Barre with Justine

When you teach anything, from yoga to higher education, I think there’s always an element of imposter syndrome that can pop up. Perhaps its because more you know about a topic, the more you realize you are just scratching the service of all the possibilities. Yoga also has a reputation of being a little more cliquey or judgmental among movement communities.

There can be strong opinions on all parts of being a yoga instructor, from teaching with/without music, taking pictures of poses, to the appropriate length of savasana. Sanskrit terminology is one of the debated topics in the yoga community.

I really appreciate my own YTT instructor, Christina Raskin’s, approach to the Sanskrit terms. She wanted us to know them for any future trainings but didn’t feel they necessarily needed to be used in teaching. I come from an initial training in BodyBalance (formerly BodyFlow), where we NEVER use the Sanskrit terms for postures. It’s crocodile, Warrior, and Forward Fold all the way. BodyBalance is a blend of yoga, Tai Chi, and Pilates and one of my favourite classes to teach. As with all Les Mills programs, it’s designed around the flow of the music and creating group fitness experiences. The class is based around yoga but is not a traditional yoga class.

One of the reasons I pursued my 200HR YTT was to feel more authentic as a “true” yoga teacher (even though I will often prefer to teach BodyBalance!) IT was great to learn the anatomy of the human body and the poses, in depth, to build my teaching and home practice. But naming the asanas is still a tricky part for me!

On the one hand, I understand the importance of honouring the roots of yoga and find it very cool that Sanskrit is used as the universal language of yoga. Brett Larkin, whose recent book I adore, makes a great case for using Sanskrit terms for teaching in this blog post. It does give you a certain cachet as a teacher to use the traditional names for poses, as it shows you have studied and learned them in depth.

On the other hand, I’m wary of language that can make others feel like they aren’t part of the club (especially when teaching and moving from pose to pose quickly). I wouldn’t expect a first-time yogi to understand what Trikonasana was….maybe they would recognize Savasana, but even that isn’t a given.

Jason Crandell is another yoga teacher whom I deeply admire and he writes, “Using excessive jargon requires students to be “in the know” and usually leaves many students out of the loop…be mindful that you try to explain things in a way that anyone can understand.” (Common verbal cueing mistakes that yoga teachers make)

Students learn in a variety of ways during yoga class: by watching us move through the poses (visual), practicing the poses (kinesthetic), and listening to our cues (auditory).* If we put ourselves into the role of student, we can reflect on our teaching methods and how they may be received by students. Do you model the poses for students or do you just verbally cue? Do you play music or not? Do you physically adjust students? All of these variations in teaching can have an effect on a student. Students all learn differently and we all teach differently.

So I’m curious to hear if you teach with the Sanskrit terms or stick with common language…or perhaps you do both?

Thanks, as always, for reading!

* They may read/write about yoga at home, but the predominant ones that we see in class are auditory, visual, and kinesthetic.