Take Care of Yourself or Your Students: Yoga and Safety

by Shari

I have been thinking a lot about the topic of safety when I teach these days, so I thought I might share some of my insights with you all, both students and fellow teachers.

So many people wander into a yoga class these days that it can be overwhelming for the teacher to juggle all the special needs that people may present. Let me give you some examples of my typical yoga students. I may have a student with glaucoma/cataracts who can’t do any poses where her head is lower that her heart, a student with a total knee replacement, hip replacement, hip fracture with surgical pinning, or students with osteotomies, acromioplasties, heart attacks, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, heart surgeries, strokes, vertigo, garden variety joint pain, spinal pain, herniated discs of the neck, back, sacroiliac issues, chronic pain of any body part, vertebral artery occlusion, carotid artery stenosis, etc. I think you are getting the point! And not all of these people are seniors or even over 55. In fact, some of my healthiest looking students have significant chronic illnesses and issues. How can I teach a class that has this variety? (I am not even talking about special needs yoga class here, but general classes.) Yes, it’s really easy to feel overwhelmed.

Navigating Through Icebergs by Michele Macartney-Filgate

But I have learned over time to ask some very simple questions in two minutes or less to get a feel of the student:

1. Have you done any yoga before? Now this question is very challenging because sometimes an individual will answer yes, but you have to qualify how long ago this was and what type of yoga.
2. Do you have any conditions that I should be aware of? Now here is another question that may appear simple but isn’t. Sometimes when people live with chronic conditions it is so normal for them they don’t even think about it being a problem. So you may have to probe a little.

Then, most importantly, I tell my new students this: “You are responsible for yourself in this class. Please don’t think I have ESP and know when something is overtaxing for you or causing you pain. And please come out of any pose and let me know of the difficulty you are experiencing.” Yes, it is paramount that every student take the responsibility for his or her own actions and does not pass that responsibility onto the teacher.

After this, you have set the stage for having engaged students in your class, but you aren’t done with providing a safe environment for your students. Throughout every class, you need to observe every student to make sure that people aren’t becoming overly fatigued and distressed. Is someone looking paler than usual? Is a student sweating more than normal? Is a student more red-faced than usual? Looking for subtle changes in your familiar students is important. Also, give people (or yourself!) permission to stop and rest (see Resting Between Poses for information about resting). We are all so driven, whether it is internal competition in our own selves on how much we want to or need to do or external competition where we are looking around at our classmates and competing. Yes, yes, this isn’t supposed to be yoga, but it does happen to the best of us and when we compete even against ourselves, injuries can occur.

These are very general suggestions that both teachers and students can immediately apply to their personal practices as well as to yoga classes. In future posts we can all discuss particular strategies for keeping yoga students who live with various medical concerns safe while they practicing asana.