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The
following teaching suggestions come from the chapter "Sensation"
in my teacher
training manual, which focuses on the importance of helping
students develop internal awareness. This excerpt describes some
strategies for helping students develop awareness of how what they do
in a pose (action) influences what they feel (sensation).
Creating Verbal Cues that Make “Sense”:
Helping Students Connect Action to Sensation in Asana
·Cue actions connected to sensation (i.e. “bend forward until you feel a stretch in the back of your legs”), not landmarks (i.e. “reach for the toes”).
·Ask students to notice how the breath changes what they feel in a pose. How does the pose feel when they inhale? When they exhale?
·Invite students to imagine sending the breath where they feel the sensation of stretch. Have them observe how this changes the feeling of stretch, and perhaps melts the apparent “solidity” of resistance in a stretch.
·Invite students to close their eyes once they understand a pose or vinyasa, and focus on what they feel.
·Describe muscular actions as something that can be felt as well as “done”. For example, “draw the shoulder blades together to open the chest, feeling the engagement of the muscles between the shoulder blades” or “draw the tailbone under, and feel the release at the front of the hip” (in a lunge).
·Ask students to observe their attitude in a pose (or towards a pose). Attitude makes a real difference in how a student feels a pose – invite an attitude of playfulness, devotion, surrender, friendliness, or adventure.
·Use creative imagery to communicate quality of movement and action (see section on imagery for detailed ideas).
·Ask students how they would know the difference between good (safe) sensation and bad (harmful) sensation? This can be an extended classroom discussion. The students in the most danger are those who a) think all sensation hurts, including the sensation of gentle stretch or effort, and those who b) think that all sensation is good and a sign of progress, ability, or intensity. Both kinds of students will be unable to use internal cues to adapt a pose, and need to be given clear instructions for observing sensation (see section on pain for suggestions).
Teaching Exercise:
Beginners can often find greater awareness when entering a pose than when holding a pose. Choose a pose, and create three different ways of entering the pose.
For example, you could enter virabhadrasana A (warrior A) from:
1. Tadasana, stepping back into a wide stance, raising arms and lunging the front leg. This brings awareness to the stability and upward lift of the pose.
2. Downward facing dog, lunging forward, planting the feet, and rising into the pose. This brings awareness to how the foundation of the pose (feet placement) influences the pose from the ground up.
3. Tadasana, lifting one leg into a standing balance, taking it back to pass through virabhadrasana C (balancing warrior) before softly landing in the lunge of virabhadrasana A. This brings awareness to the backbending/core aspect of the pose.
For your own pose, notice: What do you learn about the pose in each transition? Which aspects of the pose are you most aware of? What qualities of grounding, balance, strength, and opening does each transition cultivate? Can you feel how focusing on different transitions develops awareness of movement and the pose itself?
Actions in Asana
This same process applies to being in the pose, and holding a pose. Training proprioception increases our sensitivity to subtle actions in asana. First, we must learn the ‘basic shape’ – then we learn how to refine postures and movements. Most beginners literally cannot “feel” all of the subtle actions we learn to appreciate in asana practice. There is no awareness – or as B.K.S. Iyengar describes it, no “intelligence” in a certain muscle or area of the body. The beginner has no idea how to communicate with a muscle, what it would feel like to contract or release it, and what the difference is between (for example) squeezing the butt, dropping the tailbone, lifting the sitzbones, and lifting the pelvic floor.
Teaching Exercise
Choose a pose, and identify three possible actions students could focus on.
Practice talking through a complete exploration of each action. What is the range of possibilities for that action? Talk students all the way from the release/absence of the action all the way through the fullest expression of the action (i.e. letting the feet be "lazy" all the way to actively grounding the foot, spreading and lifting the toes, and lifting the arches). Help students find a comfortable expression of the action.
Example: Utkatasana (chair pose)
1. Explore the movement of tucking/dropping the tailbone and releasing it back. Notice how this pelvic movement affects the spine and your sense of stability.
2. Shift your weight forward, by bringing the knees in front of the toes, and then shift the weight back, by brining the hips behind the heels and the knees over the feet. Notice how this shift moves all the way from the ankles to the knees to the hips to the spine. How does it influence the depth of the pose?
3. Practice moving the arms back without arching the spine. Notice how you can move the arms back independently of the spine. On the outbreath, draw the belly lightly in and stretch the arms back. Notice how this creates a sense of stability in the pose, especially in the core.
Choose your own pose. Explore it without any commitment to one “right way” to do a pose. Teachers need to remember that all beginners need to learn alignment through experience and awareness of how different ways of doing a pose lead to different results. They need to feel the difference in stretch, effort, ease, balance, openness, stability, comfort, etc. This is best taught be explaining alignment in terms of actions that can be explored through a full range of motion or options. Ask students to notice what changes when each action changes. Not every body will experience the same way. Not every body needs to practice a pose with one idealized set of alignment standards. Empower students to find skillful ways of adapting poses through heightened awareness.
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