Hands-on Assists: Two Approaches
Hands on assisting has been a hotly debated topic in yoga communities. With the rise of trauma-informed modalities highlighting the ways in which hands-on assisting has not always been rooted in proactive consent, discussing how, why, and when we touch students in a yoga class has never been more important.
Empowering students to move towards embodiment is at the heart of why we teach yoga. At the front desk, we offer consent cards that are always available for you to better opt in or out of hands on assisting. Internal discussions about the methodologies of adjustments and how we share them with students happen at our quarterly meetings. Centering the safety and consent of our students means that we are encouraging them to consider what feels best in their bodies.
We sat down with two of the co-facilitators for our 300hr training (Erin Ehlers and Victoria Rutledge) to discuss their approaches to hands-on assisting.
Why do you like to give hands-on assists?
E: I like to do it when I need another tool to communicate, to bring the idea that I'm trying to convey a little closer to a student. I dont think it’s a make or break technique for people, you don’t need to adjust people at all to be a good teacher. I’m a very talkative teacher, but everyone learns differently. For me it’s an additional means of communication. My background in yoga was iyengar yoga where no one asked if it was okay to adjust you. It showed me that this huge piece that I was missing was to discuss consent, and that has been the most profound way that I've shifted in my practice, making consent front and center, and involving the student in the decision to adjust.
V: I don’t do a lot of hands on assists. When I received hands-on assistance as a student, I felt like the teacher was telling me that they had a better idea of what my body could do than I did. When I teach now, I'm trying to empower students to feel like they have the most agency over their body in each pose. How could I ever determine for a student how their body should or can be in a shape?
E: Yes.
What is your intention when you offer assistance?
E: I’m not interested in deepening a pose for people. That’s a cheap party trick, anyone can overpower another person. That’s not going to teach them anything. I tend to view people as very resilient and give students the benefit of the doubt. I don’t have the scope of knowledge to assume I can tell a person's safety from the outside. When I put my hands on someone, i’m trying to merge the objective information I have about the pose closer to their subjective experience of the pose. Part of my method includes talking to them as well! I rarely touch someone without saying something like “how do you feel here?” I want them to feel like I am showing care, with good boundaries of course.
V: So it’s like initiating a conversation on a very small scale. The consent begins, and then we check in…how does this movement or assist put you back in conversation with your body. Even though I rarely touch people, I often give people verbal feedback to bridge this gap.
E: Yes. A good class has an “expert” at the top of the room, but that person is leaving a very wild margin for everyone in the room to have their own experience. Which is harder than it sounds, because part of your job as a teacher is to convey something without suppressing people. We want to leave room for that margin of experience, and that carries over into touching people. I never think about it as a correction, but guidance.
How do you feel about hands on assists? How do you honor your relationship to your body when you come through the studio doors? Let us know your thoughts!
