46. Get confident giving yoga adjustments

Before we dive in, let’s be clear that the only thing that will help you build your confidence offering physical adjustment in your classes is: 
getting experience offering physical adjustments in your classes!

There’s no shortcuts unfortunately!

However, twice a year at Yoga Hero, we hold half day workshop to go through the stages of offering adjustments to yogis and then loads of time to practice under the watchful eye of our trainers,  to give you the experience that you need to be able to feel confident offering adjustments

The next workshop is 23rd June, held at Yoga Hero in Leeds and you are welcome even if you’ve never offered single physical adjustment before your entire life! You can expect to learn the stages of offering a physical adjustment, how to read people to see how the adjustment is landing on them and plenty of opportunity to practice practice practice.

The Art of Yoga Adjustments Workshop - take a look 

So this is where we’re going: 

- We’re actually starting with a look at what confidence is, which might seem really obvious, but it’s actually quite interesting when you start to break it down 

- Then we’ll look at ways to get confident giving Yoga adjustments

- We’ll look at the stages of giving physical yoga adjustments, including getting consent.

- Finally will look at how to get feedback to check that the assumptions that you’ve made about the adjustment were correct 

Boom!

See the show notes here 

Get your adjustments checklist here

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to For Yoga Teachers. This podcast has been created to help yoga teachers teach with passion, avoid burnout and earn a fair living. 

A few episodes ago, we took a look at whether yoga teachers should demo or not, and we had loads of questions like, 'yeah, I really wondered about demoing. How much should I demo? What's the right time to demo? And this ultimately led to conversations about making in person classes as brilliant as they could possibly be, which inevitably led to the world of offering physical adjustments. 

So many of you want to offer physical adjustments? However you feel like you need to build the confidence up to start [00:01:00] adjusting regularly in your classes. So before we go any further, let's be clear that the only thing that will help you build confidence, offering physical yoga adjustments in your classes is experience offering physical yoga adjustments in your classes. There's no shortcut. I'm afraid. 

With this in mind, twice a year at Yoga Hero, we run adjustments workshops for yoga teachers. So that you can get that experience in order to build up your confidence. 

We go through the stages of offering adjustments to yogis and there's loads of time to try these out under the watchful eye of our trainers, to give you that experience that you need. The next workshop is on the 23rd of June, held at Yoga Hero in Leeds, and you are so welcome, even if you've never offered a single physical adjustment before in your entire [00:02:00] life. You can expect to learn the stages of offering a physical adjustment, how to read people, to see how the adjustment is landing, and like I say, loads of opportunity to try them out, to practice, practice, practice, and give you the experience that you need. The workshop link is in the show notes and I hope that you can join us. Okay. 

So this episode is going through how to get confident giving adjustments, whether you can make the workshop or not. 

So this is where we're going. We're actually starting with a look at what confidence is, which might seem really obvious, but it's actually kind of interesting when you start to break it down. Then we'll look at ways to get confident, giving yoga adjustments. We'll look at the stages of giving a physical yoga adjustment, including getting consent. And finally how to get feedback and check that the assumptions that you've [00:03:00] made, about the adjustment, were correct. Okay. Let's do this. 

What is confidence? Often when I'm talking to yoga teachers, there's a conversation that goes something along the lines of, ' I'm not a confident person' or 'I'm not one of those confident yoga teachers'. Or even 'I'm not one of those naturally confident yoga teachers'. But. Confidence is something that you create, that you cultivate, that you build, that you work on. 

It's not something that just appears. Here I am. It comes and it goes, it grows, but not in a linear way. And in my experience, it really is something that you have to work on. And so feeling confident giving yoga adjustments is something that you can create and work on and generate and build [00:04:00] yourself. Confidence is knowing that you can do something. It's the knowing, that you are able, it is within your ability to do that thing. And the reason that I keep saying that confidence comes from experience is because the ongoing repeated experience of offering yoga adjustments, is something that you can't argue with, you are doing that, and that's a fact. And the fact that you have been generating the experience is what gives you the confidence. 

Ways to get confident giving yoga adjustments. So at the risk of being a total and complete broken record. Confidence comes from experience. Okay. But how do you go about getting that experience? 

Well, how about attending an adjustment's workshop for kickoff? [00:05:00] Or how about gathering together a couple of yoga teacher friends and practicing on one another. If you're already on The Base, put a shout out for yoga teachers near you and set up a practice session where you all practice approaching a mat, putting hands-on, administering the adjustment, and then getting feedback afterwards. 

How about starting with yogis that have been coming to you forever? You feel pretty comfortable around them, and you could just start with Balasana, child's pose or gentle adjustments in Savasana. 

How about starting with yogis that have been really honest with you in the past so that you know that you're getting honest feedback. 

How about purposefully creating a slower, simple flow that frees up your brain to focus on moving around the room and offering adjustments. 

I think the key is to start really slow and really simple. Get feedback, which will boost your [00:06:00] confidence, and then you can work on making your adjustments more regular and more skilled, and more complex, once you have that base of confidence to work from. 

The stages of giving physical yoga adjustments. 

The first stage, and if you only take one thing away from this podcast episode, let it be this. The first stage is getting clear opt in consent from every single person that you touch, before the adjustment. Something like a card, that the person takes themselves that clearly says 'I would like to be adjusted' that they put near their mat, there's more on this in episode 22, and in our adjustments checklist. The details for both of these are in our show notes. 

The second stage is your [00:07:00] intention and approach. The intention check-in is a must. Think: why am I intending to adjust this person? Is it because the pose is unsafe, or because you feel like there's some extra space or strength there. Or is it because it doesn't look like the pictures in your yoga book? Needless to say, if it's the latter, that isn't a reason to adjust. 

The third stage is the adjustment itself. This is a tricky one, because if you're feeling nervy, The Yogi will probably pick up on that and tense up. So go back to the building confidence stage and think, how can I make this easier for myself? So that you don't feel nervy when you're approaching someone. 

And while you don't want to stump up to someone like an elephant, you also don't want to tip toe up to them, you do want to make some approaching noise so that you don't surprise [00:08:00] them. 

The fourth state is a short observational period, once the adjustment is complete. If the Yogi wobbles or they rub something as if it's sore, or they look confused or whatever. This is gold. This is such useful information. This is telling you more than they might say verbally about how the adjustment was for them. 

Similarly, if they smile or they sink into the space that you've made for them, or they relax or they sigh, these are all really, really great signs as well. 

The fifth and final stage is to get some feedback. I'd say this is most likely to happen after the class, rather than after the observation. A, because you want the Yogi to be able to speak freely rather than everyone listening in. And B you probably need to get on with teaching the [00:09:00] class. 

It could be as simple as approaching the Yogi after class and saying, do you remember, I adjusted you in dadida pose. Was it clear what I was trying to do? Did you feel like you wanted more or less pressure, et cetera, gathering information that way. Put the information, the feedback in your big box of learnings and resolve to continue. 

In The Base, we have some journaling questions, some journaling prompts around offering adjustments, so if you feel that you have a bit of a block here and you're not really sure why go and grab those questions, grab those prompts and free write and resolve the block that's there. 

You don't have to adjust right? But when it's done right, and with consent, it can take your class from good to absolutely amazing. And who doesn't want that. 

So to [00:10:00] summarise, I think about making your first adjustments as simple and as easy as possible. See how they land on people. Ask for feedback. Put that in your big box of learnings and start to think about making adjustments more regular, or more complex with that base of confidence. There's no need to rush. Go and grab your journaling prompt and your adjustments checklist and join us for our adjustments workshop in June, if you can, and be kind to yourself. It takes time, but most wonderful things do don't they. Good luck. And as always. Happy teaching.