Updated: This article and video were originally published Dec 16, 2014. Filmed on an old camera, the video production is not the best, BUT my advice is very much the same. Check it out.
For every single yoga teacher, no matter what style of asana you teach, adjustments are a big deal.
There are so many ways of giving adjustments from verbal cues to deep physical repositioning.
We have all had teachers who are so overly cautious about assisting that you can feel the fear transmitting through their hands or by the vague generalized instructions they give. You may have also experienced teachers who seem to bark at their students or adjust in more forceful or automatic ways without taking into consideration an individual's understanding and limitation.
Mastering the art of adjustment takes years so it is important to understand if you fall towards one of these extremes along the spectrum. Are you avoiding it or being overzealous?
To complicate things further, your students will no doubt respond to very different things. Now you have the added complication of your personal style versus what your students most respond to (because after all, it is their body you are adjusting).
What I am getting at, is there are a lot of factors when we bring adjusting into our teaching.
It is for this reason I am not surprised to get questions from other instructors who are confused by some aspect of this art. In the video I will share a story of a new yoga teacher eager to get more experience with the art of adjusting. She took some extra time after a class to help a student find a safer version of a pose only to receive negative feedback about her approach from the student via the studio owner.
As I mentioned in the video, if you want me to share solid strategies for dealing with any professional issues or difficulties, just submit a question in the comments below.
What would you do in this situation? How do you approach adjustments?
