Learning to Speak Yoga: Cueing, Transitions and Finding my Yoga Voice
Just a few sun salutations. xo
🙊 Cueing
Cueing is the language used to tell your students what to do. i.e. Step to the top of your mat. That sounds easy enough, right? Now try cueing a beginning level yoga student through a chaturanga sequence. You have one breath per movement - GO!
It’s so hard!!! If time stood still between poses, I could teach a halfway decent 90 minute class tomorrow. But to teach the postures at speed and with the breath? Let’s just say I’m on the struggle bus.
To make it even more overwhelming, there are also different types of cues:
Directional cues – where to move - “Step your right foot forward between your hands.”
Action cues – how the body organizes - “Press through the back heel.”
Breath cues – pacing and rhythm -“Inhale to lengthen the spine.”
Energetic cues – felt sense or imagery - “Imagine lifting up and out of the waist.”
Awareness cues – attention and presence -“Notice the weight of your feet on the mat.”
Obviously teachers can’t use all of these cues all of the time. We have to choose the one or two that matter most in the moment, depending on the student. This is what I’m working on:
Giving clear, simple directions (Less than 5 words)
NOT narrating every tiny action
NOT filling every second of silence with chatter.
🙈 Transitions
Transitions are how we get from one posture to another. In other words - good transitions are mostly good cueing.
As a beginning yoga teacher, this is especially hard because I’m still learning the sequence myself. But to keep the class moving, I need to anticipate what’s coming next, and speak it clearly without over-explaining.
⏰ Experience
I recognise that all this comes with time and experience. But it’s so frustrating because I know what good looks like, i just can’t do it yet. I did a classroom observation this weekend and noticed every single thing the teacher did “wrong” - but there is no way I could’ve done better.
It reminded me of Ira Glass talking about The Gap—that space where your taste is far more developed than your ability.
☺️ Finding my yoga voice
I don’t want to “sound like a yoga teacher.” I want to sound like myself, but slower, calmer and filtered for clarity.
Anne Lamott suggests that you find your writer voice by removing fear and limitation. I think the same must go for finding your yoga voice. You don’t find it or create it — so much as shed everything that isn’t it. That takes time, trial and error.
I don’t want to perform calm. I want to be present and relaxed. I don’t want to sound smart, I want to be comfortable in my skills and experience. Which I guess will only come with time and experience…
Do you want to be one of my first students? Email me for a free 30-minute session!
LaurieMucha@gmail.com