Yoga Teachers Who Talk Too Much
A note to some of you yoga teachers out there. I love you, but could you just shut up a little when teaching? There is nothing worse than getting into a pose and have the teacher chatting at you with micro-adjustments until your brain gets numb.
Sometimes you just want to breathe and turn inward. You can’t do that if the teacher is constantly yammering on with a pre-memorized set of alignment instructions, half of which are meaningless.
I would also like to suggest a ban on the following yoga language:
“Rotate your inner thighs” – can someone please tell me what the HELL this is supposed to mean? Once I am in a standing pose, all my leg energy is going into keeping me standing. I do not know how to “rotate” my leg muscles either inward or outward. They do not do that. They are either contracted or not. No rotating is going on with the actual muscle or thigh. If you want me to move my knee or adjust my hip, just say so. Telling me to move my “inner thigh” (as opposed to my “outer thigh”) means absolutely NOTHING. It just irritates me when a teacher says that. What it tells me is that they memorized something their teacher said and probably have no real clue as to what it means either.
“Draw the sacrum down” – By sacrum, are you meaning tailbone? Is it the back of my rear end you want drawn down or my whole pelvic area? What exactly do you mean by this? Do you want me to squat lower or turn my hips in a little bit so I don’t have so much swayback going on? How about something more simpler, like, “don’t stick your ass out so much.”
“Draw the shoulder blades down the back” – Hmm, last time I checked, I didn’t really have an active muscle in my shoulder blades that let me literally pull those bones down my back. So what the heck does this mean? If I pull my shoulders back, my shoulder blades appear to be going inward, not downward. So do you want me to relax my shoulders? Then just say so. “Relax your shoulders” actually means something to me. Trying to move a large plate-like skeletal structure through the sheer power of my thoughts does not.
“Lift the pelvic floor” – Are we now doing kegel exercises in yoga? What does this exactly mean anyway? If I am lifting my pelvic floor does that mean move my entire hips up? I could technically “lift my pelvic floor” by coming into a standing position from seated. See, now my pelvis is higher than it was before, right? Look, if you want me to engage in root lock then explain what that is in detail for the newbies and then just call it root lock. Lifting the pelvic floor otherwise means nothing.
Well, those are my nominations for the most overused and useless yoga phrases. I am sure I’ve missed some. Do you have others you want to share? Please post in the comments. Namaste.
Ironically, I find all of those directions quite helpful. Granted, I am a yoga teacher, and taking my second teacher training, so I think that provides me an anatomical insight to what some teachers might be leaving unexplained.
1. My teacher encourages us to “scissor” the inner thighs together in warrior poses to create an energetic lift that helps strengthen the legs, by engaging the adductor muscles in the inner thigh.
2. Yes, the sacrum is connected to the tailbone, this pelvic tilt usually assists in lengthening the psoas muscle which creates length in the front of the body.
3. The rhomboids are the muscles that connect the scapula (shoulder blades) to the spine, and the latissimus dorsi (large plate like muscular structures) help depress the shoulders.
4. Mulabhanda. Yup. pretty much is kegel in plain terms.
I guess I am fortunate to not frequent teachers who have memorized, rote routines. But I know they are out there.
If you have a problem with the teachers cues, you can ask after class and i am sure they will be happy to clarify.
As a follow up to mountain yogi, scissoring is a great term to explain rotating the thighs. It is like riding a bike- you have to squeeze your inner thighs and think about the top of the thighs moving inward towards each other. It has less to do with your knees or hips and more to do with your thighs.
If dont stick your ass out too much makes it clear for you, every time you hear “draw the sacrum down” do a personal translation. But even when you are not trying to “stick your ass out so much” you are not using your abdominal muscles to protect the spine. Pull your belly button to the spine and pull your ribs back, allow this to lengthen the lower back, or the sacrum.
Draw the shoulder blades down the back requires muscles in the back, not just relazing the shoulders. Use your anterior ceratus to help you with this, your teres major, your teres minor, your suprasinatus, your infraspinatus. Here are pictures to help you. http://www.physioweb.org/IMAGES/back_muscle.jpg
Just like mountain yogi said, your mulabhanda is your kegel. Cut off your pee stream and youll know what it feels like to lift the pelvic floor.
I’m sorry to hear that these terms confused you. Teachers are pretty good about answering questions after class, I hope from now on you can approach the teachers and ask them what they mean. After all, if they talk to much, they should have no problem clarifying!
Love your comments! So right on. As a 9 year yogi I have seen, and heard!, so many different teachers try to talk the class through these terms without demo-ing what they are trying to say and showing how to do it. With the exception perhaps of root lock. That might be a little more information than I need.
Hi Steph,
I hear you!
I’m a Sivananda Yoga teacher, and there is nothing that destroys a class for me more than a teacher
who likes the sound of his or her voice.
I also think that some teachers like to use these terms that you mention to make themselves look good: it’s
fine to use this kind of anatomical explanation if you are teaching an advanced class, and you’re sure that everyone
understands what you’re talking about, but when there are beginners who have no idea what a pelvic floor is,
or how to rotate their thighs, then you’re just dazzling people with lingo.
Ben
Namaste Skylor
Teachers i’ve asked to “translate” these & similar instructions after class have been unable to. Had no translation, couldn’t say it in any other words, couldn’t tell me if any of my “do you mean externally rotate?’ etc. were misunderstandings or bad guesses.
The elephant in the room here is that the teacher is not looking at the individual student to see if their body needs more or less of any action. They are giving the exact same instruction to all on the assumption to very very tight & rigid people, overly turned out former dancers with swaybacks, and people with arthritis in their knees should all concentrate on the same correction in a posture!! and when you do too much tucking because you’re already tucked,
they do not notice or correct.
This is yoga teaching based on the 80’2 aerobic instructor model–call out the steps & all-purpose tips & demo.
whoops, that eighties 80′s style teaching, not 80’2
Those are actually good instructions. In the long run, they will make the difference between your practice plateauing and it moving to the next level. I would ask the teacher after class what she is referring too.
Interesting to hear your frustrations with yoga instruction. I am new to teaching yoga and am striving to find the most effective use of language and demonstration to help students. Having a mixture of students with differing requirements, learning styles, personalities and physical histories makes the challenge of accommodating everyone at once tricky! I think this could be the root of too much chatter from teachers, trying to cover all angles of explanation. I am beginning to think the traditional method of teaching one to one is the only way each student could receive exactly what they need. Unfortunately this is not an option for many.
Namaste
Lynne
@Fulana
yes, you are right…. in group classes sometimes the teacher has to find the most common mis-alignment in the room and speak to that. one is usually able to address individual issues as they move around the room, but verbal cues are tricky because you have to bring attention to the most common issue. now, while perhaps your individual sacrum, tailbone is drawing down… maybe there are a handful of people in the room for whom that is not the case. The incredibly refined skill of being able to address the room and the individual is something that many of us are striving to master. However, as a student I do find it important to use those cues to “check in” and stay present with what’s happening or not happening in my own body. “is my sacrum/tailbone really drawing down? do i just think it is? am i unsure?”
That said, if a teacher cannot articulate or clear up what these cues mean after class….. you probably need to find a different teacher. Or, if the cues are annoying you seek out private instruction.
Interesting to hear your frustrations with yoga instruction. I am new to teaching yoga and am striving to find the most effective use of language and demonstration to help students. Having a mixture of students with differing requirements, learning styles, personalities and physical histories makes the challenge of accommodating everyone at once tricky! I think this could be the root of too much chatter from teachers, trying to cover all angles of explanation. I am beginning to think the traditional method of teaching one to one is the only way each student could receive exactly what they need. Unfortunately this is not an option for many. Namaste Lynne
@Fulana yes, you are right…. in group classes sometimes the teacher has to find the most common mis-alignment in the room and speak to that. one is usually able to address individual issues as they move around the room, but verbal cues are tricky because you have to bring attention to the most common issue. now, while perhaps your individual sacrum, tailbone is drawing down… maybe there are a handful of people in the room for whom that is not the case. The incredibly refined skill of being able to address the room and the individual is something that many of us are striving to master. However, as a student I do find it important to use those cues to “check in” and stay present with what’s happening or not happening in my own body. “is my sacrum/tailbone really drawing down? do i just think it is? am i unsure?” That said, if a teacher cannot articulate or clear up what these cues mean after class….. you probably need to find a different teacher. Or, if the cues are annoying you seek out private instruction.
I found your post/blog because I was running a search of, “Yoga Teachers who Talk Too Much.” And here you were. I googled this topic because I was in a vent mode, but also to see if I was not the only person out there who felt this way.
I Just came home from a morning class, and I came home feeling irritated because I had just gone through a very annoying experience… leaving me in a questioning mode…
My yoga class was led by an instructor that did not stop talking throughout the entire class…. and we would have to stop and stand there and listen to him talk (as he talked at us), and he would talk through the poses, and I could feel myself boiling up… I kept bringing myself back to the situation at hand… what was important – the pose and my thoughts … I tried to block him out- I even shot him a bit of a dirty look. Nothing worked. This class is at a gym, so he is trying to take a lot of information, and teach to the masses… aka- those who are doing yoga for the first time. I had forgotten that I had gone to a class of his a long time ago, and never went back, or avoided his class for just this reason. But a friend of mine has raved about it, which planted the seed in my brain of, “what’s wrong with me.”
In my previous life, I may have spent a lot of unnecessary time trying to figure this out. I would have asked myself, what is wrong with me – why do people who talk too much bother me? Maybe if I write a page with 2 columns worth of something like a pros and cons list, I can really get down to this and figure out what is wrong with me? In other words, I would have tortured myself… Or even worse, I would keep going back, be incredibly unhappy and resentful, while I tried to force myself to figure it all out.
The truth for me is what you wrote: “Sometimes you just want to breathe and turn inward. You can’t do that if the teacher is constantly yammering on with a pre-memorized set of alignment instructions, half of which are meaningless.” Very well put and simply said, and sooo very true.
So I am happy to say, that I am feeling like a grown-up today because I realize that I simply do not have to go back to that class. That is his class, and he can teach it the way he wants, and all the screaming I do in my head, and all the dirty looks I throw his way will never, ever change that; that there are other instructors I really like in the same place, and that all I have to do is tweak my schedule a bit, and go where I am happy.
Life is too short.
I loved this! Thank you so much.