The Ultimate Guide To Adjustments
Yoga Journal|May 2018

More teachers are taking a hands-off approach to assists—and more students are wondering where the line is between helpful and inappropriate. Here, master teachers share their thinking on this touchy debate and offer expert advice to help keep everyone safe.

Jen Murphy
The Ultimate Guide To Adjustments

Yoga teacher Coral Brown says she’s probably performed thousands of hands-on assists on students over the past 20 years. When she traveled with her teacher, Shiva Rea, her role was to provide energetic alignment-based assists—meaning she helped students move into a deeper embodiment of twists, forward folds, backbends, and more. “To my knowledge, I never hurt anyone,” says Brown. “But looking back, I fully own that there is a danger, and potential for injury, in assisting.”

When she sustained a hamstring tear after a teacher gave her a deep assist, Brown says she realized that some assists can be too much—and she shifted her views on hands-on adjustments. “Rather than use an assist to practically do the pose for the student, I now use a guiding touch to teach students how to embody the pose on their own,” she says.

Like Brown, many other teachers are rethinking their use of hands-on adjustments in public yoga classes, which are feeling scarier than ever for both teachers and students. After all, we live in an increasingly litigious society, and the #metoo movement has brought a heightened awareness to power dynamics. Vinyasa yoga teacher Jason Crandell says this is one reason why he started giving fewer manual adjustments. “It’s natural to crave the affection of the person in charge, and that can lead to big problems,” he says. “In my mind, that was a reason to be more reserved in how I interact with my students.”

This story is from the May 2018 edition of Yoga Journal.

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This story is from the May 2018 edition of Yoga Journal.

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