This blog post was first sent to Jenni’s email list as an email newsletter. Sign up for the JRY email newsletter here!

**Why Alignment Doesn’t Not Matter in Yoga 😉**

"Alignment doesn't matter in yoga."

"Don't call your yoga classes 'alignment-based'."

"Stop teaching alignment in your yoga classes."

Have you heard language like this? If you have, I'm not surprised!

There’s a bit of a paradigm shift taking place around “alignment” in the yoga world as of late. As a community, we’re beginning to realize that practicing and teaching our yoga poses with the exact same “correct” alignment all the time isn’t necessarily protective against injury.

And this has led to the growing message that “alignment doesn’t matter in yoga” and we should throw it out the window.

(Are you new to the notion that alignment in yoga doesn’t prevent injuries? Here are two quick write-ups that expand on this: Do “Misalignments” in Our Body Cause Wear and Tear? and Top 5 Movement Science Insights for Yoga Teachers.)

This "Backlash" Against Alignment is Understandable...

Now I definitely think this "let's free ourselves from the tyranny of alignment" :) approach is understandable! For far too long in the yoga world, many of us were inundated with alignment-based cueing along these lines:

“Align your front knee exactly over your front heel. If your knee reaches forward one inch, it will explode. If your knee reaches inward one inch, it will explode. Knee over heel is the singular correct and safe way.”
“Make sure to bisect your back arch with your front heel. If your feet are aligned heel-to-heel instead, this is disastrous for your pose and you should just give up now.”
“Definitely do not let your tailbone tuck 1° under or lift 1° upward. It must be at exaaactly neutral, or you will cause back pain, hip pain, knee pain, and all the other pains.”

These are obviously exaggerations to get the point across :), but still… Toned-down versions of these examples were formerly everywhere in the yoga world! (And truth be told, they're still around in many corners of the yoga world today!)

As much of the yoga community is now realizing, teaching alignment for injury prevention purposes in this way is simply not evidence-based.

And therefore, "alignment doesn't matter" messaging is becoming quite commonplace!

If Alignment Doesn't Matter in Yoga, How Should I Teach?

This anti-alignment paradigm shift is leading to some understandable confusion.

For example, I regularly have yoga teachers reach out to me and ask, “well how do I move forward with teaching then? If alignment doesn’t matter, why am I teaching poses in any particular way at all? Should my students just move in any way they want all over the mat in class? 🤷🏽‍♀️”

I understand these excellent questions, and I respond to them by first clarifying that alignment doesn’t not matter!

I don’t think it’s helpful or accurate to say this. Alignment matters! It really does! But it just matters for different reasons than we were all taught in our yoga teacher trainings.

It's true that alignment might not matter very much for injury prevention. But alignment DOES matter if you:

Want to strengthen, stretch, mobilize, or otherwise target a specific area. We have to use alignment to direct the loads where we want them to go in our poses!
Feel pain when doing a specific movement. You can use alignment to find an alternative way to do the movement with less or no pain.
Want to teach the general shape of a yoga pose. This is what we DO as yoga teachers, right? 😃 If we want to guide people into warrior 2 pose, we must use alignment cues. But maybe we don’t need to micromanage every detail. Maybe some more general and simple cues will get the job done just as well!

There are many other ways in which alignment matters as well. I hope my list above has prompted you to think of some additional, non-injury-prevention reasons that alignment can be meaningful and important.

My main, overarching message here is: let’s not simply toss yoga alignment out the window!

Let’s just start using alignment in smarter ways that are useful and helpful in yoga, rather than in fearmongery ways that are counterproductive and unnecessary.

Ready to dive deeper into yoga alignment and anatomy?

If you'd like to sharpen your critical thinking skills as a yoga teacher and re-examine the many traditional yoga rules we've been taught in our YTTs, consider my Continuing Education membership!