Yoga Teacher Tips: Essential Conversations for Yoga Teachers

Warrior One and Crescent Lunge (also called High Lunge) look very similar. The difference comes down almost entirely to what the back foot is doing, and that single variable changes what the ankle, knee, hip, and pelvis are able to do above it. This episode breaks down what each pose actually demands from students, who each one serves, and how to choose between them with intention.

I'll cover:

• Why The Back Foot Changes Everything
• ...

Two very well-trained yoga teachers can cue Side Plank differently, one stacking the hand directly under the shoulder and the other placing it slightly forward, and both have legitimate and very good reasoning for teaching the way they do. This episode explains the anatomy of the shoulder joint, unpacks what's actually happening in each version, examines the real tradeoffs of joint stacking as a teaching principle, and gives you fi...

Interoception is the sense of the internal state of the body: your heartbeat, breath, hunger, temperature, muscular effort, tension, and pain. It sits alongside exteroception, our perception of the outside world, and proprioception, our sense of where the body is in space. Every person has a different level of interoceptive awareness, and the good news is, it is a trainable skill. A yoga class is one of the best environments there ...

When we were taught to cue a movement or a yoga asana, we were led to believe that every student could perform it with enough effort or practice. But sometimes a student cannot do what is being cued, not because of a lack of flexibility or effort, but because their skeletal anatomy does not allow for it. This episode busts three common anatomy myths that shape the way we cue, covering the knee, the ankle, and the hip, so that you c...

There is a reason the social media challenge around sitting down and standing up from the floor without using your hands has caught on: the ability to get up and down from the floor is one of the most protective, trainable skills a person can maintain as they age. In this episode, I will cover the sobering statistics on falls among older adults, why falls so often become life-threatening, the research behind the sitting-rising test...

If you're a yoga teacher who wonders whether incorporating strength training, joint control work, myofascial release, or movements borrowed from other disciplines means you are no longer teaching yoga, then this episode helps to reframe that question entirely. Rather than asking whether other modalities are allowed, the question asks whether you can articulate the reasoning behind what you're including in your classes. When we thin...

Teaching students to keep their hips square is one of the most consistently taught cues in yoga twists, but the anatomy behind it is more nuanced than what we were initially taught. This episode breaks down where spinal rotation actually comes from, what changes mechanically when the pelvis is allowed to move versus held still, why allowing pelvic movement can actually increase total spinal rotation rather than reduce it, and how t...

As yoga teachers, we inherit most of our classroom language the same way we inherit our cueing language: from other teachers, from studio culture, from a vocabulary that has been circulating the yoga world for decades. Much of it is well-intentioned and lands exactly as we intend it to. However, some of it does not. 

This episode looks at how language we use around bodies, effort, and emotional release can affect students in wa...

Many of the cues yoga teachers use with students were built around helping students maneuver their bodies into what we think a pose is supposed to look like rather than what their bodies actually need to do. This episode examines three of the most widely used cues in yoga, breaks down what the anatomy tells us about each one, explains why individual body proportions make some of these instructions impossible for certain students to...

Most yoga teachers graduate from their 200-hour training with a solid foundation in philosophy, history, sequencing, and anatomy, and almost no preparation for the injured, painful, complex students who are in their classes every day. This episode examines the specific gaps in how teacher trainings currently approach injury education, what those gaps cost teachers, and three foundational changes that would make a meaningful differe...

Yoga props are widely understood as tools for accessibility, but in practice they are often offered as an option rather than a tool to alter the biomechanics of a pose. For students who are injured or managing chronic pain, the gap between those two things matters significantly. This episode examines when props actually change something meaningful in the body and when they create the appearance of a modification without addressing ...

Most of us inherited our cueing vocabulary from the teachers who trained us, and many of those cues have been repeated with so much confidence and so often that they feel like they're factually and anatomically correct. But when you actually examine the anatomy underneath the cues, a different picture begins to emerge. Neutral alignment is different in every student and is not a single position that every body can, or should, achie...

Answering the question of how often to practice yoga seems simple enough, but the full answer is more nuanced than most students expect. This episode takes a broader look at what the body actually needs to stay healthy and resilient over time, why yoga works best as part of a varied movement diet rather than as a student's only form of exercise, and what the yoga tradition itself says about practice beyond the physical postures. I'...

Savasana is frequently treated as downtime near the end of class, but it deserves far more attention and intention than most teacher trainings give it. This episode draws on some of the research I originally did for one of my 200-hour teacher training assignments to explore the history and philosophy of savasana, practical variations for different student needs, what a teacher should actually be doing while students rest, and an ho...

The breath is one of the only functions in the body that is both automatic and within our conscious control, which makes it one of the most accessible tools for shifting the nervous system in any of your yoga classes. This episode breaks down how breathing helps the nervous system, why this matters especially for anxious students, new students, and students in pain, and explains specific breath practices you can start using in your...

Plow Pose is a standard part of many yoga classes, and many teachers were trained to include it without much question. But in a group class setting, the demands on the cervical spine in this pose, combined with the reality of teaching multiple students at once, create a level of risk that is worth taking seriously. In this episode,  I'll make a direct case for why plow pose does not belong in a group yoga class, what the anato...

Chaturanga is one of the most repeated movements in vinyasa yoga, and one of the most commonly practiced by students without having the foundational capacity to support it. For yoga teachers, understanding what chaturanga actually demands of the wrists and shoulder joint, and recognizing when students are not ready to practice it in a way that supports their bodies, is essential knowledge for teaching safe, effective vinyasa classe...

Many yoga teachers think of yin yoga as a universally gentle practice, but for students with hip labral tears, the deep hip flexion and sustained holds that define the yoga practice can be genuinely problematic. Understanding the difference between yin yoga and restorative yoga, why the hip labrum is vulnerable to certain kinds of loading, and what alternatives you can offer your students is the kind of practical anatomy knowledge ...

As yoga teachers, we were initially trained to think of restorative yoga as the gentle, accessible option, the class option to send students who are struggling. But for students managing anxiety or chronic pain, traditional restorative practice can be challenging, and sometimes counterproductive. Understanding why certain nervous systems resist stillness, and what to offer when they do, is one of the most practical skills you can d...