Teaching Yoga: Creating a Practice that Transforms

Yoga is a vastly diverse form of spiritual practice. It can take so many different forms that it is literally endless. Some yoga practice is just mantra chanting, some practices involve meditation and breath only. Some practices follow the same series of postures each time, etc. Whatever type of practice that a yogini does, it is designed to take her into a greater experience of harmony, peace and well-being.

If you are a yoga teacher and you don’t teach to a set series of postures or practices (Like Ashtanga or Bikram), it is up to you to take the students into an experience of connection through your own knowledge and creativity. Of course, the essence of teaching a yoga class is taking students through the different practices (postures, breaths, meditations and the like) to improve the flow of their prana and then affect their general ‘reality’.

Each and every posture, breath and meditation has its own unique expression of prana and effect on the individual. Putting all the practices together into a class will yield an overall effect. It’s like baking a cake, you put the ingredients together, stirring and adding things in a special way and the apply the heat to get a specific effect: the cake. This is called ‘yukti’ in Sanskrit, which means ‘putting things together in a special way to create a specific result.’ A yoga class is a yukti just as baking a cake is a yukti.

Here is one way that you could think about building a yukti in your classes:

First, create grounding. Grounding is about stabilizing the body and attention in the present moment. This generally means getting people into their bodies and leaving behind the distractions of the other parts of their lives. You can do this through teaching simple seated poses and making some easy movements to get people in touch with their breath and bodies.

Second, activate flow. Flow is important because it gets prana, energy and attention circulating. In order to create change, we need to get things moving. It’s like a body of water, if there is circulation then the water is flowing and the lake is healthy. If things do not circulate, then the lake turns into a swamp and things stagnate. So, in this stage, get the body and breath gently moving, without too much intensity but with awareness.

Third, start to add some fire. If you want to create change, you must add some fire, some heat, to the body and mind. Fire is the great transformer and it is responsible for all change that happens to us, even on a subtle level. If we don’t create heat, the tissues of the body will be resistant to change, so bring up the intensity and general heat to allow change to happen. You can do this through the standing poses, sun salutes and vinyasas.

Forth, go to the edge. At the edge, we are out of our comfort zone and in a place where we must make a strong effort to succeed or transform. The heat that is generated in the last step allows students to access these areas of challenge and change. It might be a physical challenge such as a series of difficult postures like headstand or arm balances or backbends. The previous steps have prepared students to be in a place of intense transformation and to get the most out of the opportunity for change.

Fifth, move inwards. Yoga is not about constant challenge and intensity, yoga is life. Just like in life, it’s not healthy to have constant challenge and intensity in yoga. We have our times to be challenged, but we want that challenge to help us grow and help us to be more relaxed and at ease in our center. So, in this section, soften the practice and return to some grounding and softer poses. Do seated poses and twists and lots of breath. Take advantage of the openness and presence that the edge postures created to now go deeper. Yoga is the inward journey, so invite students to take their attention into themselves and move towards meditation.

Lastly, move to stillness. Ultimately, yoga is about meditation. To meditate, we need to be quiet and as still as possible. The body needs to be still so the mind can be still. Meditation is the yoga of the mind, and it is vastly more important and powerful than the yoga of the body. Towards the end of the practice, decrease the intensity and increase the stillness. Do even more breath and meditation. Do the gentle postures for longer and encourage stillness and meditation and eventually Savasana.

When you are finished, gently bring them back to the waking consciousness and help them to reestablish their engagement with the world, but encourage them to maintain their yoga feelings and quiet mind for as long as possible after the practice.

Play around with this sequence in your own practice before you try to teach it to others. It is a very powerful and effective way to help yoga students on their journey of transformation.

If you are interested in this approach to yoga, consider doing one of our 200 Hour Teacher Trainings in Thailand or our 100 Hour Modules in Europe and Bali. Even if you have done a teacher training before, we encourage you to join us. You can learn to teach yoga in a whole new way. We teach in a holistic and unique way that will give you unique perspectives on yoga practice and teaching. Join us soon!

See you on the mat!