Adjustments

Changing the Face of Yoga Podcast

1:12 Introduction to Christine Wushke and adjustments

2:15 Adjustments – many of us were taught hands-on adjustments to make the student’s body take a certain shape. Christine prefers supporting the student to go into their own body and learn to make their own adjustment and correct their own movement. Her philosophy is to a) help the meet their own yoga goals and b) how to support them to realise what they need to do make their own adjustments. Christine uses the Hakomi (a body-based therapy) precepts of mindfulness, non-violence and organicity to direct her adjustments.

8:15 Walking toward experiment. Two individuals each go into mindfulness, one quite deeply. The other one walks toward the other one. When in mindfulness, one is highly sensitized to movement and proximity. Students in a yoga class are usually relaxed and will be in some form of mindfulness and so very aware of movement and proximity.

16:25 Student led yoga – teacher supports them in meeting the student’s yoga goals and not the teacher’s goals. Teacher needs to be aware that cues will be interpreted differently by different students. Teachers need to learn how to track their students to see if a cue is causing them to react negatively.

21:00 Adjustments for safety. When is it appropriate to touch a student? Need consent, trust, and a sense of safety before adjusting. What is your reason for and how to touch a student to make an adjustment. May touch to show a student a part of their body that they are not aware of or to emphasize a movement that is dysfunctional. But a light touch or tap is sufficient.

27:00 Bigger adjustments may be needed if the movement disrupts the student’s ability to understand where their body is and how it moves (i.e., arms overhead and how to externally and internally rotate the arms). If the teacher puts the student in the pose, then they haven’t learned anything.

29:00 May not be able to do the movement because they don’t have the neural pathways to do so. Students may not be aware of habitual movements and don’t know where there body is in those movements.

35:07 2nd toe lift: after warming up the toes, lift only the 2nd toe. Because most of us have worn shoes all of our life, we don’t have the neural pathways to move our toes individually. Doing the 2nd toe lift builds neural pathways (can help by having a finger lift up the toe) and then have to work on “training” to build strength to lift the toe without the finger.

35:45 Fine tuning our tactile touch. Just touching and gently moving the student to the extent that the student does not resist. Don’t push to the resistance and beyond – this is where injury can happen.

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