Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app. It’s not uncommon for yoga teachers to have a few crutch words in our vocabularies. We often rely on “um” or “so” when searching for the next thing to say. A crutch phrase I tend to say a lot is “you know.” Whereas these could be considered benign fillers, there is another crutch word that I catch myself using a lot that can actually have a harmful effect on students. The word is “just.” When Good Intentions Go Awry In an attempt to be inclusive and invitational, yoga teachers commonly, and perhaps unknowingly, slip in the word just when cuing more intense add-ons in a pose. This usually takes the form of offering students the option to “just stay here.” For example, in Extended Side Angle Pose (Utthita Parsvakonasana), when I cue students to take the top arm alongside their heads, I’ve heard myself say, “Or just keep your arm reaching to the ceiling.” When I cue students to take their top arm in a bind in that pose, I’ve often said, “Or just put your hand on your hip instead.” My intention is to be helpful. But for people who are unable or unwilling, for any reason, to practice the alternate version of the pose, my words can be demeaning. The word just can also occur when we’re offering students the option of taking an alternate pose during a sequence. For example, I have also made the mistake of offering alternatives for Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand) by saying “Or just do Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana)” and “Or just practice arms overhead.” In each of those instances, I had thought I was being conscious and thoughtful. Our intention may come from a place of sensitivity, but if we preface pose options with just, our teaching can go from accessible to hierarchical real quick. Jivana Heyman writes about yoga teachers’ good intentions backfiring in his recent book, The Teacher’s Guide to Accessible Yoga. “Sometimes we overcompensate and infantilize our students, especially older adults, by speaking in overly concerned or worried tones. An example of this is using the word just as in ‘just raise your arms up in front of you,’ even though you may be saying it to sound sensitive. It can come across as belittling.” “It can seem like just is an effort to make the action sound easy,” Heyman later explained in a conversation. “But if the action is actually hard or impossible for the student then it can really be offensive.” The inability to perform or perfect can also uncover a variety of uncomfortable psychological layers for some students, says long-time teacher’s teacher and the founder of SmartFLOW yoga, Annie Carpenter. “Just is often received as a comparative request, which triggers deep, and often old, ego responses. It cues us to place ourselves in the ‘Oh, that’s easy’ group, or alternately in the ‘Something else that’s hard for me’ group.’” Some students may see just as an invitation to remain in the status quo of their practice, says Jocelyn Gordon, yoga teacher and the creator of HoopYogini. Gordon works mostly with women and mothers and notices the tendency for this population to play it small in both their practice and their lives by using just in their self-descriptive language to diminish their abilities and accomplishments. “The word just is diminishing. Like, when someone says ‘I’m just a stay at home mom,’” says Gordon. “‘Give yourself more credit! You’re a human managing a household—that’s beyond CEO-level output’!” You’re Not a Bad Teacher If You’ve Used “Just” Allihopa Accessible and Adaptive Yoga founder Rodrigo Souza had an experience with just while teaching at a rehab center for newly injured spinal cord injury patients. “During the class, I asked everyone to ‘just spread their fingers wide and then close them again,’ making a claw-like movement in synchronization with their breath,” he explains. “However, I noticed that two out of the ten students were unable to perform this movement.” Souza felt terrible. “My superego came in judging my behavior. “So I kindly brought myself back and used this as a learning curve.” His efforts include no longer using the word just and making an effort to get to know his students as much as possible before each class. “I want to ensure that my students feel included, safe, and most importantly, seen.” Liza Fisher, (known on Instagram as Limitless Liza), also believes we can change our languaging while being compassionate with ourselves about past errors. Fisher started to teach yoga months before a life-threatening bout with long COVID took away her ability to walk. Having experienced life in a wheelchair transformed both her yoga teaching and her practice. “Lots of cueing for modifications comes from the lens of the physical capacity of the person doing the cueing. It takes a lot of work to remove that, let alone take on the lens of someone else,” says Fisher. “Especially if you’ve never come into contact with their perspective.” She has since relearned to walk. “I used my yoga practice to gain awareness of my body while learning to adapt. It did help to have formal training in adaptive yoga and chair yoga, but I can now do that on my own and do not need an instructor necessarily to cue. Many disabled people go through their own version of this journey. We know our bodies and we can adapt better than anyone can tell us.” Tamika Caston-Miller, director of Ashé Yoga, has been working hard to remove just when cueing breath, especially since the pandemic. “Folks have all different relationships with their breath and lung capacity. Saying just as relating to breath alludes to breathing being a common and easy experience to people, and that is not always true.” These days, Caston-Miller tries to be less prescriptive of people’s exact breath by cuing in the following way, “Inhale, for as long as feels good and if it feels right for you today, add a tiny pause at the top of the inhale. Exhale for as long as feels good, and if it feels right today, add a tiny pause.” In this way, she is empowering students to determine their unique capacity, while still practicing similar breathing ratios as a group. How to Stop Using the Word “Just” When Teaching When we come back to our “why” as yoga teachers, it’s to hold a safe and welcoming space for students. This means choosing our words as carefully as we choose the poses we offer. It’s also always helpful to remind ourselves that we’re there as space holders rather than maestros. Fisher agrees that there is a big difference between being a guide and a taskmaster. “Guiding requires the challenge of the teacher removing themselves from the instruction and being guided by the energy and bodies in the room,” she says. There’s nothing more symphonic than a bunch of humans doing what’s individually right for them. There are a number of incremental adjustments you can make to help you ditch just from your teaching vernacular and help create that experience for students. 1. Look at Your Why? First, consider why you are offering an option. Are you giving options as a place for people to explore their practice autonomously? Or are you implying that there is a mandatory sequence for students to follow? For example, Child’s Pose (Balasana). Many teachers cue the pose as a place of rest, but for a lot of people, this pose is far from restful. Rather than insisting students do the shape offered or that they just find a modified version, if we remember our intention is for the student to have a moment to rest, we can say “Or take any shape that feels restful to you.” 2. Make It an Inquiry Carpenter encourages teachers and students alike to make everything an inquiry. She relies on asking questions. For example, instead of telling students to “just keep your arm reaching overhead,” she prefers to ask “can you take your left arm overhead?” That empowers the student to be their own expert on what is right for them that day. Approaching our practice from a place of curiosity also takes the pressure off of having to do something correctly. When everything is an experiment, then everything is exactly as it should be. 3. Encourage Awareness Interoception is our ability to feel our body’s internal sensations, such as hunger, pain, discomfort, etc. Souza believes that encouraging this awareness more than alignment is essential to making class more inclusive, accessible, and trauma-sensitive. “Removing the word just will give your students more agency,” says Souza. “By doing so, they will feel encouraged to explore their abilities and develop better interoception and body awareness, which will ultimately make your class more inclusive.” Souza gives the example of “Raise your arms any amount that is comfortable for you while you inhale.” The emphasis becomes on the student’s comfort rather than how high they can lift their arm. 4. Offer Logical and Empowering Variations In support of not needing the word just, you can offer variations that are empowering and maybe even exciting. Rather than always suggest students come into the same poses—namely, Child’s Pose or Reclining Bound Angle (Supta Baddha Konasana) during more complex shapes, think about the anatomical and energetic intentions of each pose you teach and be prepared with alternatives that offer the same effect. For example, with Bakasana (Crow Pose). This is an intense and exciting pose, but people may not be able to crouch to the ground to play with the preparatory steps or linger in a squat. Instead, you can practice the pose on your back by rounding your spine and hugging your knees toward your upper arms. If you are in a chair and unable to get to the floor, you can place a block between your thighs and pull your elbows down by your sides while contracting your tummy. You can also visualize the pose without moving your body at all, which neuroscience shows lights up the same parts of our brain as if we were doing the movement. These variations help to make it clear to students that there is no “full expression” of a pose or “final” pose in the class. When it becomes clear that we’re not working toward anything, no one can be left behind. We’re simply exploring different movements and cultivating different sensations. 5. Let Your Students Teach You Souza encourages teachers to always maintain a beginner’s mind. “Stay humble and be a student,” he suggests. “Allow your students to be the teachers instead. This approach fosters compassion and kindness, making your class more human-centered.” Souza finds this approach particularly helpful when we inevitably slip and blurt out things we didn’t intend. Allowing yourself to be a student first means “you are no longer in the position of being the teacher who knows everything and feels the pressure of that role,” he says. “Instead, you can simply smile, regroup, and try not to make the same mistake again.” Learn more about how yoga can transform your everyday life and enhance your connection to your body, mind, and soul by subscribing to our newsletter!
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