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January 10, 2018

Why are you Touching me? How to practice Anatomical Safety as a Yoga Teacher.

I woke up recently to a deliciously rainy Saturday morning with the first chill in the air I’ve felt in far too long. In my first few waking breaths, I texted my friend Jen and got the best response you could hope for on, well, any morning really…

“Pancakes and coffee in 20?”

Yup. Yes.

I took a look at the yoga classes happening in my hood and there was a restorative going on at a small, no-frills studio I really enjoy.

“Restorative at 11?”

“Perf.”

Cue a perfect Saturday.

But alas, this is not a story about a perfect Saturday. This is a story about yoga. About being a teacher. About being a student. And, it’s a moment of deep gratitude and love for my own teachers, Lizzy Moore and Caroline Wybar.

This is on the heels of a recent blog post by Lizzy that got quite a bit of attention. “Dear Yoga Teachers…” she wrote, “Do you understand anatomy? No? Then stop touching people.”

It was a brilliant, intelligently informed, educated, and f*cking bold and brave plea to teachers everywhere to refrain from putting their hands on their students if they are not anatomically aware of what they’re doing. I read it and welled up with pride to be her student.

I thought of this frequently during the class I took today. Since I became a teacher myself, I practice mostly on my own or with my teachers, so it’s rare that I’m in a space where I’m not intimately known by the person guiding my practice.

That gap was apparent on my mat this afternoon.

Let me say first, that you could take a hundred 200-hour registered yoga teacher trainings, and you’d have a different experience and absorb different information every single time.

We’re not all being given the same framework just because there’s a “200 RYT” next to our names. The fact that my teachers delivered a training that was hyper-focused on anatomy as a baseline of our education, and ensured that we could safely go out into the world and teach—is a downright unbelievable gift.

We spent hours upon hours upon hours learning the vast and intricate landscape of the body, and even in that, only scratched the surface.

However, this gave me an awareness of the body that taught me, if nothing else, one very important thing: I. Should. Not. Touch. People.

If I’ve just met someone, the likelihood that they’ve given me enough information (if any at all) to make intelligent and safe adjustments to their shapes, is extremely slim. For me personally at this stage of my journey as a teacher, I’d be comfortable saying it’s impossible. Most students aren’t aware enough on their own to even articulate those things to us.

Beyond all of that, the question I’ve been taught to ask myself is: why am I touching them?

Before we really get into it, let’s talk about what it means to be assisted in yoga and why we do it. An assist is when the teacher manually adjusts our posture somehow and they’d do that for a number of reasons. Primarily, we’d be asking ourselves if there are any adjustments we can make so that the student is in better alignment or if they could be safer in the pose based on the anatomical intention of the posture.

There is also tremendous value in simply placing a hand on someone and/or applying gentle pressure when that’s appropriate, for the purpose of offering love, compassion, support, and comfort. All of these require that we know the student and their body, and most importantly—that they would want to be touched.

This afternoon I got an assist in a pose that I always make a modification in: Virasana (hero pose). I modify here because I have had reconstructions in both my knees and to go into the full expression of the posture (reclined all the way on my back), just isn’t available to my body for now. In fact, if I recline much at all, I can feel the oncoming sensation of near-explosion in my knees.

So in my body, this pose looks like sitting on a block and propping myself up on my hands as I lean back just enough to invite a stretch into my quads while still getting the benefits of deep flexion in my knees. I also know to engage my core and keep my tailbone long in order to avoid getting compressed as f*ck in my lumbar spine. Virasana is not a backbend.

If I didn’t know all of that, based on the modification I was damn near forced into today, I would be in a lot of pain right now.

As this really sweet teacher came around and made adjustments to my shape and to the student next to me, I actually felt incredibly violated without having been offered any of the cues that would keep me safe in the shape she seemed to think I needed to find. As she put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me backward, I thought, “Why are you touching me?”

Last Sunday, I had coffee with an old friend that teaches an ancient and very consciously preserved lineage of meditation. He said, “The role of a teacher is to hold up a mirror.”

This statement is deeply resonant and wrought with truth. However, I do wish to take this thought a few steps further.

The role of a teacher is to hold up a mirror—safely. Our job is first and foremost, to remove ourselves from the equation. This is not about us. It is about our students.

In this mirroring, the promise I make to my students is to meet them where they’re at. In their truth and at their edge as they know it in that moment. As I cultivate a relationship of trust and deep knowing, it is then and only then, safe to offer gentle nudges to encourage them to lean just beyond that edge and invite them to expand—be that physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.

Have I adhered perfectly to this rule? Of course not. I’ve put my hands on plenty of students without knowing them well enough to make anatomical adjustments. And, some people really love to be assisted.

There are ways we can love on our students by simply placing a hand in a way that lets them know we’re there and that we care for them, without potentially causing harm. Today was an excellent reminder of where the line is and an opportunity to check myself as a teacher.

I’m truly stunned at the extreme gift of being the student of my own two, incredibly humble teachers. They’ve been two of the safest places I’ve ever had to meet my edge. Every part of me has been cared for as they’ve held a mirror up and invited me to look.

My body. My heart. My spirit. Indeed I’ve painfully shed layers of fear, limiting beliefs, and ego in this journey with them, but never without a soft landing place and only at the rate of my own readiness.

I can truly never say this enough: thank you, for never ever making it about you, so that I would know to never, ever make it about me.

If you are a student in the care of any teacher in any lineage of yoga, please know that you are there to be served. If something doesn’t feel good (in any way, physical, emotional, etc), please speak up. Tell us. If you are met with resistance, then perhaps that isn’t the space for you to continue on your journey. It is not about us as teachers. It is about you as students.

May you be safely held as you are met with a mirror and invited to take a look, and may it be of service.

~

Author: Stef Osofsky
Image: Author’s own/Instagram
Editor: Kenni Linden
Copy Editor: Travis May

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