53: How Do I Know If I’m Doing A Pose Correctly?

Yoga Teacher Training Podcast: Learn Anatomy, Philosophy, Business and More

One of the most common questions that new teachers have his “am I doing this pose correctly?” This is a great question and really important to know if you're going to teach that pose. What do you look for? What should it feel like in your body? Is there really even just one correct way to do a pose?

There are some important questions to consider when we're talking about a posture. First of all, whose standards are you following? Some lineages of yoga say that you have to do chair pose with your knees together and arms overhead. Other lineages say that you should adapt each pose to the individual student. Which one is correct? Is there a place for both?

The word alignment gets thrown around a lot in the yoga context, but what does it really mean? It's really understand the postures we need to answer these questions and decide on what standards we are following and how we are choosing to define ‘in-alignment’ vs ‘out of alignment.’ Often these definitions are not as clearly defined as you might think.

How can we define alignment? How can we know if a pose is correct or incorrect? Is that even a context that we want to frame our teaching in?

I'll share 5 questions to consider that I teach about in my Quietmind Yoga Teacher Training to help you feel confident practicing and teaching all of the most common poses. Once you understand how to apply this to one pose you start to see how it applies to all poses.

1. Whose standards are you following?
2. How do you define Alignment?
3. What are the common misalignments in this pose?
4. What anatomical actions are happening in the pose?
5. What are the possible progressions of this pose?

These are things I weave into everything I teach in the Teacher Training, the Quietmind Yoga Podcast and the Quietmind Yoga Membership. If you find this helpful, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or send me a message on Instagram @jeremy.quietmind

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Thanks for listening!
Jeremy