Communicating through touch as a yoga teacher

What isn’t touching everything else? This is the question we used to open a weekend of teachers sangha and inquiry with Jean Hall and Anna Ashby. 

In my classes leading up to this weekend I was already starting to think about how I use touch as a teacher and the challenges I sometimes feel around hands on assists. For me, assists are moderate and compassionate. They are a way to encourage a student's own experience of being in their body. I love to encourage independent inquiry, which is so often informed by the students themselves and can be broken with a ‘teacher knows best’ approach to touch. Force, dogma and hierarchy have also been at play in the world and we’ve all seen the horrific stories when a power dynamic plays out as abuse in the yoga world.

When thinking about the use of touch as a teacher it’s so important to get into the students perspective. How does it feel to receive touch as a student?

I’ve been considering the assists I like to receive in practice. Some of these assists have changed my experience of the shape completely - a shifting relationship to ground or an expansion and reach that wasn’t there before. Often these assists have been a subtle well placed hand or an encouragement to breathe into a certain part of the body. They are rarely heavy handed and forced (... although I’ve had my fair share of these in the past too and have loved them, at times, also.) The most meaningful assists I’ve received have felt as if they’ve come from a place of care, compassion and mutual understanding of what might support my own practice. An understanding of what I might be missing or not have noticed about my own body. They feel bespoke and like a nudge in a new direction that I hadn’t quite found myself yet. They amplify the experience - whether this is spaciousness around a certain part of the body or a closeness in relationship to ground.

A useful place to start when using touch as a yoga teacher is to consider, what’s the intention?

Is it to perform the role of the teacher? Particularly as a new teacher, there can be a sense that in order to appear ‘good’ at the job, you’ve got to prove yourself to be competent with hands-on assists. I’ve definitely been guilty of this mindset in the past and it honestly feels a bit uncomfortable now. I began my teacher training during the first covid lockdown, when hands-on assists were completely off the cards and social distancing was in place. Then, as restrictions lifted and I took further training around assists it felt like a box ticking exercise to fit these into my classes. As I made the move into teaching at larger studios, it felt like something I needed to include to prove myself as qualified for the job.

I would sequence my flows around the opportunity to give assists, moving through sun salutation sequences and aiming to assist every student's downward facing dog, often with the same cookie-cutter assist I thought I had mastered. While this taught me the valuable skill of moving through the room I look back now and wonder what my intention was here? Was it to truly support the students body awareness, or to prove myself as a newly-qualified but competent teacher?

Now, I will consider more closely what use of touch will support a student best. This comes with time and experience watching bodies in movement and was something I really developed whilst taking the Daoist Flow training that heavily emphasised observation and assisting hours (this is so valuable as a teacher and I’ve written in detail about it previously here!) Watching my very experienced teachers move through the room with confidence and precision, offering assists that appeared to shift the tone of the student's body inspired my reframed approach to touch. This also gave me the opportunity to observe and explore a far wider range of hands-on assists, building an internal catalogue of ways to introduce touch into my teaching.

Now, my assists are more varied and bespoke to certain bodies. I often work with props, especially in slower classes, offering more support through carefully placed bolsters, blankets and bricks. They are also more minimal and there will often be times when I won’t use touch at all, when a student feels so immersed in their own deep interoceptive flow that I don’t feel any need to step into that physically. 

A two way communication

Assists in yoga are a two way communication. There is mutual learning and understanding taking place here in the moment of touch. This can be a beautiful moment of co-regulation, a chance to build empathy and remember our interconnectedness. In a world ever more distanced from physical touch these spaces to connect, in person and without words, feel rarer and rarer.

As a teacher, if I’m feeling a little out-of-body (over worked, under slept, perhaps) then that is the energy that I’ll be giving to my students. Similarly if I am grounded, steady and well rested this is the tone that will be reflected when I offer assists. Often the grounding practices I share at the beginning of a practice do wonders to shift any funky moods for myself, but on those complete off-days where the mood won’t shift, I’ll make the decision not to use touch. This is such a valuable lesson. You don’t have to teach the same every day.

Using touch is an ongoing learning process …

This conversation isn’t over and I look forward to observing, exploring and embodying new ways to offer assists to my students. I’ve already felt my confidence improve around assists in past years but I know from observing other teachers that there are so many more ways to offer support to students using touch. Touch is a teaching language that we build with time, from our own experiences and our observations with others. This is just one of the many reasons why I find it so valuable to continue a regular practice in studio, even with a busy teaching schedule myself.

Staying open minded is also key here. Knowing that every body is built in a different way and therefore will respond to assists uniquely. The personal experience is also hugely important. There are so many reasons why we might not want to be touched in a practice and this has to be respected as a teacher. As much as we see of the student on the mat and their demeanour arriving to the studio, we never know their lived experience and how it might affect their practice.

We talk about yoga as a lifelong practice - and the same goes for the teaching experience. These reflections and group discussions are an opportunity to question my intentions and methods on a regular basis and keep checking in.

My hands-on assists protocol:

During the teachers sangha we discussed considerations when giving assists in the room, particularly around when to and when not to assist. Reflecting after these conversations and my teaching experiences, I wanted to write a protocol for myself as something to hold myself accountable to, and reflect back on in the future.

Here it is;

1. A personal check in.
   
   How do I feel at the start of the practice? Do I feel comfortable in the space, with the students and in myself to start offering hands-on assists? If I don’t, are there any practices I could use to calm and ground that will change my outlook. And if I don’t feel comfortable offering assists in this moment, know that that’s okay and there are so many other ways I can communicate what I would like to teach.
   

2. Ask permission.
   
   Towards the start of every class, often in a child's pose or downward dog, I will let my students know that I offer hands-on assists, and that they are completely optional. Any students wishing to receive assists today can let me know with a raise of a hand or foot. This opt-in approach is a change of language that I’ve started using recently after a conversation assisting on the latest Daoist Flow teaching training. I previously asked students to ‘opt out’ of assists. This positive assumption that most students want to receive assists feels out of place, especially with many newer students in my classes who might not be used to the practice of touch in a class environment at all. When asking students to opt-in I get a clear sense of the students who respond positively to touch as a learning method and can offer them a teaching style that supports their practice. I also feel much more confident approaching a student for an assist knowing that they have positively opted-in. I would say roughly 50% of my students choose to receive assists.
   
   

3. Let the student know you’re there.
   
   If possible, I approach assists from a position where the student can see me. I might also use a brush of my hands to, firstly warm up any cold palms, and secondly highlight to the student that I’m in their space by using sound.
   
   

4. Don’t be afraid to be selective.
   
   This is an interesting one and something that came up during the teachers' sangha. I no longer feel the need to assist every student. I will sometimes use assists with students that are new to my classes, especially those that are newer to yoga and might need more guidance in posture. However, on the whole I am much more likely to offer assists to my regular students.  I would much rather offer a select few well intentioned assists to those I know will benefit from it, rather than rushing through the room in the sake of fairness. With regular students I know their bodies and the assists that they have received well in the past. This isn’t favouritism, but just a recognition that I have greater understanding and relationship with those that practice with me regularly.
   
   This selective approach to assists comes from the fact that no two students are identical. Not everyone needs or wants an assist and there is therefore nothing wrong with being selective.
   
   

5. Post-class practices
   
   What am I doing in the moments after a class? When teaching and specifically working with touch, we receive a huge amount of energetic feedback from our students. Mostly this is positive, the post savasana smiles and the overall magic tone we can find ourselves in. Sometimes we walk away with something stickier. The circling narrative of things that might have gone wrong, been misinterpreted and the student that became rigid and tense in response to an assist.
   
   I’m lucky that I have a lovely bunch of regular students that I will often chat to after class. This softens the barrier between teacher and student. I will then try and find some time alone to shake, to sway and to breathe through my body. Coming back to my own body. Letting it move through.