How to Teach a Multi-Level Class

Teaching a multi-level class is challenging and requires tremendous focus and care. Fortunately there are skills you can learn to give all students--young and old, practiced and new, injured or healthy--a good experience.

By Marget Braun

It's something many yoga teachers face when standing at the front of a room to begin a class. Before you is a classroom of yogis representing a range of levels, ability, ages, and expectations. How can you lead a practice that's appropriate for each person? Teaching a multi-level class with grace is the hallmark of an experienced teacher, but there are strategies you can use even if you're just beginning to teach yoga.

First, boost your confidence by acknowledging that teaching a multi-level class is a skill that can be learned. Second, recognize that keen observation is crucial to this task, and begin to develop your ability to really see your students. Third, once you've trained yourself in careful observation, offer appropriate modifications of poses, as well as interaction and humor, to make sure students at all levels are learning and progressing. And finally, realize that, in a sense, the idea of "levels" is simply a construct that true teaching quickly transcends.

The Importance of Observation

Refining your power of observation isn't just a way to keep your students engaged—it's also a way to evaluate your students' abilities and protect them from injury during a class that may be challenging. Ashtanga teacher and author David Swenson believes that every class is a mixed-level class. "There is no such thing as a class where all levels of experience are the same," Swenson says. "And further, students find that their 'level' may change, even from day to day."

Swenson will scan a new group of students as they go through Sun Salutations. "Teachers are like forest rangers watching for signs of smoke," Swenson says. "The signal I look for is danger of injury."

Neal Wright, the former owner of Mission Yoga, a Bikram studio in San Francisco, also makes safety a priority because Bikram classes always mix beginners and more advanced students for its 90-minute timed sequence.

"It's fine to have mixed levels as long as the teacher's goal is to make each person feel they've received attention," Wright says. "Everybody wants some attention from the teacher. Most people want corrections, too. They want to understand the practice and feel they are progressing."

According to Cyndi Lee, Vinyasa teacher and director of Om Yoga in New York City, you can give this individual attention best once you really observe your students. Train your eye to see what's going on with them, she explains: "Develop the eye to see." Lee may ask new students to sit with legs crossed. "You find out right away about hips, back, their strengths, their habits. In Child's Pose you can see an even, or non-even, curve of spine. In Downward Dog you see everything: lower back, hamstrings, shoulders, the strength they have or may not have in limbs." Becoming aware of their individual bodies is the first step toward offering modifications and variations.

Engaging Students with Modifications

So just how can you engage all of your students in every class? Wright highlights the importance of this question: "Everything is fine and dandy if everyone is the same, but differences can make a class jagged." He notes, "The experience of a teacher is demonstrated by how he handles a roomful of new and more experienced students."

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