Your language is one of the greatest tools you have in your teaching. You have the ability to create and help someone feel something they may not have been able to see or understand on their own. Weaving a coherent theme throughout your class is such a gift and can allow someone to step outside of themselves and experience wonder. With attention to the words you use and when and how you use them, your theme is not separate from the rest of your class but rather combines the students’ experience.
Some thoughts and reminders:
- Use direct, active and specific language instead of passive voice and vague, general terms to instruct.
- Feel your muscles engage vs Hug your legs towards each other
- See if you can relax vs Relax your shoulders away from your ears
- Be present vs Notice the air moving around your skin
- Sprinkle in concise, clear action cues (plain language) with a few sassier verbs that deliver your theme.
- Raise your arms:
- Float your arms up
- Glide your arms to the sky
- Skim the air as your arms reach towards the heavens
- Raise your arms:
-
- Forward fold:
- Pour your upper body down over your legs
- Hang the torso down
- Bow to yourself
- Forward fold:
- Use Vivid Descriptive Words
- Body parts:
- Barrel of the chest
- The arms reach out as if they were stems of a flower
- Legs solid and unyielding
- Breathe:
- Sip of sweet air
- Expansive, life-giving inhales
- Freeing exhale
- Adjectives/Adverbs/Metaphors:
- Illuminating fingertips
- Press unwaveringly
- Rock lovingly
- Breath like a gentle wave, flowing in and out
- With the power of a warrior
- Hands like lotus flowers
- Use visualization (without using “think of”):
- Let your fingers glide over the water’s surface (in forward fold)
- Spread your wings and soar on your breath (in triangle pose)
- Dig your fingers/toes into the earth
- Trace colors of light through the air (in flying warrior)
- Let your branches sway in the wind (in tree pose)
- Ask questions :
- How can you surrender to this shape?
- What do you need to adjust to listen to your own heart right now?
- Where are you resisting here?
- What would a warrior of the heart do right now?
- Body parts:
Match the tone of your choice to the quality you are invoking and/or the action you are describing, or what you want to evoke.
**Most importantly, use language that brings your students into the experience they are having right here and now, rather than directing their attention into thinking of something elsewhere. The practice is always taking place in the present.