After years of teaching yoga and training yoga instructors here are a few of the main characteristics that differentiate a yoga teacher from a fantastic yoga teacher. From our experience and from the feedback of our clients here is the most valued signs of an excellent yoga teacher.
Characteristics of the Best Yoga Instructor
- Compassion
The teacher must understand your needs and be sympathetic to your condition, never making you feel inadequate for something that may come easily to others. We all start with the first lesson and having a guide to understand our situation with kindness is the best way to work on meeting your objectives.
- Feedback
The teacher must be able to observe and listen to how you are feeling from pose to pose. Instant modifications should be given if something doesn’t feel right, once that channel of communication is open he/she can best understand how your body responds to the poses and can build up your practice accordingly
- Adjustments
Attention to alignments and the foundation is the cornerstone to a safe practice. It ensures your body does not compensate in poses and that you feel exactly the right stretch at the right place so the targeted muscles can be properly engaged throughout the class. This could mean a hands on adjustment, providing a slight variation of the pose or improving your alignment with the use of a prop.
- Intelligent sequences
The energy of the class should flow and gradually build allowing you to feel balanced after each session, rather than depleted. Each pose should lead to another so that the structure of the poses activates the different muscles that will be called upon in the next pose, this brings strength and a more graceful coordination.
- Empowerment
Once trust is established the teacher should also be able to gauge your capabilities and test your boundaries when it comes to strength, resistance, stamina and flexibility. He/She should slightly increase the intensity of the classes so you can look back and appreciate how you have developed knowing you are always improving.
We have a large team of teachers and each one of them embodies exactly these characteristics, their experience and specializations may vary but they certainly will give you the detailed approach that is most suited to your private yoga program.
