How to Adjust People in Poses

People crave to be touched, to feel a connection.  They can watch a yoga online at home, but adjustments and human connection cannot happen there.  Adjusting your students in class enables you to connect with them on a deeper level and develop bonds quickly.

Some adjustments are just a gentle touch that suggests a direction for the student to move toward. Other adjustment can make an otherwise impossible pose doable, or allow a deepening in a pose that feels oh so good!

Here are some principles to help you give your students a yoga experience that is out of this world:

1. Consent

Touch is a sensitive topic and not everyone feels comfortable with touch. Sometimes this is due to general social agreement or it can be caused by a past trauma.

Rainbow Yoga Classes being social and interactive, and conscious touch and massage being such an integral part of it, permission is mostly not needed once you step into our yoga circle. In other circumstances asking for permission may be essential.

You can ask for consent to be touched and assisted in poses either individually every time before you adjust someone, or at the beginning of the class by addressing the whole group. A fun way to do it, while not embarrassing anyone, is to ask the group to close their eyes and suggest that those who would like to be assisted during the class please put their hands on their tummy, scratch their head, touch the tip of their nose, or try to lick their elbow… keep it light and not so serious!

2. Intentional Touch

Approach your students slowly and walk away from them slowly – make contact slowly and intentionally. If your touch lacks a clear intention and purpose, it might be interpreted the wrong way.

3. Move Slowly

Once you made contact, always move your students slowly. If you adjust their body too fast, their body will resist and pull in to protect itself. Going too fast also increases the risk of injuring your students. Move slowly and your student’s body will have time to respond, soften, or hold on and protect itself if it needs to.

4. Large Contact Surface

Use ‘big’ hands as it feels better, softer, more supportive and loving and it allows you to better support your students.  

Pokey fingers don’t feel nice.

Of course, avoided touching sensitive/private areas, but the adjustment needs to feel pleasurable.

In Cobra Pose for example, stand behind them in a Lounge or in Chair pose, place big hands on their shoulders and pecks and help them open their chest. Avoid touching lower down closer to their breasts.

In Seated Forward Bend, you can do a low lunge over them and press with your whole body to help them sink into a deeper pose.

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Also, when you stretch someone, make sure to get some ‘Skin Credit’ so that you don’t give them a skin burn. Hold them firmly and move your hands away from the direction you are going to pull them in, before you pull.

5. Listening Hands

Make your hands sensitive, and feel the tension in your student’s body through them. If they feel tensed, hold the pose there until they soften. If they are soft and relaxed, SLOWLY take them farther into the pose.

Try and practice Listening Hands with a friend at Forward Band/Butterfly Partner Pose.

6. Observe Their Physical Structure 

Look at the student and observe their general physique:

• If they are of gentle/fragile build, adjust them gently. Sometimes a gentle touch can be enough – a sweeping motion in the right direction can serve as a subtle indication for your student to sit taller, twist deeper or lengthen more.

• If they are of strong build, adjust them more deeply. Most men, if adjusted too gently, will not understand why have you come to touch them at all. It needs to make a difference to be significant for them.

Of course, it is always better to adjust too little than too much. 

7. Collect Feedback

Watch the student’s facial expression, body tension & breath. 

Do they look happy? Are they soft? Is their breath deep and regular? That means that you are doing a good job and that maybe you can take them a bit farther into the pose.

Are they making a face or frowning? Does their body feel tense? Are they holding their breath? Those non-verbal signals mean that they feel resistance. Slow down and ease off the pressure.

Verbal feedback is also important. Encourage your students to express themselves by asking questions such as:

• How does that feel?

• Would you like me to help you take it a bit further/deeper?

Modify your adjustment according to the feedback you receive.

Practice collecting verbal feedback with a friend in Partner Sited Straddle Forward Band.

8. Yoga for Both of You

Protect your body when adjusting people – If you hurt yourself while teaching, you won’t be able to be there for your students next time.

Use yoga poses when adjusting so that your body is safe and your spine is straight. 

Try exploring giving adjustments in Goddess Pose, Lunge, Chair Pose, Warrior etc.

The Marriage Proposal: In Standing Forward Bend, you can use the Lunge Pose to help them bring their chest closer to their thighs by pressing your chest against their back and hugging their thighs with your arms.

Use your weight instead of your strength when pressing on your student’s body by keeping your elbows straight and pouring your weight through your bones. If pulling them into a deeper stretch, lean away from them with your weight rather than pulling with your muscular strength.

In Child Pose, have the student hold your ankle with both their hands. Place both your hands on their hips and push down with straight arms. At the same time, come on your tiptoes and slowly press your heal down keeping your leg straight. You can slowly take a step back and press your heal down again to lengthen them more.

When lifting someone’s limbs or supporting their weight, try to use your skeleton for support rather than your muscles. 

For example, when holding their arms or legs in Locust Pose you can place your elbows on your thighs to support their weight through your legs rather than through the muscles of your arms and your back.

9. Always Lengthen

Think about making them longer and taller. If you create more space between their vertebrae, you allow for deeper bends and twists. 

Manipulating their limbs without pulling those limbs away from their center compromises the safety of their joints.

Lengthening is very helpful in balancing poses as well. The more extension you can help your students find, the steadier they will be in the pose. Thing about helping your students be more than straight; help them be extended! When we extend, we engage our core and all the muscles around our bones and joints.

In Dancer Pose, Warrior III Pose and in Half Moon Pose, you can place one hand under their thigh and the other hand under their arm/s and lift them slightly up to help them find more length and stability. Stand on the open side of their body and help them inner rotate their lifted leg so that their hips are more squared.

In Pigeon Pose, pull the student’s back leg gently to help them find more length in their spine.

In Bridge Pose, stand over the student in Goddess Pose, place your hands under their hips and pull away and up to lengthen their spine in the pose.

In Seated Forward Bend Pose, lie in Push Up Position with your chest over their back (if this is too intimate, you can use your hands on their back, or sit feet to feet with your student carefully pulling their hands and extending them gently) to help them lengthen forward and down with your whole body.

10. Grounding and Stabilizing

If you ground your student and allow for a more stable connection to the ground where their limbs come in contact with the earth, you will be able to lengthen them more in the pose and take them farther without setting them off balance.

You can gently step on their foot, push them down to the earth from their hips or their shoulders, hold their thigh between your thighs etc.

Help them find their center of gravity, and a stability they can lengthen from.

In Triangle Pose, Side Angel Pose orr in Twisting Lunge Poses, place your foot on top of the student’s back foot, or hold their thigh between your thighs, as you hold their wrist and lengthen them.

 In Chair or Eagle Pose, do Chair Pose behind the student letting them rest their hips on your thighs, place hands on their shoulders and ground them down toward the earth. In Chair Pose, you can continue from here to lengthen them by holding their wrists and pulling their arms up.

In Pigeon pose, place a hand on their hips and push down before helping them open more from their chest.

In Downward Facing Dog, stand in Warrior One and push their hips toward the ground. Or hold their heals with your hands and push to the earth.

11. Opposite Directions

Move a student body in opposite directions to create more lengthening, or a deeper twist.

Think about your students’ bodies as a squiggly line… Pull it away from its center on both ends, and you’ll get a straight line.

In Camel Pose, hold student’s arms with your hands and pull while placing your feet at lower back to push forward. This movement in opposite directions will help them to find more length in their spine, open their chest and bring their hips forward. 

In a Seated Twist place one hand on the student’s shoulder and the other hand on their lower back. Move your hands in opposite directions to assist the student into a more profound twist.

In Baby in the Arms Pose, kneel behind the student or be in a squat and press on their back with your chest as you use your arms to pull their leg closer to their body.

In High Lunge, place one hand under the student’s thigh and pull up while you press down on their hips with your other hand.

In High Lunge, stand behind them hugging their thigh between your thighs. Have them bend their elbows, and pull on their elbows with your hands as you press your own elbows into their upper back on either side of their spine. This pressure in two opposite directions will greatly help them open their chest.

In Standing Split, stand in Goddess Pose and press with your chest against the student’s back as you pull their raised leg toward you with your hands.

Banana Pose: In Standing Side Bend, do a chair pose on their side and push their hips away with your bottom as you hold their wrists and pull their arms up and over your head.

12. Hot Potato

 Often by scaffolding and helping our students too much we might handicap them. 

This is especially true for balancing poses. If we over support a student, they will never find their own balance.

We need to create a safe space for the students to find their own balance. We let them almost fall, but not quite. This controlled struggle helps the students find the muscles they need to support themselves in the pose.

The student is like a Hot Potato that is too hot to touch for more than a second. So in this exercise we just touch them with our fingertips for a brief moment… a little touch this way, and a little touch the other way if they start leaning in the opposite direction. 

We stop touching them when they find their own balance, but we keep our hands close by in case they lose their balance again.

The Protective Circle: In Headstand or Handstand, you can make a circle with your arms around the student’s legs and let them bounce off your arms safely until they find their own balance.

 

13. Tighter is Lighter

The more we hold our body together into our core, the steadier we will be and the lighter we will feel in the pose finding more ease in balancing or even simply maintaining it.

Help your students to find more integration and tightness by squeezing your hand (or it can be a block) between their thighs or arms.

 This technique can work wonders in Downward Facing Dog, Bridge, Headstand and Handstand.

14. Breathe Together and Move with the Breath

If you sync your breath with your student you can move with them in a more harmonious way. The sound and feel of your breath will give the student the queue to get ready for the adjustment when you breathe in, and move farther into the pose with you when you breath out.

Use the student’s breath to ease into the pose. Lengthen them when they inhale, and gently push, stretch or twist them farther when they exhale. It is in the exhalation that the body lets go and is ready to deepen into the pose.

In the Seated Forward Bend you can place your hands on the student’s back. Make yourself aware of their breath; when they inhale lengthen them forward, when they exhale gently press them down farther into the pose.

Practice working with the breath in the Sited Twist, placing one hand on their lower back and the other on the pectoral muscle between the shoulder and the chest. Extend your student when they inhale, and twist them a bit farther when they exhale.

15. Take Pleasure in Stretching

Many new yoga students can associate stretch with pain. Help them experience for themselves how wonderful it feels when we stretch and the tension seeps away from the body.

The secret for doing this is going slowly. 

Vocalizing your pleasure in the pose helps too – give it a go!

Tell them that you are supposed to feel a stretch in yoga; if they don’t feel anything you should try to go an inch farther. If it hurts, back off a bit and take it slowly.

16. Anatomically Correct

Make sure to move joints in the directions they are meant to. 

A hinge Joint, such as the knee, should not twist. Even Ball and Socket Joints such as the hip and shoulder have their limits, and those limits differ from student to student.

Never press on joints; it might cause them to move in an unhealthy way.

17. Disconnect Gradually

Don’t run away to the next student once the adjustment is done. 

Let your hands leave your student gradually, take a deep breath, look at them and make sure that they are ok and that they are grounded and balanced in the pose. A little extra squeeze or brushing their back with your hand before departing may be appropriate too.

If you walk away from them quickly, they literally might lose their balance and fall.

18. Share the Love… Equally

We all want to feel cared for and everyone wants the teacher’s attention. Try to spend equal amounts of time with all of the students and make sure that no one is feeling left out.

While you give your full attention to the student you assist, don’t hesitate to shout a compliment or an encouraging word to a student on the other side of the room if they need an extra distant push or if they have achieved a pose they have been dreaming of for weeks.

As yoga teachers, our job description is to make people happy! We do it by making them feel good physically and emotionally. An encouraging touch or a word can go a long way in helping them feel that.

19. Be creative 

Think outside of the box. Your hands are not the only tool you have to adjust your students. Feet, hips, thighs, elbows, tummy and more are all awesome at the right time and place. You can even use your whole body to assist your students in the poses. Just make sure that it is respectful and that it feels good.

If a pose is too challenging, break it down to the simpler components before you try it again. 

For example, the Headstand is nothing but an upside-down Mountain Pose. If your students are bending all over and floundering their legs in all directions while attempting the Headstand, have them stand in mountain pose for a moment and keep their body integrated and steady before trying it again on their head.

Success builds success… help your students build their confidence and work with them step by step instead of trying the impossible.

20. Massage

Adjusting in poses does not have to be about getting somewhere new; it can be about feeling more comfortable and relaxed about where you are.

Massage can make a pose feel more restful and helps a student find ease in discomfort.

21. Last Tips

Generally, I don’t adjust kids in poses as we don’t stay in the poses for very long. I only adjust them if I see that they are going to hurt themselves. They get better at the poses by observation and repetition. As children grow into tweens and teenagers you can adjust them more and more to help them find more pleasure and ease in the poses.

In partner yoga, you can adjust couples together; which sometime might mean you’ll need to move them in the same directions and at other times move them in opposite directions. Teach couples also how to support each other more. Practicing yoga together is like having a 24/7 yoga teacher to adjust you!

22. To Conclude

Don’t hesitate to touch and help people. If you feel comfortable with the magic of touch and your intention is purely just want to give and share, chances are that your students will feel it and be happy to receive.

And please always remember that your goal is not to impress people with your fantastic adjustments; it is about making them feel good. So always adjust the pose, or adjustment, to the student rather than the student to the pose.