5 Influential Yogis Weigh in on Yoga Adjustments: When, Why, and Whether to Give Them
This blog post was first sent to Jenni’s email list as an email newsletter. Sign up for the JRY email newsletter here!
Physical touch in the form of adjustments and assists is a controversial topic in the yoga world these days. When should they be given? Should they be given at all? Do they add to or detract from a student’s experience on the mat?
My colleague Travis Pollen and I have been following this conversation for quite some time now. (As a yogi and Rehabilitation Science PhD Candidate whose research focuses on injuries, Travis takes as natural an interest in this topic as I do.)
Much of the adjustments dialog currently taking place in the yoga world has revolved around the issues of consent and trauma. We are thankful that these important aspects of adjustments are receiving the attention and reflection they deserve in the yoga community (see HERE and HERE for excellent treatments on these issues).
One aspect of this topic that we haven’t noticed as much focus given to, however, is the biomechanics of yoga adjustments. For example, within a context in which consent has been clearly established, how can adjustments be helpful or harmful to a student’s body?
To foster an insightful discussion about the more biomechanical side of yoga adjustments, we asked a selection of influential yoga teachers to share their personal perspectives on yoga adjustments (within a context in which consent has been established). We purposefully chose a group of teachers from a variety of backgrounds in the hopes that their responses would represent a spectrum of viewpoints on yoga adjustments.
We are grateful to the incredible yoga teachers who shared their perspectives with us for this project: Dianne Bondy (Accessible Yoga), Judith Hanson Lasater (Restorative Yoga), Cecily Milne (Yoga Detour), David Robson (Ashtanga Yoga), and Yogi Zain (Iyengar Yoga).
Please note: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect Travis’ or my own. Nor do they represent all possible viewpoints. They are simply our best attempt at showcasing a range of current attitudes toward adjustments/assists. Nevertheless, we do hope you find these answers insightful and revealing and that they can promote rich discussion on this important subject.
1. HOW DO YOU DEFINE A PHYSICAL ADJUSTMENT IN YOGA?
Yogi Zain
DAVID ROBSON: Anything that involves touch to promote and support an asana or vinyasa.
YOGI ZAIN: When the instructor physically places their hands or other body parts and/or some kind of a prop onto a student’s body with the intention of helping the student in a position or movement.
CECILY MILNE: I see adjustments as any attempt to use my body as a means of force to direct someone else’s body toward a specific movement or position.
DIANNE BONDY: I don't use the word “adjustments” for any hands-on assists. I am assisting a student – not correcting them or adjusting them – but helping them find their way, I feel the only people capable of adjusting a body is a physiotherapist or chiropractor. I consider a physical assist any in which I touch a student.
JUDITH HANSON LASATER: A physical “adjustment” is a dance between two people – the actor and the receiver. If I decide to use physical touch, it is because I would like to offer someone a new way of being in the pose, or give them new information that they might enjoy in the pose – rather than the concept that I’m correcting their pose or imposing my idea of a rigid form upon their body.
2. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF ADJUSTMENTS IN YOGA? WHAT BENEFITS DO THEY OFFER AND HOW ARE THEY HELPFUL?
YOGI ZAIN: Adjustments in yoga are meant to help a student’s understanding and awareness in their practice. They are not intended as a means for the teacher to impose their will upon a student. A physical touch from a teacher can bring new information to help a student with their proprioception – where is their body in space and where are their body parts in relationship with other body parts? Or even help a student work more where effort is lacking, or work less where there may be too much strain. Tactile communication can be a highly effective option when verbal cues and visual demonstrations fall short and when a desired result or aim of practice is not achieved.
A sense of human touch can also bring connection and a sense of healing. Especially if there is injury or trauma involved for the person receiving the adjustment, which almost everyone has some degree of in their own history. Regardless, it is much more of an intimate space of communication, and so physical adjustments should be performed with lucid intention and utmost care.
DAVID ROBSON: In Ashtanga most of our adjustments are about helping people meet the conditions of a posture. For example, helping someone lift the leg and bring their chin to the shin in Utthitahasta Padangusthasana (extended hand-to-toe pose), or clasping the hands in Marichyasana C (seated twist), or supporting a student’s dropbacks. All of these examples are about helping the student meet the prescription of the vinyasa/asana in the Ashtanga system. When adjustments are intelligently and consistently applied, they safely support and accelerate a student’s growth.
Cecily Milne
JUDITH HANSON LASATER: I want to train people to look at the student with soft eyes and to receive that person in that moment and from their intuition study confidence, awareness, then choose if and when and how to offer the student information that might protect them or enhance their enjoyment or allow them to be more stable, more free, and more happy at that moment. When I touch someone, I want to do it with deep respect and humility.
So to me there’s not a list of what you do – it’s what do you see? There are so many important things in teaching, and one of the most important is to cultivate our ability to observe. How is this person manifesting this? And what might make their experience more safe, more stable, more open, more satisfying, more fun, more enjoyable, reduce pain and prevent pain and injury in the future because they’re following basic kinesiological laws of movement? So that’s a skill that I think predates or precedes the actual physical adjustment. If you can’t see them, then you’re just going by route.
DIANNE BONDY: Assists can help students connect with their bodies in their asana practice as long as the assists are intentional and thoughtful. Teacher assists can help in guiding the student to a safer form or an accessible form of the pose or help the student make peace with the pose in their bodies. It can be a tool for self-discovery in the practice.
CECILY MILNE: This is a question I ask myself all the time – is there a purpose, or has that purpose morphed into the realm of expectations and obligations? Are adjustments necessary? Are the possible benefits actually benefits? If we’re using adjustments to help our students go deeper into postures, is this actually serving them in a way that’s helpful in the long term? How many students endure an adjustment not because they want it but because they’re trained to submit to the teacher who they believe has their best interests at heart?
I think many students crave adjustments not just so that they can reach new depths or conform to what the teacher expects, but also because we – as human beings – require contact with others. It’s one of our basic instinctual needs, a need that for many of us isn’t being met in our day-to-day lives.
David Robson
But at the same time, the majority of yoga teachers aren’t licensed to provide hands-on therapy. Much of the adjustment training we receive comes from other yoga teachers, not manual therapists. So while it may be well-intentioned to provide hands-on touch, how can we be confident that the impact of that touch lands in the way it’s intended? There are so many variables at stake to consider – individual physical capacity, history of trauma, personal relationships with touch, reasons for showing up to class in the first place which may have nothing to do with being adjusted, etc. – that I think the most important question to ask is: “Why am I giving this adjustment, and can I accomplish that same goal via other means?”
3. ARE THERE DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OR KINDS OF ADJUSTMENTS? IF SO, WHAT ARE THEY?
YOGI ZAIN: Yes, basically there are two: good and bad adjustments. (LOL – sorry, but that’s the first thought that came to mind.) I don’t know about official categories, but I think there are some adjustments that can help align a student’s pose to then achieve a desired form or completion of that pose. So using some kind of manual adjusting to help arrange the student’s body and create a particular form. Then there are adjustments that are intended to assist a student to sustain the pose longer or more comfortably. An example could be helping a student balance in handstand position by providing them support and holding around their outer hips.
There are also adjustments that help a student go deeper into a pose. An example could be imagined like adjustments in a twisting poses or seated forward bends by putting more pressure for a more potent effect. Then there are also adjustments done that a student may not be able to achieve otherwise. A basic example that comes to mind is an adjustment of the shoulder blades in shoulderstand. With the assist of the teacher, the shoulders can get much more wedged under and help the student to create more support to be on top of their shoulders, lift their chest, and not collapse as much on the back of their neck.
DAVID ROBSON: I break down adjustments into 3 categories: conditions, corrections, and deepening.
“Conditions” is the category of adjustments that are about helping students meet the prescribed conditions of an asana. For example, this category would include helping students bind, drop back, roll in Chakrasana (backward roll), lift and hold Sirsasana (headstand), etc. The conditions are given to us through the traditional teachings of Ashtanga Yoga, parampara. In Ashtanga, this category of adjustments is not determined by individual teachers – the adjustments are directed as part of the structured system of teaching.
“Corrections” are about the anatomical actions and movements involved in each posture or vinyasa. Most of these adjustments are determined on the opinion/knowledge of the individual teacher. For example, in wide-legged forward bends like the Prasaritapadottanasana, I teach students to maintain a slight posterior tilt in the hips when moving the torso in and out of the pose. I will often use a physical adjustment (by catching the hips and bringing them into a posterior tilt) to teach this action of holding the posterior tilt. I do this because I believe it’s safer for the hamstring attachments and lower back, and gets the legs and core to help support the movement. This is an anatomical opinion that I hold. It is not taught as part of the vinyasa system and wouldn’t be considered to be a condition for an asana/vinyasa.
“Deepening” adjustments are done when the conditions of the pose have been met and the student is physically manipulated deeper, or further into the posture. An example would be pressing on a student’s back in Pascimattanasana (seated forward bend), or bringing a student’s hands further up the legs in Tiriang Mukhottanasana (intense backbend stretch). Some of these adjustments are directed by tradition, and some of them are determined by the individual teacher. Deepening adjustments gently increase the stress of the posture. Done properly, these adjustments accelerate a student’s development in the pose.
Dianne Bondy
I apply the categories of “Conditions”, “Corrections” and “Deepening”, in that order. The first priority is that students are meeting the conditions of the poses, following the sequence, and getting help where they need it in order to do the asanas. Next is seeing how I can help by passing on techniques that will fine-tune a student’s approach to an asana. When a student can meet the conditions of a posture and they’re doing it correctly, then perhaps I can help them start to go a bit deeper into the posture with an adjustment. But almost every adjustment starts with a quick check in: “Are you okay?”
CECILY MILNE: I differentiate between “adjustments” and “assists.” When I give an adjustment, I’m using my body to leverage the shape of yours. I impose a certain amount of force to encourage the result I’m looking for – whether that’s to push your hips back in downward-facing dog, square your hips in revolved triangle or get your hands to bind together in a seated twist (none of which I actually do anymore).
Assists, on the other hand, happen when I use my body to encourage your body to do something for itself. Rather than impose force on you, I get your body to harness the effort on its own. Imagine sitting on the floor with your arms reaching overhead. To encourage more reach, I could stand behind you with my palms hovering just out of reach from your fingertips. By asking you to “find my hands,” your arms might extend more fully, finding the end range of shoulder flexion in a way that would be far different than me just pulling your arms toward the ceiling.
While both approaches reflect the teacher’s agenda (getting the student to experience more overhead range of motion), they differ when it comes to who’s in charge. In an assist, the practitioner creates movement, whereas, in an adjustment, movement happens to the practitioner.
“‘Yoga adjustments’ are aspirational, based on an external agenda. ‘Yoga assists’ are educational, based on the needs of the individual. Adjustments imply consent, while assists generate agency.”
Adjustments are aspirational, based on an external agenda. Assists are educational, based on the needs of the individual. Adjustments imply consent, while assists generate agency.
4. IN WHICH CONTEXTS DO YOU THINK ADJUSTMENTS CAN BE HARMFUL FOR YOGA STUDENTS? ARE THERE WAYS OF MITIGATING THESE RISKS?
YOGI ZAIN: All the examples of good adjustments I mentioned above can also have a bad effect. Aligning a student’s body with manual adjustments may take a student past their threshold or capacity to sustain themselves in the pose. Mentally, they may feel the shape that they were just in before was not worthy of exploring. They may mistake striving for the aligned form or end result the goal as opposed to the process of experiencing it all.
Holding a student for handstand balance can be also be dangerous for the teacher as the student could kick up rapidly with one leg and hit the teacher in their face (true story!). Adding pressure in twists or forward bends can make a student move deep into a passive range which could lead to over stretching muscles and ligaments and/or over compressing discs in the spine, eventually leading to injury.
The best way to mitigate risks in my experience is to keep the communication open and check for feedback with as many adjustments as possible. Each time is a different experience, even if the student has received a similar adjustment before. The student should have a clear feeling or positive result from the adjustment.
DAVID ROBSON: Adjustments can cause injury if there’s too much stress placed on the student’s body. There are at least three ways to mitigate these kinds of risks: (1) knowing the student and their capacity; (2) understanding the underlying anatomical alignment of the adjustment; and (3) being aware of a student’s overall well-being in the moment of each adjustment.
DIANNE BONDY: If students have an injury you are unaware of, or you’re “adjusting” based on ego of having superior knowledge of a person’s body, this is dangerous. Sometimes assists/adjustments are based on a lineage’s perception of how the pose should look, with very little regard for what the student’s body is capable of doing. Also, the teacher’s need to push the student deeper can be problematic. Students often want to please the teacher by going to a deeper expression of the pose. It is important to give your student autonomy over their own practice and body in yoga and we do that by open communication.
JUDITH HANSON LASATER: I will tell you unequivocally that I would never do an adjustment that would “push someone deeper in a pose.” That’s not my job. Because if I push you deeper into a pose, it is my body and my ego that is moving you faster than you want to go. Because what is valuable in the pose is the resistance. That resistance is telling you something. And it might be telling you that this is enough for me right now. Or I’m really holding on right now. Or I need to really pay attention to this part of my body right now.
“It’s not touching your toes that is the yoga. It’s what you learn on the way down there.”
If I try to push you deeper, I take away those lessons from you. So what I might want to do is use my words more than my touch to invite you to let go at the speed, in the direction, and to the depth that is appropriate for you in the moment. Inviting you to step into a deeper pose is very different than me pushing you into a deeper pose which can injure you and completely obviate what you learn. It’s not touching your toes that is the yoga. It’s what you learn on the way down there. And it’s always more satisfying, and you probably get further – without aggression, without pushing – by inviting the body to explore and wake up its own intelligence. Not pushing, but enticing you – if you so choose – because I’m not telling you how much to move. I’m not deciding ahead of time how much you should move. I’m inviting you to explore the possibility of another way of being.
I’m an educator. I want to create an environment which encourages you to learn more about yourself. What your natural limit is, what your ability is, where your resistance is in a way that’s appropriate for you. That’s my job: to use that resistance to create awareness so you make a choice that’s conscious.
CECILY MILNE: Adjustments cause harm when they attempt to override the practitioner’s nervous system. In other words, if I decide to drape my body over yours in a forward bend so that you can go further into the position, I’m ignoring the fact that your body stopped you at a certain point for a reason. Pushing you into that forward fold ignores the many reasons why your nervous system doesn’t think it’s safe to allow you to go deeper on your own. Tightness is there for a reason – and often that reason is a neurological response, one that’s far more complex than stubborn hamstrings. If I want to help you find more depth in that forward bend, I’d get you to feel safe there first. I’d get you to breathe. I’d try to ensure any interaction I’m having with you (contact or otherwise) doesn’t set off a stress response. That’s the only way to get your body to actually respond with more flexibility (or depth) – and I’m not in charge of that. Your nervous system is.
5. HOW ARE MANUAL ADJUSTMENTS SUPERIOR AND INFERIOR TO VERBAL CUEING?
Yogi Zain
YOGI ZAIN: Manual adjustments allow a student to surrender and trust the teacher, an outside source, to help them in their practice. The more knowledgeable and experienced the teacher, the more capable they are (at least in theory) of assisting the student manually. For this same reason, manual adjustments can be inferior. If a student begins to continually outsource their intuition to the knowledge and experience of their teacher, they will only disempower their own capacity to self-organize and self-regulate. Hence, in my experience and personal teaching opinion, the skills for sharp verbal cueing and crisp visual demonstration are not to be undermined.
DAVID ROBSON: I would always prefer to verbally cue a student instead of manually adjust them. In Ashtanga we are always working towards independence in our own practice, and adjustments are almost always compensations for a student being unable to do something on their own. If we can describe a posture, action, or movement to a student, and they are able to do it, then no adjustment is necessary. When the students can’t physically perform the condition of the pose or vinyasa, then a teacher needs to manually help them. In the context of vinyasa as a moving meditation, a physical adjustment is sometimes better than a verbal cue, as it allows the student to stay in the flow of their practice. Each adjustment with each student is always very unique.
DIANNE BONDY: I think manual adjustments can disempower a student from figuring a pose out on their own. The student is more familiar with their own body's needs than the teacher. Yet, depending on how the adjustment is done, it can sometimes remove a student's autonomy and confidence and replace it with a "teacher-knows-best" attitude. I love to offer verbal cues and ask the student to explore their own practice and body in asana.
CECILY MILNE: Hands-on contact can be helpful when people have a hard time connecting to certain areas of their body. For example, I encounter many students who struggle to mobilize and stabilize their shoulder blades. The muscles around our scapulae – the rhomboids, lower trapezius, rotator cuff, etc. – are “off the map” for a lot of people, meaning the connection between the brain and those muscles has become really fuzzy. Using verbal cues can fall flat in these instances because even when someone knows what you’re asking them to do, their brains simply can’t find the connection – there’s too much static. To re-establish that connection, I might gently tap that area with my fingertips, or rest my palms on the shoulder blades to provide a tactile cue as someone aims to complete a scapular push-up. In doing so, I’m not adjusting their body; I’m communicating with their brain.
6. WHAT KNOWLEDGE/SKILL SET IS REQUIRED FOR A YOGA TEACHER TO BE QUALIFIED TO PERFORM ADJUSTMENTS?
“In the context of vinyasa as a moving meditation, a physical adjustment is sometimes better than a verbal cue, as it allows the student to stay in the flow of their practice.”
DAVID ROBSON: In Ashtanga, a teacher needs to be able to do (or have done) the posture that they’re teaching. In other words, they need to have their own practice. They need to understand the basic anatomy underlying the adjustment. Teachers need to have a good understanding of touch and guiding joints, and a good feel for tension and limits in the person they’re helping.
JUDITH HANSON LASATER: You need to have your own practice that’s established. And you really need to know anatomy and kinesiology. If you’re going to tell other people’s bodies what to do, you’d better understand basically what the structure of the body is, what it’s capable of, what normal limits are, and what movements are healthy and which are not. It’s like if you’re going to teach someone to play the piano, you’d better know how to play the piano. You’d better know what the black keys do what the white keys do. The body is so intelligent and you don’t want to interfere – you want to enhance the natural intelligence.
DIANNE BONDY: Lots of training and teaching experience, empathy for your students lived experiences in their bodies, as well as excellent knowledge of asana and anatomy. I think you need a deep connection to your personal practice to offer assists or adjustments to others with any kind of skill. I find that my personal asana practice allows me to be more aware of how things can feel in my body. and I can offer insight on what works in my body and opportunity to explore in yours.
CECILY MILNE: I believe this depends on where you’re teaching – the rules can differ from country to country. In Canada I’ve never been told that special qualifications are necessary to perform yoga adjustments. Compare that to the hundreds – if not thousands – of training hours for massage therapists, chiropractors, physiotherapists, and osteopaths to provide licensed hands-on therapy, not to mention the compulsory exams and continuing education, along with high standards of ethics and accountability when it comes to professional conduct.
In the yoga world, I see a lot of novel approaches to physical manipulations which often look like mash-ups of Iyengar, aerial yoga, and Thai massage. They produce pretty Instagram pictures and attract people to take workshops where these adjustments are taught. These workshops are awesome when it comes to learning new ways to explore contact, and can be a lot more fun than other trainings that focus more on anatomy and physiology. As a result, we oversimplify how the human body actually works. Without compulsory standards in the yoga world when it comes to required training in anatomy, physiology, and hands-on manipulation (above and beyond those proposed by Yoga Alliance), injuries and misunderstandings will continue to run rampant. [Editor’s note: To learn more injury rates in yoga, check out this excellent guest blog post by Jari Karppinen.]
7. IN YOUR ORIGINAL YTT, WERE YOU TAUGHT TO GIVE PHYSICAL ADJUSTMENTS? IF SO, WHAT WAS THE STATED PURPOSE OF THESE ADJUSTMENTS? HAS YOUR VIEW ON ADJUSTMENTS CHANGED SINCE YOUR ORIGINAL TRAINING?
David Robson
DAVID ROBSON: I started practicing yoga in 1998 and started teaching around 2000. I never did a YTT in the West. My teaching Authorization comes from practicing with my teacher in India. After my first five trips there to practice with Sharath Jois, he told me that I was ready to teach others. Before teaching traditional Ashtanga, I was teaching a vinyasa/flow class based on Ashtanga. Over those years I slowly gained experience in giving some adjustments. But it wasn’t until I was officially Authorized and started teaching in a traditional Mysore setting that I really began to research and hone the technique of physically adjusting students. Basically, I just started to give all of the adjustments that I received, and saw my teacher give, in Mysore.
JUDITH HANSON LASATER: I’ve been teaching 48½ years now. I never took a YTT because there were not YTT’s when I started. I started with B.K.S. Iyengar and I learned a lot from watching him work and understanding what he could see. At first I just did what B.K.S. did, and it was more rote. I thought I was correcting the pose, and I would say the word “correction.” I don’t even use that word anymore. Nowadays, I don’t think I can correct you. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a whole, perfect human being created by God. Your pose may lack a little clarity, but that’s a different thing from adjusting you or fixing you or putting you in the pose. Now I say something like, “May I give you some more information?” Or, “what would it feel like if your arm is a little more back? What would you think of that?”
CECILY MILNE: Yes, but I was encouraged to use adjustments in a minimal approach. My first teachers were Ron Reid and Diane Bruni. One of Ron’s main influences is Chuck Miller, and it was one of Chuck’s teachings on adjustments that Ron passed on to me when he asked this: “How can you do as little as possible while achieving maximum benefit?” For instance, if I see a student in triangle pose and notice that things look somewhat unstable, what one piece of hands-on feedback could help? What I love about that approach is that it doesn’t put the teacher in the role of “fixer.” It makes us think more clearly about how to use touch effectively, and it doesn’t make the student feel like their pose relies on us. To me, that’s an effective balance between teacher and student agency.
Diane, meanwhile, taught me the importance of compassionate touch. She focused on using adjustments as a way of helping people relax in savasana and other postures where we’re at rest. As a shiatsu therapist, she understands and can communicate the therapeutic power of hands-on work that can be appropriately shared by those teaching the general public. One of my favourite tips from Diane was to rest my palms on someone else’s shins as they lay in savasana – something relatively non-invasive that can still work wonders to help them drop into a deeper state of relaxation. When we can connect through touch in a way that helps promote down-regulation, that can be really powerful.
YOGI ZAIN: Yes, in my first YTT we were doing physical adjustments by week three or four already. It was too quick in my opinion, but it was a different time back then. We barely learned clear consent, and it seemed more like an appropriate way to position ourselves around a student and let them “kindly” know we were going to make an adjustment on them, and if for some reason it didn’t feel good, then the student could tell us to stop. I recall more focus (and thereby more confusion to my budding teacher brain) as to what was an adjustment versus assist, even though both acts are physical and manual.
A lot of what I learned in my first YTT were merely “feel good” touches or half-ass corrective alignment adjustments passed on from one teacher in some class they enjoyed and interpreted however and passed down to us. Much like the training program itself, everything I learned then was more about efficiency and less about effectiveness. As critical as I sound for my first YTT, I did learn a lot of important things which I still value to this day. Though I feel I have done a U-turn once, twice, or more times with my views since my original training. In many ways, it’s been a constant evolution of learning, unlearning, and relearning.
DIANNE BONDY: Mostly verbal cues were encouraged in my initial 200-hour training. Further advanced trainings gave us insight into assisting students with hands-on assists with the focus on consent. I was always cautioned to do minimal hands-on assists and that verbal cues empower a student. In the current climate we live in, giving our students hands-on assists needs to be a very careful and thoughtful process. I was taught to always give verbal cues over physical ones. I feel that students may depend on the assists instead figuring the pose out in their own bodies.
8. DO YOU PERSONALLY OFFER ADJUSTMENTS TO THE STUDENTS IN YOUR CLASSES (ASSUMING THAT CONSENT HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED)? WHY OR WHY NOT?
Judith Hanson Lasater
DAVID ROBSON: I do adjust my students. As I mentioned earlier, that’s part of the context and expectation of a traditional Mysore setting. Students come expecting to be adjusted. But my best experiences in adjusting have been watching people get to the point where they don’t need the adjustment anymore. Witnessing that kind of growth is one of the best parts of what I do.
CECILY MILNE: I rarely perform adjustments in my classes and instead rely more on assists – using touch as a way to communicate with someone’s brain. That could look like providing tactile feedback during scapular retraction, for instance. My students no longer expect me to take them deeper or stretch them further – they show up to do the work for themselves.
DIANNE BONDY: Sometimes if I feel a student is in danger of harming themselves and only after I have offered a visual assist (i.e. I have demoed the pose) and verbal assist. I love to see a student figure it out on their own.
YOGI ZAIN: I remember adjusting students a lot in the beginning of my teaching career. I think I was enthusiastic to share what I had received and how good it felt to me, especially when I was assisting in a mentor’s class. The teacher would give me the clear in front of the group of their students and I would help with all good effort and intention. Then in my own classes there were particular students who I thought would benefit more by hands-on learning. Since then, I have given myself space away from the habit of physical adjustments. Not for fear or concern regarding physical touch, but more for the experience I enjoy in challenging my verbal skills and visual demos. In my Iyengar Yoga training, I learned to use physical adjustment as a last resort. And I have found most students are not in any dire need to be adjusted.
For me it’s important to know that me manually adjusting anyone may take them more out of their body than into it. I’ve come to realize that what I have loved and felt from teachers who have adjusted me (sometimes quite firmly and deeply and with little to no consent) may not feel the same at all for others. I like having a toolkit of knowledge for how and when to adjust students but also enjoy not acting on impulses to correct, modify, or align. I find this empowers students to be more present with their own intuitive body than becoming dependent on the teacher.
When I travel and teach outside of the USA, this topic is a different experience. Many cultures are used to being touched and the topics of consent and physical contact are not of as critical importance as in the states. In fact, a funny memory of teaching in Brazil is that I recall receiving a complaint in the middle of a two-day workshop for NOT touching any students! I was surprised and confused by this feedback. The host had to jokingly remind me I was among Brazilians – a tactile culture and people – that very much enjoy touch whether in yoga or in body language and communication. And the same is true with many other cultures. This conversation on adjustments is not so present in yoga communities where I have taught internationally. Which also begs another interesting anthropological study to see how different people cross-culturally experience consent and value physical adjustments.
For further reading, see Physical Touch in Yoga: Do Teachers & Students Agree?
If you’re interested in exploring the perspectives and work of any one of the yoga teachers featured here further, you can learn more from each of them here:
Dianne Bondy (Accessible Yoga) – Website / Instagram / Facebook
Judith Hanson Lasater (Restorative Yoga) – Website / Instagram / Facebook
Cecily Milne (Yoga Detour) – Website / Instagram / Facebook
David Robson (Ashtanga Yoga) – Website / Instagram / Facebook
Travis Pollen, co-author: Travis Pollen is an author, personal trainer, and PhD candidate in Rehabilitation Sciences at Drexel University. His research focuses on core stability, movement screening, and injury risk appraisal in athletes. He also holds a master’s degree in Biomechanics and Movement Science along with an American record in Paralympic swimming. He’s been a yoga student for 15 years. Website | Instagram | Facebook
You Might Also Like…
