Your Yoga Cueing Skills
Are you a new yoga teacher who struggles with confidence on the mat? Do you worry that your verbal cues will be misunderstood or that you may unintentionally cause injury to a student in your class?
Whether you are new to teaching or a seasoned yoga instructor, improving your verbal cuing can have a profound impact on the way students experience their practice. In cueing course for yoga teachers, as in other types of fitness classes, cueing helps students connect with their poses and with one another. Cuing can be as simple as providing direction, describing a pose with its directional movement, or offering a specific physical action that encourages a deeper stretch. Using the following yoga cueing techniques, you can help your students achieve a more satisfying experience on their mats and beyond.
Verbal cues should be clear and direct, and they should avoid being too flowery or using yoga-specific anatomy terms that many of your students may not understand. If you are unsure how to word your cues, try practicing them out loud at home or taking lots of different teachers’ classes to hear their methods.
Elevating Your Yoga Cueing Skills
When it comes to describing a yoga pose, it’s important to emphasize its functional movement and the directional movements that are happening all at once. For example, instead of giving a verbal cue such as “lift your sit bones toward the ceiling,” it might be more effective to give a simple descriptive yoga cue such as “back to neutral.”
Many yoga teachers tend to focus on the outer shape and aesthetics of a pose. However, focusing on the alignment alone can limit students’ ability to find their own inner strength and rhythm in each pose. It can also make them feel intimidated or insecure about their postures, which can have negative consequences on the student’s practice and overall well-being.
Yoga isn’t a competition, and it isn’t meant to be a race. Rather, it’s a way to calm the mind and improve health and wellbeing in the body. Cueing this philosophy to your students can help them gain a sense of ease and trust in themselves on their mat, even when they have more work to do than others.
Using descriptive yoga cues is an excellent way to guide your students through the practice, but it’s important to remember that not every student will progress at the same rate. Observe your students to see what their strengths and challenges are, then be flexible with how you approach the class. For example, if you notice that most of your students are losing their integrity in the lumbar spine during extended side angle pose, it might be beneficial to add in a verbal cue reminding them to relax their shoulders down their backs. The goal is to help each student have the most rewarding and productive yoga class possible on their mats.