been blessed with many long-term yoga students. Recently, a student who’s been attending my classes for 30 years told me that I said something in the class that completely transformed her practice. I was shocked—and pleased. The cue was something I’ve said countless times before. (Do you ever get tired of hearing yourself give the same yoga cues? I do!) Anyway, in this recent case, I changed the wording a bit, and in that moment, my student understood something she hadn’t gotten before.

Our students vary not only in their responses to visual and verbal learning. They also vary in their response to different words. Changing your language just might give even your most stalwart students a new way of experiencing their practice.

As a writer, I’m constantly striving to use words that are more descriptive and less generic—without becoming overly flowery. This is harder to do on the fly, when I’m teaching a class. But it’s doable. Here are a few ways to explore expanding your yoga vocabulary.

A Few Suggestions

• The best way to reword your yoga cues is to reflect on what you’re about to say ahead of time. You might be able to do this on the fly, especially if you teach a slower-paced, non-vinyasa-type class. Before you find yourself about to speak your tried-and-true yoga cue, stop yourself for a moment. Is there another way to convey what you’re about to say? Maybe the cue you’ve always used really is the best way to get your point across. But it can’t hurt to try another wording.
• If it’s easier, you can explore changing up your cues when you’re not teaching. Make a list of your most common yoga cues. Most likely, your preferred wording will come to mind first. Write it down. Then think about how you might word it differently.
• It can be really instructive to record a few classes. Then listen to how you communicate your yoga cues. Can you come up with creative ways to convey the concepts you want to share, without losing clarity?

I find coming up with creative wording to be a great way to juice up my teaching. It not only helps me reach more students, but it also keeps my own teaching fresh. Teaching yoga is an ever-changing process. Changing up your yoga cues can help you evolve as a teacher.

A few years ago there was yoga culture controversy over a teacher who was fired from a corporate yoga class for discouraging cell phones in yoga class. Hired by the company to provide a yoga break for employees, the teacher shot a student a disapproving look when that student in the front row interrupted practice to tap out a text in the middle of class. Apparently the dirty look was enough to get the teacher fired.

Whether or not you approve of cell phones in yoga class, I suppose a corporation who hires a teacher has the right to let that teacher go if she is not following their rules. Fair enough.

By the same token, a teacher has every right to set parameters about a whole range of student behaviors, including allowing or disallowing cell phones, in her own classes. However, the situation gets murky when that teacher is representing a corporation with its own set of rules. Still, it seems a little odd that the teacher’s employer’s first response would be to fire her rather than make her aware of their specific cell phone rules and give her another chance.

Cell Phones in Yoga Class

I very much appreciate being unreachable at times. As an introverted type, I need alone time, without the distractions of phone calls and emails, in order to function at my full potential. The idea of setting my phone next to my yoga mat in my home yoga practice—let alone in a class—so that I can keep up with my emails, phone messages or Facebook feed is unthinkable. When I’m practicing yoga and meditation, my practice works better and feels better if I focus on what’s happening in my body/mind in the present moment.

All this said, I have not banned cell phones from my classes. This is not because I think it’s okay for students to text, talk, or engage with social media in yoga class. It is because my students are mature and considerate enough to understand that fussing with cell phones in yoga class would be inconsiderate to everyone else in the class. I’ve never had to spell out a cell phone rule. My students just get it.

It’s Never Black and White

From what I’ve read in the yoga blogosphere, this is not always the case. In larger studios, people do keep their cell phones with them, ringers on and answer ready. If this is the teacher’s and studio’s wish—to allow cell phones—if all parties know this going into a class situation, then it is certainly their prerogative to come to that agreement. This would not be a class I would want to attend or teach, but that is my prerogative. We all have choices.

There have been maybe a dozen instances over my 39 years of teaching in which a student has alerted me to the fact that she may receive a phone call in class because of some emergency situation. These students have always left the room to talk, and have always let me know beforehand. I am completely fine with this. We all have lives outside yoga, and some things are more important than uninterrupted practice. Fortunately, my other students can roll with these situations.

If you’re a teacher, do you allow cell phones in yoga class? If you’re a student, would you like to be able to use your phone in class, or are you happy for the technology break?

Decades ago the film, Annie Hall, embellished a famous quote about the art of teaching. In the film the quote went like this: “Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym.” (The film’s embellishment is the second sentence.) The quote’s intention was to diss teachers, especially gym teachers I guess. For yoga teachers, it seems to be the opposite. The bendiest among us often choose to teach. We can perform all the fancy poses, after all. But is that always a good thing?

My dad was a gymnast, and I inherited his hypermobile body. So when I started practicing yoga with June Bains, an Indra Devi-trained teacher, I took to it right away. All the poses we practiced depended on flexibility, and in short order, I found myself able to perform everything the teacher offered—to extremes.

When June announced that she would be offering a teacher training, I immediately thought, this is for me. I loved how the practice made me feel. I could do the poses “better” than anyone in the room, I thought. This would be the perfect calling for me.

A few months later, before the training started, I moved to Salt Lake City. June’s training was out of the question. The teachers I found in Salt Lake City—there were only a handful at a time—taught Iyengar yoga. It was a whole new world.

All Standing Poses, All the Time

In every single class we did standing poses. I hated them. My loose-knit body was very unstable, and the loosey-goosey practice I’d been doing probably didn’t help. My body trembled under the barrage of alignment instructions, and from my overabundance of flexibility and lack of strength.

I can’t begin to recount the number of times I heard, “Lift your kneecaps!,” an instruction I was incapable of fulfilling. I’d been unconsciously hyperextending my knees for years and my quads were completely asleep. My quads slid down toward my knees 24/7. Engaging them seemed impossible. In every workshop, teachers called out my hyperextended knees as an example of what not to do.

I’m honestly not sure why I continued. The practice was such a challenge to my ego. But I really liked my teachers, Cita and David Riley, a physical therapist and doctor. Their knowledge was so vast, and I was learning a ton from them.

They brought many senior Iyengar yoga teachers to town: Ramanand Patel, Mary Dunn, Felicity Green, Judith Hanson Lasater, Pujari Keays. These workshops rarely attracted more than 30 people—a number that was considered to be huge at the time. In retrospect, it was an amazing time to be practicing.

Back to Square One

Mary Dunn taught me how to wake up my quads. She took me to the wall. She showed me that I needed to practice with the ball of my foot of my front leg a few inches up the wall and my heel on the floor, at about a 45-degree angle. When I pressed the ball of my foot into the wall, my quads would actually move upward a fraction of an inch. She suggested I practice standing poses this way for at least six months to build strength and intelligence in my quads. It took a year of practicing this way before my quads would engage with my foot flat on the floor.

During that year, my standing poses slowly became more stable. Other things started to fall into place in my standing practice. I found that when I stopped collapsing into my knee joints, my arches began to lift too. I was born with flat feet, and I was amazed to see tiny arches forming. My calves also engaged, pushing my shins forward, which stabilized my knees.

As my legs began supporting me, my breath eased. I could expand in the standing poses instead of fighting just to hold myself up. I no longer found myself grumbling silently as Cita and David talked us through endless standing sequences. When Pujari Keays came to town with his special brand of intensity, I actually began to love standing poses and began to note a newfound stability in the rest of my life too.

The Power of Woodshedding for Yoga Teachers

When I first started teaching, I sequenced classes the way Cita and David had because it was what I knew. I taught lots of standing poses. And I found without fail that the instructions I gave to help students find stability were more thorough and helpful than any I gave for the poses that had been easy for me. Despite my troubled past with standing poses, I came to teaching with a far better understanding of them than the poses I’d found effortless.

Decades of observing my students’ struggles with the poses I found easy have taught me what to look for and how to teach these poses too. But my deepest, most thorough instruction is in standing poses. Having started at square one, I understand my students’ struggles and how to help them through those struggles.

How Challenges Help Yoga Teachers

So maybe the “Those who can’t do, teach” quote isn’t a diss after all. Maybe it’s those who had to learn the rudiments that make the best teachers. If yoga was about performing fancy poses and posting our prowess on Instagram and Facebook, perhaps the quote would have some merit. But it’s not.

The vast majority of yoga practitioners will never perform extreme backbends or slide their ankles behind their heads. Most people are just not built that way. Teachers who are “born on third base and think they hit a triple,” as the saying goes, have a lot of work to do to understand where most of their students are coming from.

Asana practice is about finding steadiness and ease in the pose you are practicing at this moment. A teacher who understands in her gut, from her own experience, that the journey is the practice will likely be able to teach the majority of students with empathy and understanding.

Prasarita Padottanasana (Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend Pose) is one of yoga’s more relaxing standing poses. Its symmetrical shape keeps your pelvis, sacroiliac joint and spine neutral, while the active rooting of your feet and legs allows your upper body to be soft and receptive. These benefits are available to pretty much everyone—with a little help from a Yoga Block.

Why Practice Prasarita Padottanasana?

Practicing Prasarita Padottanasana confers many benefits. It strengthens and stretches the inner legs, hamstrings and spine; tones the abdominal organs; and calms the brain. It’s said to relieve some headaches and reduce fatigue.

Prasarita can be contraindicated for people with tight hamstrings. When your hamstrings are taut, your pelvis can’t tilt forward along with the spine. This can put pressure on the discs in the lower back, which could lead to disc problems. Also, curling the torso forward in order to reach the floor contracts your abdominal muscles, restricting free breathing.

Using a Yoga Block in Prasarita Padottanasana can help people of all levels of flexibility practice safely and comfortably. Anyone can benefit from using a Yoga Block in this pose. My hips and hamstrings are quite flexible, but I still enjoy using a block in this pose for the feeling of continuity it creates in my torso. Several of my most bendy students enjoy using a block as well.

Yoga Blocks are available in cork, 3-inch or 4-inch foam, marbled foam, recycled foam or wood. Hugger Mugger’s Big Block is extra large for extra stability and comfort.

How to Practice Prasarita Padottanasana with a Yoga Block

1. Begin by standing on a nonskid Yoga Mat with your feet hips-width apart.
2. Jump or step your feet out to a wide stance, about a leg-length apart.
3. Plant your feet into the ground, feeling the footprint you are making on your mat. Are the inner and outer heels and balls of your feet planted evenly? If not, chances are you may feel the weight sagging into your inner feet. Allow the muscles and skin of your outer legs to stream down along your bones from your hips to your outer feet to help you root the feet more evenly.
4. Place your hands on your hips. Bending from your hip joints, let your torso come forward as far as it will go without losing contact with deep breathing.
5. Place your hands on the floor and take a few breaths. Now place your hands on a Yoga Block and check in to see how that changes your breathing. A Big Blue Block or two 4-inch Yoga Blocks work best, but you can also use a single 4-inch Yoga Block. Each block has three dimensions: tall, medium and flat. Try each one to see which feels best.
6. Stay for 5 or 10 deep breaths.
7. To come up, place your hands on your hips and lift back up to an upright position. Place your palms together in front of your heart, bend your knees slightly and allow the weight of your pelvis to release into your legs. Relax your abdomen and breathe deeply, resting.

I regularly offer hip workshops at various teacher trainings in the region where I live. As the recipient of bilateral hip replacements, I’ve learned a lot about which poses and ways of approaching asanas promote healthy yoga practice, and which do not. Being bone on bone in your hip joints provides an unmistakable signal as to when to proceed or when to back off.

In one training, a student who had been teaching in a fitness studio asked a very important question. She explained that one of her female students became unusually flexible prior to ovulation. This occurs in many women because of the presence of “relaxin,” a hormone that relaxes the ligaments that hold together the various joints in the pelvis—hip joints, sacroiliac joints and pubic symphisis. The teacher said that she encouraged the student to move further into poses at that period in her cycle since she was already more flexible. “Should I continue doing this?” she asked.

Thirty years ago I would have said yes. In fact, I did encourage women to take advantage of their relaxin-induced flexibility during pregnancy. No more.

Ligaments Are Not Supposed to be Floppy

Fortunately, the third(!) time I took anatomy, the importance of understanding the structures of ligaments and tendons finally sank in. (For clarification, ligaments connect bone to bone in our joints; tendons connect muscle to bone at the joints.) Ligaments and tendons are constructed of dense, collagenous, connective tissue. Ligaments are dense, fibrous tissues that are designed to limit the movement of our joints.

Please repeat this three times:  Ligaments’ main function is to limit the movement of our joints.

This is also very important:  Ligaments and tendons are avascular, i.e. containing no blood flow of their own. Oxygen and other nutrients diffuse into ligaments and tendons from cells outside the tissues. Because these structures need to be strong, they are largely mostly collagen fibers with some elastin to create a small amount of stretch.

Don’t Sprain Your Body!

Have you ever sprained an ankle? How long did it take to heal, and did it ever return to its former stability? When you sprain your ankle, you overstretch ligaments. Because the tissue is avascular, it does not heal as quickly as muscle does. Ligaments do not have the “memory” that muscle tissue has. When you overstretch ligaments, there’s a good chance they will not bounce back to their former length.

If ligaments are meant to protect joints by limiting their movement, continually over-stretching joints can lead to joint instability over time. I know a number of serious practitioners who are now in their 50s—including myself—who regret having overstretched our joints back in the day. All too many longtime practitioners now own artificial joints to replace the ones they overused. Those fancy poses way back when were not worth their consequences.

Flexible people have a much stronger tendency to overstretch joints than stiffer people do. Armed with the pervasive “no pain, no gain” philosophy, we flexies tend to keep stretching until we feel pain. Because we don’t feel much in normal range of motion, we collapse into our joints where there’s plenty of sensation. Not only does this overstretch our ligaments, it causes us to hang or push into our joint capsules, which can wear down the cartilage that protects our joints and keeps them articulating smoothly.

The Counterintuitive Answer for Healthy Yoga Practice

My advice to the student’s question was to encourage her student to protect her joints, to do less rather than more. Counterintuitive, I know, especially when many asana classes encourage people to push past their limits and rock those fancy poses. If a person’s ligaments are unstable because of an infusion of relaxin—or by excessive heat or any other outside factor—that creates a situation of imbalance in the joints.

You wouldn’t encourage a muscle-bound yoga student to try to stiffen up. Equally, a too-flexible student doesn’t benefit from becoming even more flexible. Too much flexibility is just as unhealthy is too much stiffness. Balance is what we’re going for in asana practice. Familiarize yourself with what normal range of motion looks like.

Stretch Gently for Healthy Yoga Practice

By all means, do practice to maintain flexibility in your muscles, and remember that it takes 30 seconds of continuous stretching for your muscle spindle neuron to actually allow your muscle to habituate to a new, longer length. So take your time, and be gentle. When you feel tissue stretching along the bones—as long as that stretch is not extreme—it’s probably healthy. When you feel discomfort in a joint, please stop doing what you’re doing. And please protect your students’ future joints by teaching them the difference.

If you’re interested in exploring this further, my book Hip-Healthy Asana provides anatomical information, practice tips and a list of hip-healthy poses.

Decades ago the film, Annie Hall, embellished a famous quote about the art of teaching. In the film the quote went like this: “Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym.” (The film’s embellishment is the second sentence.) The quote’s intention was to diss teachers, especially gym teachers I guess. For yoga teachers, it seems to be the opposite. The bendiest among us often choose to teach. We can perform all the fancy poses, after all. But is that always a good thing?

My dad was a gymnast, and I inherited his hypermobile body. So when I started practicing yoga with June Bains, an Indra Devi-trained teacher, I took to it right away. All the poses we practiced depended on flexibility, and in short order, I found myself able to perform everything the teacher offered—to extremes.

When June announced that she would be offering a teacher training, I immediately thought, this is for me. I loved how the practice made me feel. I could do the poses “better” than anyone in the room, I thought. This would be the perfect calling for me.

A few months later, before the training started, I moved to Salt Lake City. June’s training was out of the question. The teachers I found in Salt Lake City—there were only a handful at a time—taught Iyengar yoga. It was a whole new world.

All Standing Poses, All the Time

In every single class we did standing poses. I hated them. My loose-knit body was very unstable, and the loosey-goosey practice I’d been doing probably didn’t help. My body trembled under the barrage of alignment instructions, and from my overabundance of flexibility and lack of strength.

I can’t begin to recount the number of times I heard, “Lift your kneecaps!,” an instruction I was incapable of fulfilling. I’d been unconsciously hyperextending my knees for years and my quads were completely asleep. My quads slid down toward my knees 24/7. Engaging them seemed impossible. In every workshop, teachers called out my hyperextended knees as an example of what not to do.

I’m honestly not sure why I continued. The practice was such a challenge to my ego. But I really liked my teachers, Cita and David Riley, a physical therapist and doctor. Their knowledge was so vast, and I was learning a ton from them.

They brought many senior Iyengar yoga teachers to town: Ramanand Patel, Mary Dunn, Felicity Green, Judith Hanson Lasater, Pujari Keays. These workshops rarely attracted more than 30 people—a number that was considered to be huge at the time. In retrospect, it was an amazing time to be practicing.

Back to Square One

Mary Dunn taught me how to wake up my quads. She took me to the wall. She showed me that I needed to practice with the ball of my foot of my front leg a few inches up the wall and my heel on the floor, at about a 45-degree angle. When I pressed the ball of my foot into the wall, my quads would actually move upward a fraction of an inch. She suggested I practice standing poses this way for at least six months to build strength and intelligence in my quads. It took a year of practicing this way before my quads would engage with my foot flat on the floor.

During that year, my standing poses slowly became more stable. Other things started to fall into place in my standing practice. I found that when I stopped collapsing into my knee joints, my arches began to lift too. I was born with flat feet, and I was amazed to see tiny arches forming. My calves also engaged, pushing my shins forward, which stabilized my knees.

As my legs began supporting me, my breath eased. I could expand in the standing poses instead of fighting just to hold myself up. I no longer found myself grumbling silently as Cita and David talked us through endless standing sequences. When Pujari Keays came to town with his special brand of intensity, I actually began to love standing poses and began to note a newfound stability in the rest of my life too.

The Power of Woodshedding for Yoga Teachers

When I first started teaching, I sequenced classes the way Cita and David had because it was what I knew. I taught lots of standing poses. And I found without fail that the instructions I gave to help students find stability were more thorough and helpful than any I gave for the poses that had been easy for me. Despite my troubled past with standing poses, I came to teaching with a far better understanding of them than the poses I’d found effortless.

Decades of observing my students’ struggles with the poses I found easy have taught me what to look for and how to teach these poses too. But my deepest, most thorough instruction is in standing poses. Having started at square one, I understand my students’ struggles and how to help them through those struggles.

How Challenges Help Yoga Teachers

So maybe the “Those who can’t do, teach” quote isn’t a diss after all. Maybe it’s those who had to learn the rudiments that make the best teachers. If yoga was about performing fancy poses and posting our prowess on Instagram and Facebook, perhaps the quote would have some merit. But it’s not.

The vast majority of yoga practitioners will never perform extreme backbends or slide their ankles behind their heads. Most people are just not built that way. Teachers who are “born on third base and think they hit a triple,” as the saying goes, have a lot of work to do to understand where most of their students are coming from.

Asana practice is about finding steadiness and ease in the pose you are practicing at this moment. A teacher who understands in her gut, from her own experience, that the journey is the practice will likely be able to teach the majority of students with empathy and understanding.

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about how to simplify your yoga cues. If you’ve ever been in a yoga class where the cues were coming at you fast and furiously, you may know how confusing it can be. I love hearing teachers explain practice in ways I’d never imagined. But sometimes constant cueing can leave no space for our own exploration. Yoga cues are very important, for students’ safety and for their growth. But if I could only give one yoga cue in my classes it would be this: Relax into where you are.

A Yoga Cue for Mastery of Asana Practice

This yoga cue aligns with Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Of the 196 yoga sutras, these three are concerned with asana practice (as translated by Alistair Shearer):

• 2.46: The physical posture should be steady and comfortable.
• 2.47: It is mastered when all effort is relaxed and the mind is absorbed in the Infinite.
• 2.48: Then we are no longer upset by the play of opposites.

In Sutra 2.46, we learn that asana is a practice of balance—balancing stability and ease. The third niyama, tapas (inner fire) inspires us to be steady in our commitment, and strong and stable in our expression of the poses. But we balance this with a sense of ease, never pushing ourselves to the point of pain or struggle.

Balancing these two qualities opens the door to mastery. What Sutra 2.47 tells us is that mastery of asana has nothing to do with pushing our bodies to the max, or practicing “advanced” poses. Mastery arrives when we are able to relax into where we are. When we are able to relax into a pose just as it is—regardless of what it may look like from the outside—our minds and bodies become one. We become absorbed in the ever-changing sensations arising in each moment of a pose.

Our ability to rest in each moment of each pose, no matter what sensations happen to be arising, yields the most life-changing benefit of asana practice. Sutra 2.48 states that when we have mastered asana in this way, we are able to navigate the ups and downs of our lives with more grace.

Intentions for a New Year

I’ve often said when we’re practicing a seated forward bend in my classes, “Enlightenment doesn’t come from touching your head to your knee. Relax into where you are.” Of course, that doesn’t mean instant enlightenment will happen when we relax into our poses just as they are. But perhaps, for a few moments, we can touch into our inner resource of calm and peace when we allow ourselves to simply be in our poses without judgment or ambition. We can shift from the realm of doing to the realm of being.

Practicing asana in this way can help us cultivate a habit of relaxing into where we are in other areas of our lives. We all experience pleasant and unpleasant experiences in our lives. Peace doesn’t come from avoiding the unpleasant experiences; it comes from meeting them with both stability and clarity. When we practice this yoga cue on the mat, it becomes a skill we can access off the mat.

As we head into a new year, may you relax into where you are right now. May you cultivate stability and ease and enjoy the pleasures of simply being.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a sensation that’s all too familiar, a little scratchiness at the back of my throat. That’s how a cold/flu/sinus infection always starts for me. I’ve been throwing some herbal defenses its way and it doesn’t seem to be getting worse, but it’s not getting better either. But I’m very clear that it’s not a good idea to teach yoga today.

By far the most stressful part of being ill—besides the misery of the illness itself—is making sure my yoga classes are covered, especially when it comes on suddenly. I’ve always been a “trooper:” If I can stand up, I can work. However, it’s different when your work is teaching yoga (or anything else). Soldiering on may not be in everyone’s best interests.

I’m fortunate to have a competent pool of subs, but they’re not always available at the last minute. So what to do? I think it depends on the nature of the illness.

When Is It Okay to Teach Yoga When You’re Not 100 Percent?

With many maladies, like sore throats and sinus infections, the most contagious period is early, often before symptoms surface. In those cases, you’re usually safe to teach when you feel strong enough to do so.

Even so, sinus conditions are messy, and I avoid direct contact with students. I also avoid handling the props in the space where I teach, especially the eye pillows. I use my own personal mat and bring my own blanket to sit on.

Inform Yourself

It’s important to be informed as to the nature of the illness you’re dealing with. If you aren’t seeing a doctor, call your local health department and describe your illness. They will likely be aware of the illness du jour in your area, and can give you a good idea as to when you are no longer contagious.

For example, there are common illnesses, such as norovirus (the violent digestive malady that appears in waves every few years), that are highly contagious for several days after you stop having symptoms. Most people assume that once they feel better, they’re no longer contagious. But that’s not true for norovirus. All too often people they end up with this nasty gombu because neither they nor their friends/family members realize they are still contagious even when they feel pretty good.

Viruses such as Covid and flu are unpredictable. Viruses mutate, so each season’s version of these diseases will be different. It’s important to find out what CDC is saying about the contagion period at the time you’ve contracted any virus.

Remember ahimsa (non-harming) the foundation of yoga? It’s far less harmful to students for a teacher to cancel a class than it is to expose them to something like Covid, flu or norovirus.

In a Nutshell

Here are some guidelines for when to teach, when not to and how to keep students safe when you do:

• Find out the nature of your illness, from your doctor or from the health department, so you know when you are contagious and when you are likely to be safe.
• Don’t teach yoga if you think you might still be contagious. Just don’t.
• If at all possible, don’t teach yoga until you feel strong enough to give your students your full attention and energy.
• Keep your hands off publicly used props until you are fully recovered.
• Wash your eye pillows regularly during the cold/flu season. Since I wash my studio eye pillows at least once a month year round—more during the winter months—I use eye pillows filled with plastic beads. You can soak them in a sink of hot, soapy water and hang them to dry. They’re way easier to wash than the ones with flax seed filling and/or flax seed and herbal filling, which you have to empty out and wash just the covers. I love the feel of the flax seeds and use them in my own personal eye pillow, but when you’re washing 25-30 studio eye pillows the plastic beads are a great alternative. Our Piccolo Eye Pillows (with flax or herbal filling) are easy to wash regardless of their filling. They have a removable outer cover that you can wash by itself without having to empty out the filling.
• Avoid adjusting, hugging or otherwise contacting students until you are fully recovered.
  Use PUREMAT Mat & Gear Wash to clean your mats and blocks, and encourage your students to clean the studio mats they use after class.
• Take care of yourself! Give yourself plenty of time to recover. Do some Restorative practice. Dragging yourself through a class is no fun. Your students would rather see you healthy and vibrant.

The Problem with Pigeon Pose

But the more I began to delve into hip health, the more I realize that Pigeon Pose is likely problematic for many practitioners. I’ve stopped teaching it. Here’s why:

• Pigeon Pose places a very strong asymmetrical force on the sacroiliac joints (SI joints). In Pigeon, the external rotators and abductors on front-leg side of the SI joint stretch, while the back-leg side of the SI joint compresses.
• Gravity. When the pelvis is off the ground or even barely grazing the ground in Pigeon, the weight of the torso amplifies the asymmetrical force on the SI joint.
• More often than not, the back leg’s position necessitates that the neck of its femur will press into the anterior border of the hip socket. Over time, this can wear down the labrum that rings the socket and the cartilage on the head of the femur.
• Tightness in the external rotators and abductors can transfer into the knee of the front leg, putting shearing pressure on the knee joint.

Can Pigeon Pose Be Saved?

Is there a way to rectify the problems with Pigeon Pose? In the past few years, before retiring the pose altogether, I suggested that everyone elevate the pelvis by sitting on a Yoga Block. This can relieve some of the problems. For some though, those whose hips are already off the floor, a block may or may not be high enough to prevent the weight of the torso from exacerbating the asymmetrical effects inherent in the pose. Also, there are practitioners who simply don’t want to use a block, and will practice the pose without it.

Kapotasana Alternatives

So what to do instead? Three options come to mind: Supta Ardha Padmasana (Supine Half Lotus), Gomukhasana (Cow Face Pose) and Agnisthambasana (Fire Log Pose). All three help relieve tension in the external rotators and abductors, but since both legs are in flexion in these poses, the action on the SI joint is much more symmetrical.

Of the two, Supta Ardha Padmasana is the safest choice for most people. Because it’s practiced lying down, it’s easier to keep track of the integrity of your spine. As always, it’s best to learn these poses from an experienced teacher who understands the importance of maintaining a healthy spinal position, and can teach you how to understand this for yourself.

Final Thoughts

Modern postural yoga seems to have a bit of an obsession with hip opening. While it’s important to maintain mobility in the hips—especially since so many of us spend lots of time sitting in chairs in front of a computer—stability is just as important. The practice of asana is not about becoming ever more flexible. It’s about balance—the balance between flexibility and stability. Hip-opening practice should always include hip stabilizing practice as well—standing balance poses and Utkatasana (Fierce Pose), for example.

As with all yoga practice, it’s helpful to remember that we’re not all cookie-cutter replicas of each other. There may, indeed, be some people for whom Pigeon Pose yields positive results. But in the context of a yoga class populated with varied body types, I don’t feel Pigeon is the healthiest choice.

Holding space for our students when we struggle mentally, emotionally, or physically can be challenging, but it’s not impossible. In fact, it’s a vital part of teaching yoga.

Like many of you, I’m no stranger to this struggle. At the time of this writing, my husband has been battling a terminal illness for 11 years. I’ve raised four kids, three to adulthood, and one who is currently a teenager. 

There have been many days when I’ve gone from the emergency room or dealing with a teenager’s meltdown straight to the studio to teach a room full of eager yogis ready to feel embodied. 

I’m not saying this is easy, nor am I any more special than you are. I am saying that if we are dedicated and willing to go back to our yoga roots and what made us fall in love with the practice in the first place, we can continue to live in our Dharma when things get tough and hold space for our students. 

Now, I’m about to share the five things that have helped me the most and invite you to try them for yourself. Remember, your wellbeing is just as important as your students.’

Roll Out Your Yoga Mat

I hear teachers say all the time that it is hard to take the time to get on their yoga mats because they are teaching all the time. I’m here to tell you that if we, as yoga teachers, aren’t doing the work we so diligently and lovingly share with others, we are missing the mark. If we aren’t walking the walk, it will come at a cost to our mental and physical wellbeing. Taking other teachers’ classes also makes us better teachers because we can get out of our heads and become more embodied, and our students will feel that shift in our energy.

The 10-Minute Rule

Show up to your class 10 minutes early and sit in your car or a quiet place to gather your thoughts without looking at your phone or obsessing over the last part of the sequence you forgot and just breathe. Spoiler alert: If you forget a part of the sequence, no one will know but you. Getting good at improvisation is helpful. After class, take 10 minutes to walk around the space outside or to sit and breathe again to gather your thoughts before returning to the world. Be mindful of your posture and the tension you hold in your body, and then allow yourself to relax. 

Have a Class Back-Up Plan When You’re Teaching Yoga

Have three “signature classes” in your back pocket, or yoga bag, in case you’re caught without time to create something new. This would be sequence, theme, and playlist (if you use music). This strategy takes loads of stress off. When you know there is always a backup plan, you won’t feel flustered trying to come up with something on the fly. It is also helpful if you’re filling in as a sub for another yoga teacher. I’d suggest writing down your theme on a piece of paper, adding a “nickname” for your backup signature classes, and put it in your bag because we know technology can fail us. 

Find the Moments in Between

Finding moments to allow ourselves to just be while letting go of titles and expectations is vital to maintaining mental wellbeing. This means giving ourselves time to process thoughts, feelings, and emotions. This could look like intentionally leaving a few minutes in between appointments. Try sitting in your car for 10 minutes before you go into a building or the place you live. Taking a breather can allow you to breathe and come back to embodiment. Remember, these moments are yours to claim for self-reflection and relaxation.

Teaching Yoga is a Process—Give Yourself Some Grace

You are human, and no one expects you to be a superhero. It’s impossible to have every class flow 100 percent how you envisioned it. If you’re being authentic, people will feel that. People are over the days of expecting perfection. They want to show up and take an hour to unwind and feel more at ease. Your students aren’t concerned that you forgot how to pronounce Utkatasana (Fierce Pose). They want you, the real you, to show them how to become more embodied. We can do that most effectively when we remember to embodied ourselves. 

There we have it, Yogis. I hope this helps you step onto your mat and live your Dharma even when things are difficult. Above all else, remember to return to your roots and why you fell in love with yoga. 

I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a reply below.