Teaching and Physical Flexibility

Most yoga teachers I know are very flexible. As much progress as I've made, I suspect that some poses may always be out of reach for me: I will never put my foot behind my head, for instance. This makes it easy for me to relate to the frustration my students feel in certain poses, but sometimes I think I shouldn't be teaching if I can't execute every pose. Should I just stick with teaching beginners, or do you see a different path?
—Mona

Read John Friend's response:

Dear Mona,

This is an excellent question. Over the years I have heard from many yoga teachers who wonder whether they should teach if they can't perform intermediate to advanced asanas. To be a good yoga teacher you need good communication skills, technical knowledge about philosophy and hatha yoga, and a heart that reflects integrity, compassion, and loving-kindness. Notice that the ability to perform advanced asanas is not on this list.

Over my teaching career, I have taught several physically adept students to perform every pose in B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Yoga,although I could not perform some of the poses myself. You don't have to be able to perform a pose in order to effectively teach someone else how to do it. An advanced pose is essentially an extreme variation of a basic pose. So, in Anusara Yoga I use Universal Principles of Alignment to teach and perform basic poses. These same principles hold true for more advanced poses. Since I have experience with the basic poses, I apply the same principles when teaching advanced poses.

Although I may be stiffer in certain poses than I was 30 years ago, my knowledge and wisdom have increased tremendously over the years through working with so many students of different abilities. The more bodies that you encounter as a teacher, the more you learn. In professional sports, the top coaches are often much older and less in shape than the athletes that they work with. Joe Paterno, coach of the Penn State football team, is considered one of the best coaches in college football—at age 80. He certainly can't perform like the young men 60 years his junior, but he has tremendous knowledge about every position on the field.

So don't worry if you're stiff. Continue to develop your communication skills, expand your knowledge of the principles of alignment behind the fundamental poses, and continue to cultivate compassion and integrity so that your students trust you. In this way, you can lead any student to her fullest capacity in asana.

John Friend, the founder of Anusara Yoga, has practiced a variety of hatha yoga styles since the early '70s. Today, he is widely considered one of the most charismatic and highly respected yoga teachers in the world. Blending an uplifting Tantric yoga philosophy with Universal Principles of Alignment, John's teaching style guides each student to fully live every moment from the heart. In 1997, John founded Anusara Yoga to promote his innovative vision. Today, Anusara Yoga is one of the most popular and fastest growing schools of hatha yoga in the world.