One of the very first yoga videos I ever purchased was Back Care Yoga by Rodney Yee, and ever since then, my back and I have been big fans of Rodney Yee’s teaching. You can imagine how excited I was when I got the opportunity to study with Rodney at a teacher training workshop hosted by Yoga on High.

For the first hour or so of the workshop, I was a bit yoga-star struck as I listened to Rodney. I have to admit that it was both a bit surreal and cool to watch Rodney and his ponytail walk right by my yoga mat giving out instructions. But I wasn’t there to stargaze, and I quickly got my head back to the mat to really soak up a lot of fresh learning. I have so much that I want to write about the experience*. But, one thing in particular that Rodney said really hit home with me, and I have to share it with you.

Rodney told a story about how he was talking to a yoga teacher that described their classes as gentle yoga. Rodney asked the teacher why they needed to use the adjective “gentle” to describe their yoga. Shouldn’t all yoga be gentle? Amen, Rodney!

That statement really struck a chord with me because I love to teach gentle (oops, now I’m using the adjective) yoga classes, but sometimes I wonder if I should be teaching more vigorous flows.

I’m sure that many people have gone to a class and been turned off by an aggressive pace or a class geared towards building up to poses like crow or headstands (the poses I affectionately call ego poses). One of the things I learned in my yoga teacher training is that only five percent of the U.S. population can do mainstream yoga. So, if I want to introduce yoga to students in a positive way, I need to break down the poses, demystify yoga, and teach it in a gentle way.

Yoga is so much more than being able to reach your toes in a forward fold or getting vertical in a headstand. In fact, anything you do can be yoga if it is done with mindfulness and breath. I always tell my students that it doesn’t matter where they are in a pose because as long as they are breathing, they are doing the yoga.

What I loved so much about Rodney’s statement is that he was conveying that teachers should never apologize for a class being gentle; yoga should be gentle, and this was just the affirmation I needed to hear.

 

*Stay tuned for more about my experience with Rodney and how I, of course, made a complete yoga dork out of myself.