Integrating Mindfulness, Movement, And Meaning In Your Yoga Class

You can feel when a class lands: the room gets quiet, the body softens, and attention holds steady even as movement continues. That shift is not magic; it’s method. We sat down with senior teacher and writer Sara-Mai Conway to unpack a practical, human way to make yoga and meditation one continuous experience rather than two separate boxes on a schedule.

Sara-Mai's website: https://www.iwriteaboutwellness.com/

We start by redefining yoga as skillful energy movement using both outer and inner methods. Ethics calm mental noise, asana prepares the body for stillness, pranayama bridges body and mind, and focused attention matures into insight and, at times, a taste of samadhi. From there, we build a class like a guided sit: set a clear intention, select poses that serve it, and let every cue point back to the thread. 

Breath-focused flows become fluid and repetitive to highlight inhale and exhale. Gratitude takes shape in bows and forward folds. Grounding becomes literal through contact with the earth. Working with non-harming or self-compassion invites challenge while naming the inner talk that shows up.

Silence becomes a teacher rather than an absence. We share how to frame quiet as safe and time-bound, when to place formal meditation inside a flow, and how to ask simple, embodied questions that turn effort into awareness. Savasana shifts from background music to true stillness, and closing with a brief dedication helps wire benefits into daily life. Along the way, we talk about teaching with authenticity, trusting students with depth, and avoiding the “spiritual sandwich” where mindfulness appears only at the beginning and end.

If you’ve ever wondered how to keep presence alive between the opening sit and the final rest

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Each episode offers a mix of:

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Transcript

Welcoming Sarah Mae Conway

SPEAKER_01 0:38

So today is a very special day. We have Sarah Make Conway joining us, who is a fantastic mindfulness and meditation teacher. Very lucky to be working with her with mindfulness exercises for several years now. She is one of our senior teachers, one of our main writers, and also behind some of our offerings that we share, including the certification program and several of our offerings. She is a wonderful teacher, wonderful writer. She is a yoga meditation teacher with the Modern Elder Academy. She is a regular contributor with the blog Mind Works. He is a very dedicated yoga teacher in Baja, Mexico. She also teaches surfing. He completed a master's degree in sport management at the University of San Francisco in 2004. And it's a 1999 graduate of Texas University. She's a former rowing coach NCAA Division I. She is a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, again, an impeccable yoga teacher. And yeah, I I feel very lucky to be working with you, so I mean you can just kind of tell that there's a level of integrity with her words, with her being, and she walks the talk, but she's a nice blend of like devoutness to the practices as well as like fun. She's a fun person. She likes to laugh, she loves doggies, she likes adventure, she loves nature, and you never know what she's gonna be doing next with her travels or adventures. So it's funny because we've been working with Star May for years, and I feel like it's long overdue to have invited her to be a guest teacher for the certification program, and because she has so much more to offer with her specialties and her unique paths that may not always be covered in her teaching for us. And so I know many people in this program teach yoga or you know embodied movement practice, and so I think that Sarah May will be able to speak to that really, really well and offer some practical guidance on how to integrate these worlds of mindfulness, meditation, and yoga. And so I encourage you, you know, if you resonate with Sarah May, to reach out to her directly if you want, and maybe go visit her at her retreats in various places in the world and partake in some of her offerings outside of mindfulness exercises. She teaches retreats, she's a writer, wellness teacher. You can find her at baha surfyoga.com. Put a link in the chat section. You can also just Google Sarah Mae Conway and find her socials and other offerings online. But Sarah May, welcome to the program, so to speak. And it's really a pleasure to welcome you here.

Yoga And Meditation As One Practice

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(Cont.) Yoga And Meditation As One Practice

Eight Limbs As Outer And Inner Methods

Ethics, Asana, Breath, And Mind

From Concentration To Insight To Samadhi

SPEAKER_03 4:14

Thank you. Um thanks for that really sweet introduction. Yeah, and I'm I'm really excited always to talk about mindfulness and meditation, but I'm especially um excited to finally get to talk about yoga in this space. So, yeah, that's what we're gonna be doing today, is just talking about the integration of these, all these things, yoga, mindfulness, meditation, because I do know we have a lot of yoga teachers in the program. Welcome everyone. I I think that we'll just get settled in as we normally do with a little meditation. So go ahead and wiggle yourself into a bit more of a comfortable seat. Um, if you're not already there. Maybe take a few deep, full breaths in and out through the nose. And as you sit, just bring attention and awareness to the body as a whole, to the body as a whole. So like the the overall form and shape of your body right now, maybe visualizing the body as just a general outline. And with the sense of the body as a whole, maybe real subtly, perhaps just felt but unseen. Just sort of sway the spine from side to side, or towards the front, or towards the back, and try to gently sway yourself into a posture where the crown of the head feels perfectly balanced right over the center of the pelvis. And then when you get there, maybe a neutrality in the chin so that the back of the neck can be neutral. We can wiggle around a little bit and and find comfort again. Come back to this space, hopefully with a little bit greater sense of just presence and and presence in the body. And so, you know, we just did something really simple, right? We just sat in a posture and we brought attention to the body, we brought a mindfulness to the shape, we brought mindfulness to our experience in that that posture. You know, it happened to perhaps look like a meditation posture, but we could do this in any any body position, right? Any any yoga pose, just you know, asking ourselves what's happening in the body, how am I coloring that experience, you know, by giving it a certain label or layering on whatever story is happening in the mind. And then just bringing bringing awareness to the entirety, to the fullness of that experience as we are in this body in any shape, right? So we're gonna talk today about how to integrate, you know, this practice of yoga asana of being in all these different poses and shapes, and how to integrate mindfulness and meditation into that practice. Yeah, so we have yoga and meditation, right? Yoga and meditation, yoga and meditation, this and that, right? We often hear these like framed as like kind of two separate things, right? Yoga and meditation. And in my own experience, when I very first came to yoga, for me, they were two separate things, right? There was yoga and there was meditation. And I was interested in yoga, right? Like for health, for fitness, for strength, for flexibility, for exercise, right? But meditation was something else, and I definitely had not signed up for meditation, right? And I know I'm not the only one with that experience. And I know a lot of students in our yoga classes at first might share that same sentiment, you know, that if the asana practice is a little too slow or shivasana is a little too long, that this is boring, right? That I'm not getting my workout, so to speak. And and when I first started out, you know, I can remember like if if your class had a had a long shavasana, like I probably wasn't coming back, right? Which is so funny. And I I'm laughing right now because now it's like, oh, please, like, please just give me like the 30-minute child's pose, right? Or the 30-minute shavasana, and I will just like happily, blissfully lie there, you know. So I think, but I think as as yoga teachers, you know, you know, maybe we can recognize like there's a lot of people for which yoga and meditation are these two separate things. And so what I'm gonna task you with today as a yoga teacher is to present, you know, this concept that they're not two separate things, that yoga is meditation and meditation is yoga. And if we are siloing away yoga for meditation and vice versa, um, we're really limiting the benefits that we can get from either one, right? So, you know, for all the yoga teachers in here, you know, if if we're not already, let's become evangelists for meditation and let's have the courage to do that like in our asana-based yoga classes. You know, we're gonna assume today that that meditation is a necessary part of the yoga practice, right? And so then it's part of our job as yoga teachers to guide our students toward an actual formal seated meditation practice because it is part of the entirety of the yoga practice, right? And we'll we'll talk about ways today to do that skillfully, because we obviously want to do that skillfully, you know, and and so that's for the yoga teachers and then for the meditators here listening that maybe don't teach yoga, you know, I encourage you to think about your meditation practice as a physical practice, not only just seated meditation, just the simple, you know, easy pose in a chair, cross-legged, whatever it is, not only is that also a physical practice, but then encouraging you to incorporate some type of actual breath work or movement into your mindfulness meditation practice, whether it's you know yoga or whether it's like walking or gardening or surfing or whatever, whatever it is, right? So, so but what we're really gonna talk about today is you know, how can I get the movement-oriented person, right? The the movement addicted person, aka the distracted person, how can I get that person in my yoga class, like a little more interested in moving towards meditation and how can I plant that that seed, right? So I thought we would start by just like getting all on the same page as as in terms of like how are we defining yoga and what is the meaning of yoga? Um and we're a lot of us are teachers in this space, so I know we've we've probably heard of this the this yoga as a Sanskrit word that can be translated as union, right? Um the union of what? The union of body and mind, body and spirit, right? Breath, breath and body or breath and movement, right? In our vinyasa classes, we bring together breath and movement. It could also be the union of like compassion and wisdom, the union of meditation and stillness. We can talk about the union of doing and being, right? We can we can go deeper and we can start talking about the union of form and emptiness, right? Relative and absolute reality. We can talk about union of dualism and non-dualism, right? We can go as deep as we want. And in a way, though, all these pairings are kind of speaking to like the result of yoga, right? The we have samadhi as the the eighth limb of this eight limb path of yoga, right? So samadhi as being full integration, right? As being union of of like our practice and our everyday life, right? Like we are we are in yoga, we are yoga, right? But we can also talk about yoga in terms of of practice, not not union as in terms of result, but union in terms of practice, right? And our yoga practice is really unifying both outer and internal methods, right? Outer and internal methods of moving energy through the body, right? So, so yoga is moving energy through the body in a way that promotes health and wellness and you know, well-being and contentment and happiness and wisdom, right? Um, we're moving energy in the body to literally like turn the mind around, right? To move from a state of confusion to a state of wisdom. And we're we're unifying outer and inner methods for doing that. So, what are we what are we unifying unifying when we talk about the union of yoga and meditation, right? Of course, we have the the famous patanjali's, you know, yoga is yoga is union. We have the famous patanjali's yoga is the cessation of the rumination of the mind, right? And so yoga is moving energy through the body in a way that that you know turns the mind around, right? Helps us to see things in a new in a new way, right? Um so how how are we doing this? Well, we have both outer and inner methods for turning the mind around. And if you quickly just look at this list, you know, it'll it'll look a lot to you yoga teachers, um, like the the eight limbs of yoga. So we have the yamas and the niyamas, which is a very external practice, right? An outer method. This is the way that we move and act in the world, right? How we show up in the world, the actions that we're taking, right? If we are, for example, you know, lying and cheating and stealing and harming others, we're gonna have like a certain trapped energy in the body, right? Because we're going to be really caught up in feelings of guilt or shame, right? We're gonna always be like ruminating on, or is everybody gonna find out that I've been lying to them this whole time, right? Are people gonna find out that I've done this bad thing, right? So we're stuck in a certain type of non-beneficial negative energy, right? So we have the yamas and the yamas, which say, you know, here's some ethical, some moral guidelines for how to behave in the world. And when we behave better in the world, guess what? We change the energy within the body, right? The next most obvious external method for moving energy in the body is our asana practice, right? We're literally like pushing and pulling and twisting and compressing and stretching the body itself to unstuck energy, right? To to move energy and to move energy in a new way. And then we have we have breath work, we have pranayama, and this is really a bridge between the outer and inner methods of moving energy, you know. Breath work is a is an external physical, outward practice, right? Breathing, you know, what's outside, taking it in, but it's also an internal practice as well. Um, we can, you know, talk about the relationship between breath and prana, but it starts moving things inside as well, right? Um, and then we have like the actual meditation, meditative practices, right? We have dharana and we have dhyana from the eight limbs. And and I think for today, you know, we can sort of see these two meditative states, dharana and dhyana. We can see these as like concentration practices and open awareness practices. Or you might be familiar with like Shamatha and Vipassyana, and we can see see these as those two styles of meditation. And so we have, you know, these outer and inner methods for moving energy in the body, and these are the eight limbs of yoga, and and so the eight limbs kind of they do move linearly, so to speak, from the external to the more profoundly subtle to the internal, right? Um, but also in yoga, time is not just linear, right? Um, and so all of these kind of swirl around and are are and build on each other and are interconnected, and and you know, we practice one, we strengthen the other, and vice versa, right? And within each of these methods, we can also say there's both like a physical and like a meditative component to each one. But kind of go through this chart here, which kind of shows, you know, even what we might think of as a physical application of yoga also has like a mindful application, right? This union of body and mind is within, within each of these limbs of yoga. So for example, you know, the yamas and the niamas, like how do we show up in the world? You know, what are we, how are we behaving in the world? Well, you know, acting ethically and acting morally also has benefit to our meditation practice because if we're not assholes, right? Pardon the pardon the phrase, when we sit down on our cushion to meditate, right, there's a lot less junk in the mind that we have to that we're getting distracted by, right? That we have to deal with, right? Makes it easier for us to meditate when we're we're behaving kindly to others from the very, very get-go, right? The asana practice, right? These are physical postures, right, designed to move, manipulate energy physically in the body. But of course, you know, the asana practice is also, you know, a means of moving so that we can get better at stillness, right? At physically just being still. And when we have a nice experience of physical stillness and we're comfortable in that, we tend to also have a better experience of mental stillness, right? So we can, yeah, talk about, you know, the sukha and the stira, right? Like we want to move the body and and and enjoy like the bliss of yoga and moving around, but we want to also be able to like hold all the postures in a very steady, steady and and consistent and still manner, right? Pranayama, right? We we talked about like this is really being a bridge between the outer and inner, uh, controlling the breath, right? Quiets the mind, quiet mind is better suited for meditation. You know, we didn't talk about pratyahara, but this is kind of this an invitation, you know, we're always looking outside of ourselves for the solution. Pratyahara is the invitation to turn inward instead, right? And we see this in our yoga classes, right? When we show up to do the asana and we're like looking at what the person next to us is doing and we're comparing ourselves to others, or we're like really leaning on the teacher for an understanding of what's happening in our own body, right? This pratyah can show up in that way in the outer world, but it's really an invitation to turn within, turn within during your yoga practice, stay within your own mat, so to speak, right? And also turn within in your meditation practice. Like, can we look at the own our own minds? Can we, you know, observe our own minds directly? You know, then we have these concentrative practices of meditation, dharana, right? Um, can we in meditation hold a single point of focus? How steady is the mind? But this also has you know an outer physical aspect. Dharana is closely related to Drishti, which we know in our yoga practice is like quite literally like what are you looking at, right? So there's what are you looking at with with your eyes, right? Where are you holding your gaze? Um, but then there's also in your meditation practice, how steady is your gaze, so to speak, right? How steady is the mind, you know, dhyana, we have these these more contemplative practices of meditation, and and you know, maybe mindfulness uh spans a bit, these two categories, you know. But you know, as we meditate and an insight arises, and when we're in the state of dhyana, there's still a bit of separation between the seer and the thing seen, right? So we can have insight contemplating energy and sensation physically in our yoga postures, and then we can have insight related to the mental aspect, the mind, you know, what is the mind contributing, layering on to our physical experience of the pose? And and at this level of insight, you know, I am doing the yoga pose, or I am meditating, or I am having this insight, right? There's still a doing aspect to it. Whereas when we reach that deeper, deeper state of samadhi, we've completely dissolved the separation between the seer and the thing seen. And it's no longer, you know, I am doing yoga or I am meditating, there's just yoga, there's just the meditation, right? We've reached the full, full integration, the full union of yoga, and we're in a state of just simply being, right? Simply being in body and in mind. So, you know, we might, you know, when we talk about samadhi and we talk about this direct experience, right? We might say, like, well, you know, that's a little woo-woo or that's a little out there for some, especially for somebody who just came here for exercise, right? We didn't really sign up for talking about, you know, non-dualism or whatever, what have you, right? The endpoint of yoga. But I would also say, I think as yoga teachers, it's okay for us to assume a little bit that our yoga students do at some level want that full. Experience, right? That they want that full knowledge. Of course, of course, we want to meet people where they're at, but also, and they're at a yoga class, right? I think if people really wanted just purely a workout, they would go to spin class or they would go to the gym, or there's like a hundred other ways where they could get a workout. And so, you know, and I'm speaking to myself too when I say this, it's like I think we all we could give our students a little more credit, right? Give our students a little more credit. And let's not, as teachers, get caught up in like, oh, if I slow things down too much, if I get, you know, too deep into like meditation in the middle of an asana class, people are gonna think it's boring, or I gotta play this certain kind of music because that's what people like and that's what they want for their workout, or I've gotta like do these certain poses because everyone wants to, you know, learn how to do a handstand or whatever it is. You know, I think it's up to us to be mindful of like, what am I? You know, what are the anxieties or worries or fears that I, as the yoga teacher, am bringing to a group of students who show up for usana class, right? And and continue asking myself, you know, am I being authentic to myself as I'm teaching? Am I being authentic to the practice? You know, am I staying true to why are we here? Why am I here? Right. I want to help people heal, I want to help people, and I think I'm then doing a disservice to them if I if I think I know what they want, and I just give them that pure asana workout, right? I I want to trust a little bit more that there's a reason why this person came to yoga instead of spin class, right? So assuming samadhi as the goal, I'm gonna go ahead and say, you know, I think that's okay. And and what do we mean when we say that? Like we're, you know, we're just talking about union, union of body and mind, right? Like a direct experience of just contentment. I'm okay, things are good, right? I feel calm, I feel healthy, I feel well, you know, freedom from reactivity, from habits, from conditioning, all the same things that we're after with our meditation practice, with our mindfulness practice. I think it's okay to assume that our that that's what our students are hoping to get from their yoga asana practice. Um, so why not you know introduce them to the fullness of yoga, including mindfulness and meditation? So I want to stop there and maybe just open it up to do we so far have any burning questions before we get a little bit more into the nitty-gritty of like, how, how am I gonna bring mindfulness and meditation into my yoga class? Yeah, Rebecca.

SPEAKER_05 34:47

I I appreciated the thought that you shared that there's a hundred other ways that people can get exercise. And so I think there it I think it's also I think it's helpful to think of them having an intention, you know, in coming to yoga for something maybe a little, a little different, a little more contemplative.

SPEAKER_03 35:07

Yeah, yeah, something I need to remind myself of all the time because I come to yoga too from a very physical athletic background. And, you know, I think yeah, it's easy for us to get caught up in in the asana, even as yoga teachers, you know, all of us as practitioners and as teachers. And so yeah, I think it's a nice, always good to remind ourselves. What about the full experience? All right. Anybody else before we move on? Yeah, Stephanie.

Teaching For Depth Without Losing Students

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Hi there. I love what you're saying. I was over here internally screaming, yes, yes, yes, I love it. It it is how I teach, but I came to the practice in the exact same way you did. It was only a physical practice for me. And if I look back and had none of my teachers all those years ago dropped in any of the other yoga stuff that wasn't the poses, then I I maybe wouldn't be where I am today. And so I feel like it is incumbent on me as a yoga teacher to give those lessons to students, the mindfulness stuff and to weave that in. And if they pick it up, they do, great. If they don't, they don't. But it it's somewhere it's like planting the seed for them. Yeah. So thank you.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

Thank you, Stephanie. Yeah. Yeah, it just kind of came to mind too. Like I'm wondering, you know, you know, there's always this balance between wanting to meet people where they're at, but then also giving them that little nudge, right? Giving them the little planting that seed. Um, but we have to meet them where they're at, or they're not even gonna listen in the first place, right? So we're always trying to balance that. And it just kind of came to mind, you know, I think maybe as people who teach yoga asana, like there's a little more of a struggle of like, well, I want to give my students what I think they came here for, which is the physical, you know, workout. And maybe that shows up a little bit more in the yoga studio than it would show up, for example, in like just teaching meditation and mindfulness, you know. But I think it's always there. Like, I think it's still there, even just as purely mindfulness meditation teachers. Like, you know, I want to give these people what I think they showed up for, but I also like, am I being authentic and am I being true to the practice, you know? And am I am I teaching authentic, you know, mindfulness meditation, or do I really just want these people to like me, right? So I'm giving them what I think that they want. So anyway, yeah. So thank you guys for sharing that.

SPEAKER_05 37:45

Can I say one more thing? Yeah. I am I'm also a therapist and I find that it's kind of an it's kind of a nice segue, I guess, to meditation to go through the body in the way that yoga does. Because there's a lot of times people have a hard time quieting their minds, you know, and so if you could add the movement, then it's a little, it's less uh-regulating, you know, because they can they can have the movement, you know, where sometimes just sitting can be like too much, if that makes sense.

Planting Seeds Through Class Intention

Structuring Asana Like A Meditation

Choosing Poses That Serve Intention

Cue Less, Pause More, Trust Silence

Formal Meditation Within The Flow

SPEAKER_03 38:18

Yeah, that makes perfect sense, perfect sense. And this I think it's really the beauty of yoga, you know, and and it and it makes perfect sense. All of us are addicted to movement, right, in one way or another. So it makes perfect sense that if we're attracted to this practice of meditation somewhere, deep, deep, deep in in the very core of our heart, right? That we would come through the door of yoga, right? Because we are addicted to movement, right? And so, yeah, so I think you know, it makes sense that we approach meditation from that physical, physical point of view. And then so as yoga teachers, we'll also teach mindfulness, you know, what is our responsibility then to our students? And and yeah, I think it's to to accept, to recognize, you know, where we're at. We want we want the hard work at work out, but also to just gently, gently be pushing towards the the actual seated, still formal, actual meditation. It looks like meditation mindfulness practice. So, how do we do this? How do we do that? You know, so first uh we can do basically what I just did, which is to just introduce our students to the eight limbs of yoga to, you know, to be to make it be known that yoga is more than just asana, which I think, you know, not everybody knows when they first come to a yoga studio that yoga is more than just asana. And so introducing this concept that there's more to yoga, it could literally be like as simple as like hanging a poster on the wall of the yoga studio, right? Um we can we can emphasize different limbs of yoga in our classes, right? We could theme around like the yamas and the niyamas, we can introduce pranayama. I think sometimes just saying the Sanskrit name of the pose and just using Sanskrit can kind of open someone to like, oh, there's something more here, right? It can help just drop that seed and plant the idea that there's something more. We can, as teachers, you know, we can quote from the Yoga Sutra, we can bring in Patanjali, we can quote from the Hatta Yoga Praditika or like whatever text we're using to further our own understanding, we can bring that into our classes, you know, and we can we can play with like, okay, today's theme is this week's theme is, you know, this monthly theme is, and kind of go through the eight limbs using that. Um but but to somehow introduce the the eight limbs of yoga and the intent here is just to decentralize asana as the sole aspect of the practice, right? Like in any way that you can, bringing the the outer methods, the inner methods forward, right? Bringing the inner methods forward, you know, the overall goal, right? Somehow, some way introduce the eight limbs, do it visually, do it using intention for your classes, themes. You know, you can workshop, hope, you know, maybe depending on where you teach, you have opportunities for workshops on the eight limbs, but somehow planting seeds by by decentralizing asana, right? And then, so I'm a structure person. I really like structure. And, you know, in in my workshop on like dropping the script for teaching meditation, we talked about just how having an overall structure of any guided meditation gives you the space to kind of like freeform within that structure and to get really creative, right? It's the structure itself that like allows for creativity that makes sense, so to speak. So, you know, my kind of what I'm gonna present to you today is like let's what if, what if we brought meditation into our yoga classes by structuring the asana class as if it was a meditation, right? As if it was a meditation. So in our meditation structure, we have like the preliminaries, we set an intention, we have the body of the meditation, and then we have a closing and a dedication, right? So, sort of to keep things simple, and because it's also just how I like to work, you know, what I want to kind of present today is yeah, what if we structured the yoga class the same way that we would structure an a guided meditation, right? And I think that when we do this, we we solve a few problems. We solve this problem of what some of you guys might have heard of as of the spiritual sandwich, right? And this is when, like, we we have a yoga class where you know we first sit down, it's easy pose or in child's pose, and we kind of do what looks like a meditation and we're really settling in, and we maybe even call to mind an intention, right? And we're in, you know, perhaps a more formal meditative practice. And then as soon as we add in the movement and the asana, we completely lose that thread, right? We never even like come back to to mentioning or referencing the intention again, and then it's not until shavasana or after savasana that we are like, oh, I gotta go back to like whatever my theme was, right? Or the meditation or the intention, right? And so we kind of have this like meditation bread with with not much meat in between except for that movement, right? But there's no like connection, there's no thread of intention through the movement, right? So so what if we taught like we're guiding a meditation? Um in meditation, you know, we always start with intention, right? The the intention kind of sets the boundaries of the meditation, right? If I don't have an intention, how do I know when I'm meditating and when I'm not, right? As a practitioner, you know, for example, if it's if mindfulness of breath is my intention, right? Well, then when I'm aware of the breath, when I'm being mindful of the breath, I'm I'm in the meditation. And when the mind has wandered off to something else, I know, like, oh, I gotta come back to mindfulness of breath. I got to come back to the intention because I'm no longer in the meditation, right? And as a teacher, when we're guiding meditation, the intention also helps us set like a boundaries for our cueing, right? Boundaries for what it is that we say. Um, so if again, if it if mindfulness of breath is the intention, well, then every single thing that I say should be bringing my students closer, holding them closer to mindfulness of breath versus, you know, encouraging them or enabling them, right? Or pulling them, distracting them, pulling them away, right? So, so in in yoga, you know, we can have fun, right? Like we can play with all sorts of intentions, right? We can play with breath awareness, we can play with body awareness, we can play with you know, awareness of how my body is connected to the mat, the earth, the ground, right? We can play with gratitude practice, we can bring in our themes from the eight limbs, like intention today around the yamas and nyamas, maybe non-harming, maybe a self-compassion practice today, right? So intention can be, you know, a means of bringing in, bringing in the eight limbs and encouraging our students to kind of hold like a thread through the practice, the same way they would hold that point of concentration throughout their meditation practice, right? And so once we've set that intention, then I have a really good guide for myself as a teacher as to what type of asana we're gonna we're gonna work with today, right? So just like in guided meditation, you know, once I set that intention, I now have have something that's guiding me as to like what am I gonna say, right? Um, but we can also say, well, what are we gonna do? What are we, what kind of asana are we gonna bring in? And how is that asana, the physical poses, how are they gonna support us either staying with the intention or you know, moving away from it? When does the asana become a distraction, right? So for example, if my intention is like mindfulness of breath, I might do a lot of like fluid sequencing with the asana, right? I might do a lot of like repetitive movement, like you know, an inhale, lift the arms, and exhale, lower the arms, doing it again. An inhale, you know, lift the arms and exhale, lowering the arms. Like if I'm gonna give my students through the asana practice as much opportunity as possible to be aware of the breath, and I'm gonna cue around breath all the way through the entire class, right? If my intention is a gratitude practice, I might do a lot of forward folds, a lot of like like really bowing, you know, prostrating, putting myself in these like thankful, humble postures, right? And and I'm gonna draw awareness to that with my cue. And I'm gonna like let the students know this is what we're doing. Like the today's intention is gratitude. We're doing these deep forward folds, you know, let's let's bow as a means of giving thanks, you know. If my intention is like non-harming or self-compassion, right, maybe, maybe depending on on the group, you know, I turn up the heat a little bit with the asana practice or I present some postures that that allow an opportunity for really big physical challenge, right? And then work with the class to be like, you know, let's get really honest with ourselves about are we pushing ourselves into this challenge? Are we, you know, if what happens when we can't do it, you know? Are we acting self-compassionately? You know, really being it's bringing, guiding, mindful attention to, you know, what happens as we face this pose that's like a little bit out of the range of a pose that we can comfortably do, right? And so that might be one way to work with the ahimsa, right? Non-harming, or work with self-compassion. If my intention is, you know, I want to teach a really grounding yoga practice today, you know, I can use the asana to help people stay with that intention. Maybe we're gonna do a lot of poses that are like on the floor, right? Or or lying down and not just putting feet on the ground, but like, you know, forehead down, top of the head down, hands down, you know, whatever it is, like the relationship between the body and the earth. And then I'm gonna also cue a lot around it so that the students are aware, you know, not only are we talking about grounding today, but we are experiencing grounding through the body itself with this specific asana or this specific sequence that we've chosen for today, right? So, you know, we can we can get really creative in all sorts of ways if we have that structure of let's set an intention, let's use that intention to maybe inform like an actual formal, it looks like, seated meditation at the beginning of class, but let's not lose that thread and let's actually get creative about how the asana itself can support that intention, right? And then as a teacher, you know, also being really mindful, you know, just as in when we're guiding meditation, right? I'm gonna try my best to be really mindful to only only speak when necessary and only use cues that help people come closer to the intention, right? Even if I think of something that's like seems like a really good idea, if it's not related to today's intention, I'm gonna let it go, right? And we can do the same in our yoga classes. Like, for example, if if it's mindfulness of breath and my intention is to really allow my students to like experience fluidity and just keep them moving and have them be in a state of flow, you know, I I might decide, like, I'm not gonna correct that person on where their elbow is or the bend of their knee or where their ankle is, because you know what? Like, that's not really today's intention. I want them to have this experience of like fluidity and flow in their body. And I'm gonna interrupt that flow by saying what I always say in Warrior 2 just out of habit, right? Or I'm gonna interrupt that flow by like, you know, telling them, like, you know, turn your foot a little more to the right or whatever it is, like I'm gonna really be select selectful. So I'm gonna really select my cueing based on on what today's intention is, right? Even if that means like letting some things go. So whatever we choose as intention, you know, we want to keep we want to keep it simple, just as we would in a meditation practice, right? Don't worry, we don't want to worry about repeating ourselves, like, oh, it's mindfulness of breath today. And I I, you know, asked everybody to come back to the breath like a hundred times already in this yoga class, right? That's okay, right? We can keep reminding people again and again and again. So we want to we want to keep the focus and keep what we say really simple. We want to just like we do when we're guiding meditation, we want to balance using words with time spent in silence, right? Put somebody in into a pose, do the minimal cueing necessary, and and and allow for some silence, right? Allow for people to be their own guide a little bit, to sense into their own body, to let go on their reliance of you as the yoga teacher, you know, telling them what they should feel, right? Let them feel what they feel by not talking for a little bit here and there, you know, and then just as we do in guiding meditation, we want to remind people you're in charge, right? We want to remind people you can always choose to not listen to me. You can always do your own thing, you can always, you know, be your own guide. And we want to remind people also self-compassion, right? Self-compassion has to be part of this. We want to be aware, right? We want to be aware, we want to be mindful. But if that mindfulness, if that awareness is not imbued with self-compassion, compassion, then that mindfulness and awareness can start to just look like, feel like self-criticism, judgment, right? Oh, I'm aware that this person over here is doing headstand and I'm not, or I fell out of tree post and this other person didn't, right? And we want to be wanna be mindful and aware, but we have to imbue that awareness with compassion. And so it's our job as as the teacher to remind people to do that. So just kind of a reveal. So what if we guided our yoga asana class as if it was a meditation? We're gonna avoid the spiritual sandwich, we're gonna integrate mindfulness throughout, we're gonna hold that thread, right? We start with our intention. The intention sets the boundaries of today's practice and not only helps us as practitioners, but it helps us as teachers, right? Can I choose asana? Can I choose cueing that supports my intention and that holds people around today's intention, right? How do we know when we're in the meditation and when we're not? And then the body of the practice, the actual meditation, right? We can select asana that supports whatever intention. We can select cues that support that intention and let go of the cues that might distract, right? The things I think as yoga teachers, we all have, you know, the things that we mindlessly say in every pose because it's how we teach that pose. But does it really need to be said this time, this today, to this student in this class, right? Does it support intention? So, and then just the same exact reminders that we apply to guiding meditation, right? Keep it simple, allow for silence, right? Allow for people to experience the meditation themselves, to become their own guides, right? Encourage autonomy, allow them to feel into their own bodies, to develop like that felt knowledge, the intuition, right? To to let their own body become their own guide and not my voice and not my cueing and not my directions. And then finally to just encourage, you know, all the time that that self-compassion, that presence of am I treating my body, my mind, my soul, my being, my heart with care, with kindness, right, with compassion in this moment, in this pose, right? So, and then what about actual meditation? So that's kind of how we can we can go through a yoga class as what's a meditation, but what about do we actually put in moments of seated formal meditation? Um I do. I say yes. You know, there's there's there's places within a class where it just makes sense to do that. You know, we can obviously arrive in meditation. We can sit down on our mat, we can we can sit in any easy, comfortable posture, sukasana, easy pose or virasana on the knees, we can, you know, child's pose even, you know, and we can we can meditate before we even move, right? Um, but then even throughout the class, we can add in meditation. We can we can pause and take a meditation break. Anytime where you might naturally give people an opportunity to rest in child's pose, for example, right? Any time after like we've really gotten the heart rate up to do something a bit rigorous, we can take that little break and actually pause and and meditate. And anytime, maybe after a peak pose, if we're working with a challenge pose or a peak posture, we can introduce meditation right after that, or we can introduce meditation during that. If there's some people that don't want to participate in whatever challenging pose we're we're working up to that day. But anytime where it feels natural to take a break, and in any pose where where the student can, you know, somewhat comfortably stay in that pose for a while, why not just pause and just take a break for a second and just check in? Like, okay, what's happening in the body? You know, what's happening in the body? What am I layering on to this experience? How am I labeling it as pleasant or unpleasant? You know, and and am I reacting to that label of pleasant or unpleasant, or can I just be with it? Can I just be, you know, after you know, a big heart opener when when the heart rate is racing and the breath is going, can I take a pause and not a pause in which I'm trying to change this moment and like force the breath to calm back down again? You know, not a pause in which I'm trying to like, you know, fix something, but just a pause to just be with what is, right? Just be like, okay, my breath is is a little bit elevated right now. What did it feel like to just allow for it, right? To just allow for it, whether it's settling or whether it's not, right? What would it feel like to sit with that energy after camel pose, for example, and and just check in with it and just allow for it? And and what would it be like if I dropped, you know, labeling of that energy, right? Um, maybe it's not tired, maybe it's not exhaustion, maybe it's not out of breath, maybe it's not, you know, maybe it's bliss, maybe it's joy. Maybe I can try on giving it a little a different name, and maybe I can just let go of trying to name what's going on in my body and just take that pause and let it be, right? Any time during the class, we can just stop and do this and sense into the energy that's present. Um, because what are we doing in our yoga practice, right? We're moving energy, we're we're moving energy, and and the more we can be like aware of what it feels like as that energy moves, and the more that we can get comfortable with allowing that energy to move and just like being with it and observing it, right? The more we can then encourage that that free flowing movement of energy. So we can do that like anytime at any part of the sequence, and then just okay, we've sat for a little while and now we're gonna open the eyes, or if the eyes were closed, or or and move on, come back to downward dog, come back to all fours, come back to whatever it is. We just we just go right back, go right back to the sequence, right? You know, so we can we can put what looks like formal meditation into the beginning of class, we can pause and do that anywhere throughout the class that we would like to. There's no rules, um, and we can do it at the end of class, right? So it might feel really natural to guide a meditation in Shivasana. You know, it depends on the intention, right? Depends on the intention. There is Shivasana is a really great place for practices like a relaxation practice, a body scan. Maybe we have a more advanced group that where we can, you know, it's corpse pose, right? Maybe we have an advanced group that that can do some type of dissolution practice and then be guided to come back into the body, right? Come back into a sense of now embodied, connected to earth, grounded. But it but it is corpse pose, and it's also a really, really wonderful place to just introduce our students to just total stillness in the body and total quiet, right? Total quiet, even if it's a little bit uncomfortable, and if it's a little bit uncomfortable, I think here's where we also have to go. Well, who is it uncomfortable for, right? And this is where also I think our own practice as mindfulness teachers, like a good place to remind ourselves how practic how important our own practice is, you know, just because this is what rises too when we're guiding meditation, you know, in these long periods of silence. When I see somebody start fidgeting, you know, when I when I sense like they're uncomfortable, you know, do I get uncomfortable too? Or can I just hold space for that discomfort and really allow people to be to be still and to go through that experience? Can I give them the opportunity to even come out onto the other side of that experience of discomfort with stillness, right? And a lot of that has to do with how comfortable I am as a teacher in my own body, right? Can I, you know, can I sit here and watch the fidgeting, see the people in Shivasana with their eyes open, looking all around, and be okay with it, you know? And and the more I can be okay with that discomfort in myself, the more I can be okay with it for my students as well, right? So shivasana, a great place to introduce people to just quiet, just being, just lying still. We don't have to play a good song, we don't have to guide, you know, complicated meditation. We can just let people be there, right? And then of course, you know, we can sit up from shivasana and we can we can meditate then. You know, we can we can close the practice with a meditation then. And so again, just as we would when guiding our meditation practice, we want to close our yoga practice with some type of dedication. And when I when I use that word dedication, I'm talking about first just bringing mindfulness, bringing awareness to what it is that we did here today, right? On on one of Rick Hanson's guest teacher appearances, he actually talks about how important it is like neurologically to like bring awareness to what it is that we're learning. And just by bringing mindfulness to like, oh yeah, let's remember what today's intention was, and let's bring mindfulness to the work that we did on that intention. And then let's now bring mindfulness to what we feel in the body as it relates to whatever progress we've made around that intention, that by doing that, we we even further ingrain those neurobiological pathways that change the mind, right? So we so we want to have some type of opportunity after we pull people out of shavasana, before we go about our day, to go let's wreck, let's, let's bring awareness to how we feel right now. Let's bring awareness to like at least one benefit that we've received. Let's feel that in the body. And then let's also spend a little bit of time and it in thinking about how we can now carry this forward, how we can integrate it into the rest of the day, right? What would that feel like? What would that look like? And it it could be as simple as, you know, I feel greater presence right now in my body. And so I'm gonna carry that forward just by being me, just by showing up in the world with this greater presence that I've now cultivated in my yoga class. And I and I so I want to recognize the benefit, I want to attribute it to my yoga class, make that connection in the mind, and then I want to think about how I'm now gonna carry that benefit forward, right? Maybe I carry that benefit forward by wishing that all beings could have experienced this same benefit, right? So there's there's many ways that we can do it. And again, it can be in external or internal methods, right? We can carry, we can dedicate in the form of a wish, we can dedicate in the form of like, you know, going out in the world and volunteering or whatever it is. Um, but it doesn't have to be complicated. All we're doing is like that little extra step in the mind of like, oh yeah, I feel better. It's because of yoga, it's because of meditation, and this is going to help me off the mat, right? You know, because we we want to always bring people back to the why, right? If we can bring them back to the why, we can bring them back to the practice again and again and again, right? Why are we doing this again? Why are we here in yoga? Yes, it's for exercise. Maybe we feel more open or loose or stronger or spacious in the body, but what else do we feel? What other types of benefit have we received, right? And do we feel a little more content? Do we feel a little happier? Do we feel just better, right? Whatever it is, bringing people back to the why as a way of reminding this is good for you, keep coming back because it only works if we if we keep doing it, right? So, and I'm gonna see if anybody has any questions about all that we have discussed so far, and or just opening it up to discussion.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:52

Hi, hi Sarah May. Thank you. That was lovely. I was just wondering, I loved it when you said about the is the silence uncomfortable for intervention because I resonate with that myself when I'm teaching. Particularly when I'm teaching other clients who have experience before. And that's when I'm a little bit aware of leaving those clients in into who are silent. So I'm just wondering, have you do you have any experience or knowledge around that? Is it is what that changes or is it okay to be in that silent space?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:27

Yeah, I guess what would come up for me is how how can I make silence like feel like there's some structure of safety around it, you know? And I think just letting people know I'm gonna leave you in silence and or I'm gonna leave you in silence for this much time, you know, and then this is how I'm gonna call you back, or you know, I'm gonna ring this bell and this is what the bell sounds like. I'm gonna ring it right right now first, or I'm, you know, to to inform people, like, you know, that it's gonna be quiet and it's gonna be quiet for a certain period of time and that you're gonna bring them back. I think for me would help ease some of that fear of like, what's happening? How long are we gonna be here for? We're just like in this like totally spacious void and we don't know when it's gonna end, right? So I think that's one way to do it. And then I think just if you have an opportunity to get some feedback from your students, like about their relationship to quiet and silence. Yeah. And I think just letting people know like, I'm not leaving you alone, like I'm here, but I'm gonna let you be in quiet. And I'd love to hear actually, you know, what anybody else might have to add as a suggestion to that, if anybody has, you know, because I do think, and I think that, you know, if you get the chance, asking, talking is really good because again, it's like, how do I know that silence equals scary? You know, yeah, yeah, Denise. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:18

I like the idea to give given an amount of time that the silence is going to be for. And something that I do already do is I let them know that even if they're choosing to lie down, I'm remaining a C Toro.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:36

Yes. Yeah, that's a really good reminder. I I I as the teacher am being vigilant, so you don't have to be. Yes, yes, exactly. Denise and then and then Sarah.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:48

I was just gonna add to your ending, ceremony. I'll typically tell them, look, we're gonna be sitting in three minutes of silence. Allow this silence to hold you in safety and know that whatever you feel is okay. Give them permission to know ahead of time that they're gonna be okay. It's gonna be without a specific amount of time.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:12

Yeah, and what I love about that is that the cueing that you just use kind of describes the silence as a safe space, you know.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:21

Exactly. They're gonna be held in that safety of silence.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:27

Let's you know, let the silence hold you in that safety.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:31

Thank you. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, Sarah.

Rest, Peak Poses, And Checking In

SPEAKER_02 1:13:33

Um mine's really just another reinforcement of creating the expectations, drawing from my time in healthcare. There's a practice of telling a patient when you're bringing them back for an exam what's gonna happen, how long, what they're going to come upon, so that they can track it within themselves. So really just a reinforcement of giving them the tools prior to entering in so they feel stable when the silence begins so they can enjoy it and know it's an enjoyable practice and not like a sit in silence type of struggle. So reinforcement where I think we're all on the right line.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:11

Yeah, thanks, Sarah.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:12

Yeah, Anya. So I teach a beginner half a class, and uh I, you know, I have students who come to my class or have been coming to my class and it's online in a Zoom format for many, many years, but I often get new students. So I take the time at the beginning of each class to set the expectation so that they know what to expect, and they read the description online as well, hopefully. But I give just a short intro about you know how the class is structured, that it's a beginner's class, so it's it's it's a slow practice in which we usually hold the postures for three, five or more breaths. We start with the meditation, we end with shravasana. I and I like that you know outline of the class because I I think people know what to expect instead of oh, what are what are we doing now, right? Why is it so quiet? Am I supposed to be doing something? Oh, she said we're gonna hold it for three, five breaths, right? The same the same in shavasana. Uh I even use that phrase. I, you know, now you can just let go of your let your mind, mind wander away, however, I'm doing shivasana, and I'll come back, I'll bring you back in a few minutes. So hopefully that helps them. I really, you know, what resonates with me, what you said uh uh Sara May today is allowing for it's so important for me in my classes to allow the those moments of stillness and quiet when I'm not speaking. You know, I've I took so many classes in the past where especially Vinyasa classes would tend to which which which are faster, busier. But what really annoyed me in a lot of those classes was very loud music. And you know, to a point that I just stopped going to those classes because I couldn't go inward because it was just overwhelming loud music, fast music, which didn't resonate with me at all. And so during teacher training, I don't really remember specifically that there was a focus on that, on teaching the you know, uh future instructors to to allow for that space of stillness in classes. So that's really important.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:14

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for for that comment. Yeah, isn't it funny too? Like the more advanced we get in our practice, like the less complicated. It's like we're just throwing stuff away and it gets more and more and more and more and more simple. Like, like I don't want the music anymore, you know. I don't want like quick moving, like complicated sequences with all these different, you know, I just just want to keep it simple, you know. But but yeah, yeah, I think, you know, to go to this idea too of like letting allowing for silence, stillness, quiet, like we can we can give that little kind of safety reminder, like at any point in the class where you know, we can come into like you know, pigeon pose and be like, okay, everybody, like get comfortable. We're gonna hang out here. We're gonna hang out here for you know X amount of time or until the end of this song, or you know, for for many, you know, several breaths or whatever, and and just let people know, like this is gonna be a long one, you know, or this is gonna be like another three, four, five breaths, you know, and and then building that, also building that trust when I say three more breaths, you know, okay, maybe it's three more of my breaths, and I'm a slow breather, you know, I'm a I'm a yoga teacher, but I'm gonna really do a really as best as I can do to be three breaths, you know, because I want the students to feel like they can trust me, you know, I'm safe. But yeah, we can leave that spaciousness at any at any time and play with, you know, maybe that the music thing, you know, playing with the music thing, playing with maybe we have music in our class, but then at some point in the class we we we go, hey everybody, I'm gonna press pause and we're gonna do this next five minutes in total silence, you know, and then bring it back, you know, but just just baby stepping your way somehow into a little bit more of an experience of quiet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:25

Yeah, and and further on that, which you mentioned also today, is you know, when especially when we start teaching, we always worry. We often I worried a lot about doing too much of something or not doing enough of something. But then I realized that everybody finds their own favorite, their teacher, their practice that resonates with them, right? So, you know, if if you if you're really teaching from if you're authentic in your teaching and you're teaching from your heart, from your soul, and not trying to teach like somebody else, I think it will resonate with people. And if it doesn't work for them, they will find another teacher and that's okay. Right. So yeah, I try to remember that today. There's a lot less anxiety in that if people if people are going to like my style or not, because I know that they will, if they don't, they'll just find somebody else, and that's totally fine.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:16

Yeah, absolutely. That's such a good reminder. Yeah, yeah. We want to be authentic, we wanna, you know, teach the practice, teach the whole practice in a way that is, you know, most beneficial.