Basic Art of Adjustments: A Beginning Guide to Meaningful & Safe Adjustments in Yoga by Kaivalya Alanna

Author:Kaivalya, Alanna [Kaivalya, Alanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Clarifying Your Intentio

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Maintaining Appropriate Boundaries

This basic book teaches you the fundamentals of adjustment techniques. Given, however, that there are rumored to be 840,000 yoga postures (according to the Hatha Yoga Pradipika), this book does not show you every adjustment for every pose. Rather, I give you the tools, competence and confidence to extrapolate what you learn about basic postures and their adjustments to postures that have similar mechanics and alignment.

For a thorough understanding of adjustments, a comprehensive teacher training program is the best course of learning. The Kaivalya Yoga Method Online Teacher Training with YogaDownload.com contains a full module with video instruction, testing, and mentor feedback on this topic and can be found here . Or, to take a free trial of this program, click here .

The Learning and Testing Process

When first learning any adjustment, there are a few rules to follow to make sure you maintain the integrity of your adjustment practice and the student/teacher relationship. Here are the guidelines to follow:

First, find someone (ideally an experienced teacher) who can do the adjustment on you. This will allow you to feel in your own body if the adjustment indeed serves the mechanics, anatomy and alignment of the pose. Be discerning! Direct experience always informs you more accurately and powerfully than mere suggestion or second-hand learning.

Second, practice on willing people who are not your students. For example, practice on a friend, partner or fellow yoga teacher – someone who is not afraid to tell you what you might do differently, such as hand placement or pressure. Students never give you the concise and honest feedback you need, nor is it their job to do this. Your students come to your classes having every confidence in you and your knowledge. You must ensure you rise to their expectations by becoming experts at the elements you bring to class, whether it be dharma talks, alignment, clever playlists, or adjustments. Students see us as the guides, and just as a professor wouldn’t ask his students whether he is teaching them calculus accurately, as a yoga teacher, you are there to impart the knowledge you’ve gathered to your students compassionately and confidently.

When you feel 100% confident with a particular adjustment, it is then appropriate to bring it into the studio. This complete level of confidence is important because students feel it subconsciously, and your confidence will allow them to be more receptive to the adjustment given. If for any reason and at any point you are not 100% confident, move on and either adjust a different student or go back to steps one and two. Students are best served by confident adjustments.

Thinking Outside the Box

As you learn the fundamentals of adjusting, you can begin to extrapolate your knowledge to different poses and new situations. Many poses look similar, with similar body alignment and mechanics. Many poses have pieces and parts that we can find in others. We can take what we know about how to adjust certain elements of the postures (alignment, mechanics, anatomy) and apply these elements to poses with related shapes.

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