Start from where they are!

Here is a simple principle I emphasize a lot when I train yoga teachers: “start from where they are”.

It seems so obvious, but so often we approach a class with our plans, ideas and expectations. In reality, this is a recipe for disaster.

It is the same with our life… we make plans, and we get disappointed a lot of the time just because life takes it’s own course. 

So life and your yoga classes are not about your plan. Who cares what you planned? I can assure you that your students don’t. Listen, it is all about the people that are in front of you at that specific moment. Not how they were last week and not how some other students were in a different class… it is about here and now, it is about living and breathing people, not about plans.

Plans are important. You want to know what is happening next. You want to do a good job, so you want to have some control. But plans are rigid, while life and yoga should be flexible. So make plans, but once you are there with actual people, chuck the plan out of the window and go with the flow.

If you offer your students poses or other yogic practices that are too difficult for them or that they are not ready for, they will get frustrated and discouraged. If you teach them things that are too easy, they’ll get board and will probably not come to your class again.

I have met so many “Gurus” that think they know what is best for you and what you need as if they can read your thoughts and your Karma or as if they know you better than you know yourself. NOBODY knows you better than you know yourself, and no one can make your life decisions for you. Trust yourself! And in the same token, trust your students! Don’t pretend to know what your students need… ask them, talk to them, observe and listen, and give them what they want.

Need and want are not so different from each other as our parents or teachers have always told us. Whatever your students want to learn is most probably also what they need to and are ready to learn.

I have been a monk in a yoga ashram for 10 years and have been immersed in all of the yoga philosophy, chanting, meditation etc etc. But when I go to a yoga class, I just want to do yoga poses; stretch, move, relax and feel good. So many times those really nice yoga teachers will start with a long lecture about Shiva or another Hindu Gods and with this big philosophy. It is not that I’m not interested in the Gods or in yoga philosophy… I just didn’t come to the class for this. We are not in India, and nobody told me that there would be a lecture about yoga philosophy and I didn’t see it advertised, and really I did not come to hear someone talk for that long. It is not what I came for. I came to do asanas.

Do you understand this? You need to give people what they want, not what you think they need.

I believe that our one goal as yoga teachers is to simply make people happy (Wow! What a great profession!). This is our job description. How do you make people happy? You give them what they want. 

Isn’t happiness what’s yoga all about? Yes! Yoga is many paths to happiness. The path changes according to who you are and what stage in your life you are in. It changes as you grow, as you are ready for more or for something else. 

And how do you know what your path is? You listen to your heart and to its desires. If you try to work against the current, against your heart, all you’ll end up with is frustration.

So back to the yoga classes…

Yes sometimes you have students of different levels, or students that came to get different things out of the class. No worries! As you keep teaching and as you make your senses more attuned to collect this important information (of what they want) from your students, you will become better at juggling it all at the same time by giving students different options when needed and saying just the right amount (which is usually very little) of yoga blha blha blha to make everyone happy. 

At the same time, remember that there is only one thing that no one can do… which is to please everyone. So trust your heart. Trust your observations as you become better at reading peoples reactions and at actually listening to what they are saying to you, and don’t doubt yourself, your confidence will inspire people to open and explore more than they thought they want to.

It also helps to advertise your class with the intention you want to have in it. For example, someone that wants yoga for relaxation and for peace of mind will not attend a class that is called “Yoga Party” or “Yoga for Weight Loss”, but will come to one that is called “Yoga and Relaxation”. And a conservative person looking for some stretching might not choose a class called “Partner Yoga and Tantra” or “Sexy Hot Yoga”. If you put the intention for the class in the name and description of it, you are more likely to attract the people that will fit with what you wish to teach in that space.

In Kids Yoga specifically it is so important to keep this principle of “start from where they are” because if you don’t you will simply not have a class. If the class is not the right fit for the children age group and if it is not flexible enough to change with their moods, they will loose their attention and start disrupting your class.

Just like with grownups, it is usually much more about the Group energy rather than the age group. When my two older kids Emily and Oli were 7 and 5, I was teaching yoga at their school every week. With Oli’s class I did headstands and handstands and acrobatics and human pyramids, and it was always so much fun and everything was possible because their group was so together. 

Now, even though Emily’s class was two years older, their group was bitchy and divided, and all of those beautiful practices that require trust in yourself or others were a struggle. It took a long time and a lot of gradual work with this group to reach the same practices that were so easy with the younger group. But again, I had to start from where they were.

Angel, my wife, puts this principle of “start from where they are” in different words; she calls it “success builds success”. It is so important. If children, or grownups, build this sense of achievement and of pride in what they have done, even in what may seem the smallest of things, it gives them enough confidence to be successful in the next, a bit more challenging practice.

It is all about trusting and believing in yourself. Sometimes when I teach the Crow Pose to either children or grownups, I let them try it first and then I ask them what did they think about when doing the pose? Some always answer that they were thinking about banging their face on the floor. I then ask them to do the pose again this time visualizing themselves in a perfect pose and telling themselves that they can do it, and easily at that! The success rates are hugely improved with this extra trust and faith in themselves.

Most of the time you will not know if a certain practice will work or not unless you actually try it. With kids it is always “next next next”; if it doesn’t work, you just move to something else and forget all about that unsuccessful practice. You want to keep the sense of success rather than dwelling on the children’s inabilities. You can try the same practice again in a few weeks with great success, but going against the flow and the energy of the kids at that moment will not work.

This principle of “start from where they are” is most important when teaching children with special needs because they are even more sensitive and highly attuned. They might be less familiar to you than your everyday kids class, so you will need to relinquish all expectations and be ready to learn from their exceptional personalities.

When you teach children with special needs, and this is really true for ALL children, there is only one thing you need to do: 

• Open your eyes

• Open your ears

• Open your heart

• Open your mind

• Open your arms

And really see and observe who is in front of you. And if you can truly see this and if you start from where they are, even the sky are not the limit of where you can reach with them!

But if you start from where someone told you they are, or from where the book or Google says they are, or from where you thought they were before, it will simply not work.

Yes, you can get some ideas and pointers from talking to the parents and teachers and from doing some research about that child’s condition, and you should definitely do all of this! But there is nothing that can really prepare you for what is going to happen at the moment, and you will miss the moment with that child if your mind is in the past and if your heart is not actually there.

Look, you simply can’t teach people things that they are not ready for because it will just not go in. You also can’t teach things that you are not ready for… in a few private Partner Yoga classes that I taught there were requests for more of the sexual practices of Tantra, and in some other cases partners started taking their cloths off. What would you have done in that situation?

Noting is impossible, but everything has its right place and time. No rush. Start from where you are.

Want to learn how to share yoga and mindfulness with your children at home or with your students at school?

Join one of our Rainbow Kids Yoga Teacher Trainings today! Click here to sign up!