THE LANGUAGES OF YOGA
Finding Your Voice as a Teacher
The Language We Use Matters
When we teach yoga, the language we use to teach our students creates their experience and determines the relationship they will have with yoga, with us, and with themselves.
We want to use trauma-informed, more gender-sensitive, and less body-shaming language systems.
Yoga teaching language once ranged from dictatorial to esoteric. We’re rightly moving towards more inclusive, mindful and sensitive communication styles. As we strive for sensitivity, we also want to create an impactful experience for our students. When we communicate in our teaching, we must also be aware of:
- The foundational language skills for teaching asana.
- The correct use of language while speaking with sensitivity.
- How our language choices can uniquely catalyze our students' experiences, including developing their self-confidence, body respect, or even lessening the impacts of trauma.
- How our language choices increase our personal relationship to leadership, to others and to life at large.
Communicate with Sensitivity and Impact
Learning how to communicate in a way that is nuanced, sensitive and still impactful enough to create a transformative experience for our students takes understanding, time and practice.
The Languages of Yoga is a series of guidelines for exploring different elements of our communication as yoga teachers ranging from how we communicate moving through the poses to creating the right atmosphere for your class to increasing mindfulness for your students and yourself.
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THE LANGUAGES OF YOGA
About Sarahjoy Marsh
SARAHJOY MARSH, SARAHJOY MARSH, MA, E-RYT 500, C-IAYT is a certified yoga teacher, yoga therapist, and author, is a vibrant, compassionate catalyst for transformation.
While fundamentally informed by the teachings of yoga, Sarahjoy also masterfully integrates her training in Western therapy and mental health, interpersonal counseling, neurobiology, reciprocal muscle inhibition, and kinesiology. She has an unwavering belief in people’s innate goodness and their capacity to re-awaken to their potential.
From her extensive background, Sarahjoy created “amrita yoga”, a form of vinyasa yoga that integrates Ayurveda, mindfulness, neuroscience, yoga philosophy and psychology, pranayama, and physical therapy. She also created Yoga + Social Justice integrating yoga, mindfulness, trauma-informed care, personal, intergenerational + cultural inquiry, and bringing yoga into the marginalized communities including Oregon’s prison system.
Committed to supporting marginalized populations and using yoga for social justice she founded two non-profits. Living Yoga and the DAYA Foundation. DAYA Foundation provides Prison Yoga Outreach Programs in 5 facilities in Oregon. DAYA has also provided yoga and mindfulness tools to those with addiction, anxiety or depression; to those with medical issues such as cancer, chronic pain, spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease; and to others who would not be able to attend yoga classes because of social, financial or physical constraints.
The combination of her ability to identify when a conditioned mind pattern crowds out clear thinking and to inspire the courage to bring insight into action, her knowledge of powerful yoga and mindfulness tools, her perspective on the terrain of the stages of recovery and the tools to use along the way make her Yoga for Recovery methodology (outlined in her book Hunger, Hope & Healing: A Yoga Approach to Reclaiming Your Relationship with Your Body and Food) a comprehensive and effective healing modality.
Sarahjoy enthusiastically embraces her students’ well-being in a pragmatic yet passionate way, seeing them as their true self, filled with innate potential and a vital, necessary gift to bring to others – that is, their genuine, vulnerable, and radiant self. She masterfully creates authentic community on a deep level.