04 Feb Why I Teach Yoga Differently (Yoga in Hounslow)
Namaste.
I hope you are all well and happy!
While I was away in Canterbury I used the opportunity to try out all the local classes whether they were Olympic Weightlifting, Yoga or African dance classes.
The classes reminded me of something very important that in my experience most teachers don’t put enough emphasis on.
When we first start any physical activity we dramatically underestimate how technical even the seemly most simple exercises are.
For an exercise to be safe and beneficial we must perform it correctly.
All of us would acknowledge that we need to perform any exercise correctly for it to be safe and beneficial for us.
Obviously if we perform the exercise incorrectly we cannot blame the exercise for any injury it causes us or for not giving us our desired results.
It’s not enough to just listen to the instructions, our mind and body have to be capable of following the instructions.
It’s no good knowing what position your hips should be in if you physically can’t get your hips into that position or if your mind is unable to tell what position your hips are in!
Performing an exercise wrong over and over again just leads to pain and injury.
That’s why I don’t follow the usual pattern of just throwing the class into doing round after round of Surya Namaskara with minimal instruction after a brief warm-up.
I make sure I build everyone up right from the foundation. I don’t expect people to have the first few floors in place already.
Youngsters can bounce back from injuries but for people aged 40+ injuries can end up being something you have to live with for the rest of your life.
Once we get into our 40’s and 50’s our exercise regime will play a big part in determining whether we stay healthy and independent in our old age.
So for me getting my students fundamentally sound to the point where they can perform the exercise correctly is crucial.
To perform an exercise correctly requires us to have several things in place first.
Here are 5 examples.
Mind-Body Connection
During a yoga class you will be instructed to squeeze specific muscles or groups of muscles that are critical to performing an asana safely and effectively.
You may for example be asked to squeeze your Glutes (buttocks).
These are the largest muscles in your body and being able to squeeze them during various exercises is essential to protecting your back and your hamstrings.
If you run to catch a bus and pull a hamstring muscle, it’s probably because your glutes were asleep at the time.
Unfortunately, because most of us lead sedentary lives or are constantly sitting at work we lose the ability to consciously tense our glutes.
In my classes we do specific exercises to regain and strengthen our mind-body connection to address this.
Body Awareness
It’s very common for a yoga teacher to ask her students to attempt the plank position and then see half the class perform down dog or up dog because they can’t tell where their hips are!
Having your hips in the wrong position can be dangerous and lead to injury.
For example, have you have ever tried using one those ab wheels?
If you perform the ab roll-out with a posterior tilt in your hips (cat position) you will get a good ab workout.
If, however you do it with an anterior tilt in your hips (cow position) you will likely just end up injuring your back.
For many exercises knowing and feeling the difference between these 2 positions and being good into getting into both of them is the difference between getting fitter and stronger or injuring yourself.
This is why I concentrate on developing body awareness.
Mobility
You may struggle to sit in a kneeling position or lift your feet so that only your heels are touching the ground when doing my variation of the wall sit.
If that’s the case it may be due to you not having sufficient foot mobility at this moment.
We walk on flat surfaces most of the time and lose our foot mobility, this restricts our movement and makes us more prone to injury.
I make sure to include mobility exercises for all our joints in my classes.
Muscle imbalances
Our Western lifestyle leads to muscle imbalances and our bodies lose their alignment making us prone to pain, discomfort, and injuries.
Yoga was conceived and designed in a time and place where people lived very different lifestyles to how we in the West live today.
Yoga came into the world before desk jobs, cars, sofas, television and comfortable mattresses existed.
To safely practice the physical aspects of Yoga we need to correct our muscular imbalances first.
If we don’t, all our hard work often leads to us doing more harm than good to our bodies.
Not addressing posture and alignment before beginning a physical activity is like building a house without creating a firm foundation first.
It’s only a matter of time before the whole thing comes crashing down around you!
It’s also important that we keep fixing any imbalances that might arise.
For example many yoga postures require us to keep our shoulders locked down and back.
If you have rounded shoulders from using your phone or computer for long periods then you may well find this very difficult to do and as a result you will be vulnerable to injury.
In my classes I put a lot of focus on putting our bodies back into their natural fully functional states through specific targeted exercises that address our individual problems.
Biomechanics
It’s important for us to learn how our body moves.
For example, I teach the “hip hinge” in detail as it’s essential to master this movement if we want to squat safely and effectively.
It’s also important to understand the difference between ball & socket joints such as the shoulders and hips and hinge joints such as our knees and elbows.
In general, mobility in the shoulders and hips is desirable but not in the knees and elbows.
This is why you won’t see knee circles as part of my warm-ups.
When we create mobility in our knees we risk stretching the tendons and ligaments that hold our knee in place.
Once these are stretched they leave us vulnerable to a dislocated knee.
Why My Classes Are Different
Most people only start to fully appreciate what I have written above after they have been injured several times.
At that point their teacher / coach will tell them that it is just part of the journey and give them a phone number of a physical therapist.
If they are more knowledgeable they may suggest to look into physio type stuff to learn how to better prevent getting injured in the future.
This is because they teach a fixed curriculum and have their classes planned out for months.
They see it as your responsibility to adapt to their classes.
Many teachers expect you to come to the classes with most of the attributes listed above already in place.
That’s fine if you’re a natural athlete who has been physically active since childhood, constantly engaging yourself in a wide variety of physical activities.
The vast majority of people don’t have great posture, body awareness and mobility and will benefit greatly from a teacher who can train them to acquire these abilities.
The advantage of having taught for two decades is that I can easily adapt my classes at any moment to the students in front of me and tailor the classes to their needs.
To do this I address muscular imbalances and teach body awareness, mind-body connection, breathwork, mobility, and proper bio-mechanics right from the beginning.
This is especially true for my Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday beginner / foundation classes.
If you build a firm foundation the sky is the limit..
I take a long-term view.
I want you to be healthy into your old age.
Yoga isn’t about looking good so you can post pictures of your flat stomach all over the internet.
It’s about being healthy, energetic and independent for as many years as possible so that you can better look after your family, friends and community.
That means I have to help you build a very solid foundation that will keep you pain free and injury free and allow you to keep active into very advanced years.
I need you to understand what you are doing so you can correct yourself even when I am not there.
I consider this knowledge fundamental as once you have learnt it you can apply it to any physical activity.
You will be much easier to coach and will learn and advance far more quickly.
For example the weight lifting coach I worked with last week commented on how easy it was to teach Dean and I as we have good body awareness and found it easy to respond to all her verbal cues.
My approach sometimes even costs me students as they lack patience and want to jump ahead to exercises they are not ready for and their ego doesn’t take it too well when I point out to them they are not ready yet.
Despite that I still find that honesty is the best policy as it’s led to me teaching a class full of people who are more than just students to me, they are my friends, and I look after my friends.
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