Teaching Yoga with Intention: The Essential Guide to Skillful Hands-On Assists and Verbal Communication

Description

The definitive guide to effective and appropriate communication through words and touch between yoga teachers and their students. Clear, effective verbal communication and judicious touch are two skills that Judith Hanson Lasater feels are essential for every yoga teacher. In Teaching Yoga with Intention, she gives pointed advice on how to interact verbally with students in class and how to appropriately use touch to make corrections. Drawing from her fifty years of yoga experience and her training in Nonviolent Communication, Lasater trains yoga teachers to effectively communicate not only technique, but also the more subtle lessons of respect, empathy, and compassion. She also shines an unflinching light on the use of touch in yoga. Teachers often use touch to create understanding and awareness in the poses. But this is a subtle art, and Lasater gives clear guidance on how, where, and when the use of touch can be used appropriately to further a student's development. In this book, Lasater also empowers students by encouraging them to take ownership of and responsibility for their practice. She covers myriad topics that can be difficult for students at any level to navigate, such as how and when to say "no" to an adjustment; keeping boundaries; when to leave a class; helping your teacher understand your needs; how to communicate your appreciation to your yoga teacher; and if and when to report a teacher's behavior. The skills that Lasater offers help create a safe environment for students to "own" their learning process, and to progress technically at their own speed.

JUDITH HANSON LASATER has taught yoga since 1971. She holds a doctorate in East-West psychology and is a physical therapist. Dr. Lasater is the president emeritus of the California Yoga Teachers Association and is one of the founders of Yoga Journal magazine. She trains yoga teachers in asana, kinesiology, yoga therapeutics, and the Yoga Sutras, and she leads workshops and retreats throughout the US and abroad. She is a pioneer in the teaching and practice of Restorative yoga. Dr. Lasater writes extensively about yoga. Her feature articles, columns, and essays appear in numerous books, magazines, and anthologies. She is the author of ten books on yoga.

"Lasater's words on how we touch students with our voices and hands and how to do so in a way that builds trust and a collaborative spirit between yoga therapist and client are of great value."-Yoga Therapy Today, a publication of the International Association of Yoga Therapists