‘My students don’t listen to my cues. what do I do?’
I’m often asked in mentorships what to do if students don’t seem to listen to the cues given in class.
As teachers this might bring up many things:
you might be worried you can’t keep your students safe in asanas if they don’t go with your suggestions
you might feel triggered if someone doesn’t seem to listen to you and does their own thing (aka handstand flip type of things when you suggested a vinyasa or child’s pose ; )
you might be worried your cues aren’t clear enough and your students won’t learn enough
This goes especially for instruction on how to breathe ujjayi (victorious) breath. So let’s take this as an example.
I usually go through these questions with my mentees:
Did you give a clear direct action cue? (‘exhale through your mouth as if you’re fogging a mirror’)
Did you repeat the same sentence in a different way later on so it would land with more people? (‘inhale create a whispered ‘aah’ sound, exhale create a whispered ‘haa’ sound’)
Was the thing that you wanted your students to do accessible enough for everyone? If not: maybe some people didn’t do it because they simply couldn’t or felt it wasn’t appropriate for them on that given day (‘if ujjayi breath doesn’t work for you today, feel free to instead breathe long deep, slow breaths without any special technique’)
Did you give some benefits of the thing you would have liked them to do? (‘Ujjayi breath slows down our breathing, which then helps our nervous system to calm down’)
Are you teaching with a loud enough voice but in the tone of a friend?
Were they actually ready for it? Maybe they did hear your instruction but just couldn’t translate it to an action in their body. Especially ujjayi takes a lot of practice in my experience.
Did you go up to the student who seemed to not receive your cue and help them with a friendly, personalised cue?
If all the answers to these questions are ‘yes’, then we dig a little deeper:
If you feel your students don’t ‘listen’ to you: can you be ok with that? (While of course keeping them safe) in other words: is it essential for their experience of yoga to do exactly what you say?
I think this is often where the discomfort comes from:
We feel that we need to control each part of the class.
The group, the way students feel, their emotions, their thoughts, their whole experience.
But we cannot control any of these. Neither is it our job to create an experience for our students.
We share from what we have embodied. And then we hold space & trust the process of yoga. We let our students have their own experience.
Do you feel your students get your cues and follow them? And if not, what does this bring up for you? I’d love to know!
