Our bodies reflect our personal stories and journeys, both physical and psychological. They hold traces of our daily movement patterns, injury history (physical and emotional), and hints of internal imbalances. If we want to be helpful to our yoga students, we need to learn to read the messages that the body conveys and help our students make sense of their own body stories.
As yoga teachers and yoga therapists, we continuously work on perfecting our observational skills to be able to understand our students on a deeper level. We conduct these observations in stillness and in motion because different layers of the systems are revealed in different positions and at different times.
We observe our students as they sit, stand, lie on the ground, and move through yoga poses and hold them.
Little by little, we collect pieces of information about the student’s body and their relationship with it. Below are examples of static and movement observations that you can use for inspiration.
Hi there! My name is Olga Kabel and I am a yoga practitioner, yoga teacher and yoga therapist who is constantly striving toward balance on and off the mat. When you work with someone privately, you have the responsibility to make yoga work for that particular person. To make it possible, you have to learn as much as you can about the student, carefully choose the elements of the practice that are appropriate for him, plan the practice according to his needs and help him integrate it into his life. These are the skills that I’ve been consistently cultivating for the past 10+ years and these are the topics that I write about in my blog .
