Michelle Finlay Yoga

You're guiding your students into Warrior Two. You tell them to align their front heel with the arch of the back foot.

Because that's how you were taught to teach the pose. It works for your body.

But you notice Jon in the back try his hardest to maintain that foot position but struggle to stay upright and balanced.

Or when Jenny tries to stand like that her back knee buckles.

And it dawns on you that this way doesn't work for everyone.

And so the experiment begins.

you let go of such specific cueing and invite your students to feel their way to a steady standing shape.

you notice that many heels are not lined up with back arches but all of a sudden everyone looks more comfortable.

This opens a door to less dogma and more freedom in your classes and your students respond in a way you never imagined.

After class one day, Jon tells you he is a runner and was training for a marathon and had been following a standard training plan because that's how he's always done it.

But since coming to your class and being allowed to experiment and break the rules, he applied this thinking to his training and had a lightbulb moment around what wasn't working for him. He changed a few things and ended up running a PB!

Both you and he realise that following someone elses idea of optimal might not always work for the individual.

It feels exciting to hear from students apply yoga in their everyday lives.

This is yoga philosophy. It can help you help your students use their yoga practice to create shifts in their everyday lives.

When you understand some of the basic principles your teaching shifts gears from guiding shapes to something that is firmly applicable to every day life.

Theres a difference.

You're beginning to understand some of the core concepts in yoga philosophy and in your mind you're trying to square the circle of what happens when you teach a physical asana class.

You ask yourself how does "turn your back heel down, reverse cartwheel your arms up, Warrior 2" correlate with lessons of impermanence, letting go of attachment and staying present.

You want your student to becomdle more aware of themselves in the moment as they practice. Sensing, feeling and noticing what's there. Rather than just following your lead through a series of shapes.

I get it. I went through this internal tangle of how I was teaching to making the practice more relevant for my students

I read the part of the Gita that says about following your own Dharma, even if imperfect, being better than following someone else's and I realised the 'simon says' style class just doesn’t fit.

When you consciously choose to shift gears from Asana Instructor to Yoga Teacher you can no longer separate philosophy from practice because the former must inform the latter to feel true.

Everything changes.
Your students feel it.

They know they're in a place where they can learn something far beyond where to put their hands and feet in down dog and they tell you this is why they choose your class.

They feel engaged with their own practice more than when they were simply following your lead.

Because you're teaching them to trust the teacher within.

Have you noticed this shift in your own teaching or in classes you've attended?

I'd love to hear what changed for you? Share your experience in the comments, or send me a DM if you're navigating this transition yourself.

When you’ve been teaching yoga for a couple of years, you get the hang of directing your students through movement.

You know yoga is more than Asana and you're experimenting with ways of bringing depth and meaning into class.

Maybe you theme around some of the other limbs, the chakras or do a series on the yamas and niyamas as this was the philosophy you learnt during your YTT.

Or maybe you centre classes around the moon, astrology, the seasons, holidays?

I did all of this.

I took workshops and trainings on how to find my voice as a yoga teacher. How to theme classes and tie it all in to the movement so that it sounded meaningful.

But something always felt off. Because I knew that if a student questioned me - h0w is this related to the teachings of yoga. I'd struggle to answer.

That's when I took the deep dive.

Into the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita and the funny thing was, a lot of what I had been teaching was YOGA as per those texts.

The difference being that once I had the grounded experience of studying these texts, I better understood the roots and context.

I could make it relatable for the people I teach without feeling like a fraud.

If you're where I was and want your classes to be more than life-coaching through movement, I've got you.

You get the benefits of a consistent yoga practice, it's why you trained to teach. Because you are eager to share what you've learned with other people.

But what really happens when your students roll up their mats and leave the studio?

Yoga is a way of life. You know this. But do your students?

You do your best to convey the deeper messages of a yoga practice being about a conversation between mind and body...

But somehow it always ends up being about the poses.

How to make the pose fit the person. How to help your students navigate the flow of the class and find the variations that suit them best that day.

But then that takes over and all the other stuff you wanted to layer on top kind of gets lost amongst helping your student with the injured wrist modify during a sun salutation.

You realise that once they leave that room, the yoga stays behind until they come back next week. And you want to help your students take yoga off the mat.

There's a way to do this. It begins with yoga philosophy. I'm not talking about the yamas and niyamas (although they are important too), but much of the stuff that comes before them.

How when you learn just few key concepts and begin to apply them to your own life, you start to see them everywhere!!

In your relationships, in books, on TV and in the class you're teaching in front of you.

At that point, you don't need a plan of words to sprinkle over your students while they're in savasana. You're teaching yoga in real time, because you're living in it real time and it just becomes part of who you are!

As I say here, it's scary to allow more freedom in your classes, especially as a new teacher.

I know this because I've been called "brave" for the way that I teach which is incredibly invitational and allows lots of space for students to explore their own bodies and decide what needs to go where.

Remember your students are adults. They've been living their whole lives in their body. No one know it like they do.

You can guide your students through a sequence but you can't feel it for them.

This is why options aren't just for the people who can't do pigeon pose upright so are offered the reclined version.

Or for the person with a hamstring injury being invited to bend their knees in a forward fold.

Or for anyone not wanting to go upside down to rest in child's pose.

Options are for everyone. Because no two bodies are the same. No two days are the same. No two practices are the same.

Yoga philosophy teaches us that change is inevitable. Can you teach in a way that honours the human individual experience day to day? Because we're not robots (yet 😵‍💫).