Hey Yoga Teacher: Don’t Adjust Me, Just Support Me!

Adjustments are big talk around the yoga world. Teachers want to get me in the right position. They want to fix me! There are even trainings for yoga teachers on how to correct me out of where I am, into where someone else wants me to be!!

Luckily, I’m a tough one to correct. Tara and I both have our history of walking into traditional environments where the rules are unbreakable, breaking them, and proving that it works better this way! But for most of us who are relatively new to yoga, if a yoga teacher tries to fix us, we’re going to think we should listen. There’s a hitch.

You don’t need someone to fix you. It’s not useful to your yoga, or to your life. It creates injury, trying to get into someone else’s body, rather than your own. It creates injury, trying to get into someone else’s ideas, rather than your own.

If you’re not finding your own way in yoga, then you’re following someone else’s way. If you’re following someone else’s way, you believe their way is better than yours. You might believe you need them to put you where you want to be. You’re theirs. You’re subservient. You’re doing something called “yoga” and it’s making you less capable in your life!

Of course, that’s not where any of us want to be. Luckily, there’s no science or logic to this yoga idea of one correct position for each pose. Equally, there’s nothing to suggest it’s helpful for a teacher to manipulate your body into an idea of what’s right.

Health and all kinds of capability come from the inside out: feeling into your own body, and responding to what you feel. Pushing and forcing things from the outside in – whether it’s a yoga teacher doing it to you, or you doing it to yourself – leads to injury, and to less capability. So we can leave the yoga teachers to fix each other, and move on to making our own yoga!

There is no single right place to be. When you think about your experience in your own life, that’s easy to understand. But when we walk into something less familiar – like yoga – it’s easy to abandon what we know, and put trust in that person at the front of the room. The thing is . . .

Yoga is the same as the rest of your life. It’s about you, learning to work with you. You’re the authority figure. You’re the one who gets to feel into your body, respond to what you feel, and create your own life.

Yoga is your practice ground for how you want to live. This is your body and your life right now. You’re the only one who can directly feel you. The right form for you each day, each moment, has to do with responding to your entire life. The right place and movement for your body is all yours! If a teacher can help you, it’s in supporting you to feel you. You can stop pushing and struggling to get into someone else’s shape (no more injuries!), and find your way into your own.

Your health, your capability, you having fun in your own life – all begin with getting sensitive to you. From sensitivity, you get to release stress and barriers to your health and capability. You get to make choices that feel good. You get to inspire others to do the same.

1) We’re not here to fix each other.

2) There is no correct pose. Move easily into your body. Move easily into your life.

3) We’re here to support each other.

Making your yoga your yoga is the best thing you can do. Tara broke the rules in creating Strala. She moved away from the common yoga teacher focus on “How can I prove what I know?” or “How can I prove what my guru knows?” over to a more gentle and useful “How can I help?”

Helping people is in making a connection. When we help and support each other to connect to ourselves, yoga works. It cures. We get healthy and happy. We have a whole lot of fun creating and sharing our lives.

-Mike

About Strala Yoga Training

Strala combines the movement and healing wisdom of tai chi with the form vocabularies of yoga, tai chi, qigong, and Traditional Chinese and Japanese Medicine, to help people release stress, move easily through challenge, and live radiantly inspiring lives.

It begins with a mindset, that says our best way to get where we’re going is to feel good along the way. It also works miracles for whole health, helping us to find ease in our bodies and minds, and create the right conditions both for healing and optimal performance.

In our Strala Training Courses, you learn to shape your destiny on every level that counts, from your psychology, chemistry and neurology, to your chromosomes and even gene expression. The unique set of skills you develop – for connecting with yourself and others, unblocking your energy, healing what needs healing and accomplishing challenge with ease – uncovers your ability to create the life you want, and be an inspiring leader to the people around you.

Who’s What’s and When’s of Strala Yoga Training

Picture below with one of our favorite rule-breakers, Jason Wachob, founder of MindBodyGreen