Yoga teachers! Have you ever taught a class where it seemed like every cue you were tripping over your words? Or maybe you just couldn't find the right words to cue students into a particular pose?
Yoga students? Have you ever taken a class where you felt like you had no idea what the teacher meant when they said "x, y, or z..."? Or maybe there were too many cues so you felt stuck in your head over how your pose LOOKED versus how your body FELT?
Well, before we dive into specific cueing tips, let's take a step back. As yoga teachers, what is it we want our students to experience? How do we hope they'll feel during AND after a class? As the guides for other peoples' yoga journeys, we need to be aware of our communication to give the best experience to our students.
Hold these questions in your mind and let's talk CUEING.
Alignment... Energy... Breath...
I'm going to call these my THREE BRANCHES OF YOGA CUEING. Take a moment and reflect on the most recent yoga class you taught. Was the basis of your cueing more in tune with alignment, energy, or breath? Maybe a combination of a couple or all three?
If you're looking to diversify your cueing and enhance your students' experience in your class, use all three of these branches throughout! This does not mean you have to cue alignment, energy, and breath for each pose you do. But all three of these elements should be cued in some capacity during your class.
Cueing 101
Before we break down ways we can cue these three branches, I just want to mention how I cue more broadly through my classes (getting from one pose to the next). I use the breath-body-direction-pose technique because it helps me to be concise in my cueing and (hopefully) reduce any confusion students might experience when transitioning to a new pose. I want my yoga students to be able to be as present as possible in their practice; so I try to be as concise with my words so their brains can focus less on me.
Breath-Body-Direction-Pose in action!
I'll use a super common transition as an example. Let's say students are in a forward fold at the told of the mat and we're transitioning to a high lunge. This cueing technique would go something like this...
"Exhale, step the right foot back, rise to high cresent lunge"
This could even be condensed to... "exhale, right foot back, high lunge"!
Now that we have basic transitional cueing down, let's talk about how to enhance your students' experience in class!
Alignment
Now, hopefully we all know as yoga teachers, that alignment is important for safety reasons. We don't want our students to do a pose so incorrectly that it results in injury whether it's immediate or evolves overtime from repeated exposure.
If your YTT was anything like mine (hopefully amazing!), then you probably learned about the anatomy of a lot of poses. This helps immensely with cueing alignment! It can also be really overwhelming when you know a lot about the anatomy of a pose. So let's break it down a little.
When cueing the alignment of a pose, pick 3 anatomical pieces with 1 modification offered. For me, it's easier to think of these cues from the feet up to the crown of the head. So depending on the pose, you could have a foot/ leg cue, a torso cue, and a gaze cue. Let's try this out with Warrior 2...
Students have just come into Warrior 2. Allow a couple of breaths for them to settle and feel the pose, then offer some alignment cueing:
Front toes pointing forward with the knee stacked over the ankle.
Hips open to the side.
Strong gaze over the front fingertips.
Then offer a modification because this specific alignment may not work for everyone:
If having the front toes face forward puts any strain on the knee, turn the toes in slightly - towards the direction your knee wants to naturally bend.
Once you've given the alignment and modification cues, allow students to feel into their "new" version for at least 3 breaths. You certainly do not have to give alignment cues every pose, or even every other pose! Pick 2-3 of the poses in your sequence to give these more anatomical cues to.
Energy
I personally find cueing energy to be the most challenging when I teach. It can be very easy to get caught in your own head about everything else going on while you teach, that we let go of students' experiences in the poses. So what does it even mean to cue energy? Well, come back to that question of what you want your students to feel during and/or after your classes.
I find that energetic cueing elevates the alignment of poses and is great to pair with breath. This is what really gives students an amazing experience in your class.
Let's say you've brought your students into Chair pose. Students will start to feel sensations in their body pretty much immediately, so bring attention to it and maybe work on moving that energy they're experiencing. Use the following as an example of energetic cueing:
Feel the warmth in your legs as a base for the fire in your core. Invite softness in the jaw. Imagine shooting light out of your fingertips to create more length in the spine.
Like alignment, there's so much energy we can work with in each pose we guide our students into. So try to pick 1 or 2 areas of the body for students to tune into energetic sensations.
Breath
Cueing the breath can be thought of in a couple of different ways. It can be as simple as mentioned above when guiding students through your class using breath-body-direction-pose. But we can also cue and guide the breath in deeper more meaningful ways!
We can guide students through a pranayama practice at the beginning or end of class.
Using breath as part of your warm up is a great way for students to connect their mind with their body. Maybe it's chilly in the studio and you'd like to warm up students quickly, then Breath of Fire would be perfect to get things going! Similarly, at the end of class, we can help students reground or find balance by offering guidance through Alternate Nostril Breathing.
We can incorporate pranayama techniques throughout the class.
I love to do this because students can usually expect a breath practice at the beginning or end of class. But having a guided breath technique done in an asana brings a whole different experience! You can add more ~spice~ to poses by bringing in Breath of Fire (like in Chair pose). You can invite soft focus with Box Breathing (maybe in Warrior 1). Ujjayi is also a common pranayama used throughout Vinyasa classes!
Any way you choose to incorporate breath in your class, your students will thank you for giving them the space to expand their lungs and breathe openly!
Let's tie this all up together to really enhance your students' yoga experience!
It can seem overwhelming to incorporate all of these kinds of cueing in your class, especially if you're a new yoga teacher. I know I stressed over just getting my sequences correct on both sides when I first started! But truly, these techniques will feel more natural the more that you do them and will keep your students coming back to your classes! So these are my best tips to round out your classes while incorporating alignment, energy, & breath:
Pick 3 poses you'd like to give alignment cues to.
Give alignment cues on one side of your sequence & energetic cues on the other side.
For example, give Warrior 2 alignment when on the right side & then Warrior 2 energy cues on the left.
Guide students using the breath (simple inhale/exhale cues) or a designated pranayama practice EVERY SINGLE CLASS.
I would love to know more about your own cueing techniques! Let's keep the conversation going yoga fam! Message me on Instagram or send me an email. :)
~Much peace~
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