The Case for Teaching Without Demonstrating

I’ve got a question for you...Do you demonstrate when you teach? Do you even do parts of the practice with your students?

Do you use your body to teach, or do you use your words?

As a rule for myself, I demonstrate as little as possible when I’m teaching, which almost always means I do not demonstrate at all. One of the first things that happens in my teacher training is I tell the participants that while they are studying with me I want them to try to avoid demonstrating entirely. Why?I think using our words to teach, rather than our bodies, asks us to be more skillful teachers.

Here are some reasons people say they prefer to demonstrate when they teach:

• Some of their students are visual learners.
• Some students are brand new beginners and don’t know the names of poses.
• Some students are beginners who have very little body awareness.
• Teachers find it easier than saying the same thing in 20 different ways until their student finally understands what they are being asked to do.

And I hear you on every one of those points! They are all completely true! Many people “perform” better when they see a visual picture of the movement they are being asked to embody.  But...do we really want our students to “perform”? Or do we want to create a container that allows them to be with their experience? A note: I think that hearing and applying movement instructions is an important skill that we can and should be teaching people. Many people are visual learners, that’s true! But many other people just haven’t been taught how to connect language to their kinesthetic experience and I think taking the time to teach that is a super worthwhile endeavor. Obviously beginner yoga students won't know the names of the poses! But...isn’t it our job to teach our students, slowly and carefully, the shapes and the names we associate with those shapes?Yes, teaching movement to people with little body awareness is challenging. But I think these students especially benefit more from our attention than they do from our demonstrations. And yes--- it is much easier to show our students want we want them to do, rather than get creative and specific in our descriptions. But....should we do something just because it is easier?

I’ll add a few of what I think are some of the unconscious reasons that teachers often rely on their bodies to teach:

• It helps teachers avoid the awkwardness and vulnerability of holding space with our still, grounded body.
• It is much easier to have someone copy a shape than it is to describe to them skeletal organization, weight distribution or tissue sensation.

The bottom line is this:It usually is harder to teach without using your body to demonstrate. I think we should try to teach this way regardless.

Teaching without demonstrating does a few important things:

• It forces us to get more creative and articulate with our language. It may be rough going at first, but it will get better with practice. The more skillfully you are able to use your words, the better teacher you will be. Period.
• It teaches students how to connect language to their kinesthetic experience, which I think helps them have a more embodied experience off the mat.
• When students watch us create an asana, that takes their attention out of their personal experience. We need our students’ attention to be moving inward to create the kind of deep and meaningful changes we are hoping for.
• If we use our bodies to teach, our students will wrongly get the idea that the important part of a pose is the way it looks.
• It is much healthier for our own bodies to walk around and sit and squat and kneel while we teach, than it is to jump into and out of poses.

If these ideas are new and scary to you, here are a few practices that may help:

• Don’t put a mat out for yourself. You’ll be less likely to get down and show something if it’s not as comfortable. Also, you’ll feel less stuck to that place in the room, so you’ll walk around more!
• Practice teaching a new-to-yoga friend a 20 minute beginner sequence while sitting on your hands.
• Get comfortable with the awkwardness and vulnerability that comes with holding grounded space with your still body. Take ownership of those moments.
• If your students are watching you and waiting to see how you move before they do, remind them you’ll be a much better teacher for them if you’re watching them move, not the other way around. Then go stand behind them where they can’t see you.
• Audio record yourself teaching. {This is painful, but a very good thing to do.} Listen to that recording and make a list of the words or instructions you say repeatedly. Then make another list of synonyms of those words and phrases.

I'm not saying demonstrating NEVER has value. I'm saying it has value WAY LESS OFTEN then it is used. You guys know this about me... right? I'm not a strict teacher or a black/white kind of person, so I'm never going to say something is always good {verbal cues} and something else is always bad {physical demonstrations}. What I am saying is that I think many teachers overuse their bodies and underuse articulate cueing and that is why many teachers aren't good at verbal cues; they don't practice it enough. Showing the poses to their students instead of describing the movements becomes a crutch. Also, in private lessons I rarely think demonstrating is helpful, and since that is what I spend so much of my time talking about, that is where this perspective comes from.

In the spirit of Shades of Grey, here are some reasons TO demo:

• It helps build community and solidarity with your students...like holding a long utkatasana with them, for example!
• Do you guys know the Bus Stop Modification technique? It’s where you quickly offer four versions of a pose and students can get off the bus at any stop they want. Someone in my Facebook group mentioned this might be a place that using your body is helpful, and I agreed. It could be a much faster way to show a few different options for a pose.
• Sometimes I teach non-standard, weird movements that don’t have a yoga name...and so occasionally a short physical demonstration is helpful.
• When teaching trauma sensitive specific classes, teachers often stay on their own mat so their students know where they are at all times.
• In the OM Yoga style of yoga {where I did my first TT} we lead students through a few rounds of a warm-up vinyasa that coordinates small, simple movements with each breath. I sometimes do the first round with them to help collect the energy.

Just know that if this idea is new to you, it will take a lot of time to practice teaching this way. Don’t rush or push yourself. Just take one baby step at a time. It will be slow going at first, and sometimes it will be messy, but teaching in this way is a worthwhile endeavor.What do YOU think? Are there reasons TO demonstrate that I left out? Or reasons NOT TO demonstrate that I forgot?

P.S.  Do you have these In-Person events in your calendar?Early bird pricing ends May 15th for all of them!!

Refill Your Well: A Study + Self Care Retreat for TeachersWith Francesca Cervero and Diana ZotosJuly 16th- July 20th at Blue Mountain Retreat Center in Knoxville, MD~&~The Science of the Private Lesson™ In-Person Trainings:Intro Workshop Saturday April 15th 12:30pm-6:30pm, Silver Spring, MDNYC August 6th- 11th 2017Washington, DC August 19th-23rd 2017