3 Tips for Advanced Adjustments Every Yoga Instructor Needs to Know

Being a yoga instructor is not an easy job. You’ll meet all kinds of students with varying physical fitness levels and mindset. But with the right tools in your arsenal, you can work with just about any student regardless of their age, gender, and physical fitness.

The primary yoga teacher training courses from a registered yoga school will give you enough knowledge to start your own yoga classes and teach yoga to students, however, if you want to take your practice to a whole new level, you will need to learn Advanced Assists and Kinesthetics as part of continuing yoga education.

After all, one of the most powerful tools at your disposal is kinesthetic empathy - the ability to see and feel how a student feels in a given posture.

If you’re a yoga instructor who wants to bring additional improvements to your adjustments in yoga practice, you can start by using kinesthetic awareness - a learned ability that allows you to feel how a student feels in a yoga posture.

You can start by incorporating the following exercises into your yoga practice and then bring them to your yoga studio so you can individually and artfully assist students.

Advanced Adjustments Exercises

As a registered yoga teacher who has completed at least a 200 hours yoga instructor certification, you should incorporate the following methods into your practice.

• Look at and observe an individual student closely and see their physical alignment, never ignoring their energetic qualities. Try to figure out where the student seems to be stuck, tense, compacted or unaware. You should get an overall impression immediately. Is the student unengaged within the practice? Or is he/she not trying to make an effort? Or are they struggling and trying too hard?

• Now proceed and attempt to mimic the individual in the pose they are making sure that they are not looking at you. How do you feel if you were in the same posture and in the same way they are? Take the exact shape of their body in the posture and try to carefully arrange yourself energetically to the student. For example, if their legs look tense or their knees are locked, try to copy that.

• You should start to feel exactly the way the student feels if you mimic their posture. When this happens, you can mentally articulate how you would adjust your posture so that it becomes more stable and comfortable. With this, you can help the student perfect their pose.

The art of advanced adjustments takes time and practice to master. It is something that you will have to make a permanent part of your yoga practice. However, if you feel that you are unable to provide advanced adjustments to your students, invest in the continuing education course called the Advanced Assists and Kinesthetics Training.

More about Advanced Assists and Kinesthetics Certification

Purposeful assisting rapidly accelerates understanding in yoga practice. Yet conventional assisting courses rely on primarily “corrective” adjustments (from the outside in), instead of harnessing the natural intuition of the student.

Learn to help students maximize independent learning, increase coordination/muscle memory, while promoting deep, relaxation in action. Hardwire new confidence & knowledge through the use of action & resistance, stability & grounding, and intensity & duration.

Wild Abundant Life is a registered yoga school based in Illinois providing various certification courses including certified yoga instructor courses, 200, 300, and 500 hours teacher training programs and various other continuing education programs.

Check the complete catalog of yoga courses then look at the schedule and register yourself to certification program (both in-studio and online) to avail early bird discounts.