Intention

My intention over the next seven days is to consciously refine my authentic voice and my ability to pay attention through
Effective Cueing, Listening and Reflecting, and Intentionality

practice

Practice daily. Use your daily practice this week to create sacred speech. Enjoy the Sacred Preparation SOUND. We are working with the fifth chakra Vishudda. The practice theme for this month is Attune. See the Virtual Class Studio or Live Class Recordings.

meditation

Practice daily for 3-11 minutes. Use your meditation this week to bridge your feelings with your thoughts. Hone your ability to listen and verbally express your needs, desires, and opinions truthfully and authentically.

COURSEWORK

one Record and take your own class.
two Write 3 Morning Pages following by 2 minutes of Listening to Silence each day.
three Schedule an Artist’s Date and a Walk for this week
four Consider what it means to teach someone with intention

reading

Catch up on any overdue reading. *Reminder - you will turn in a 1 page “report” on each of the 4 required books.

Journal

one Note your transitional, super, support, and exit cues. Review the Yoga Teacher Archetypes on pg. 188 - 189 in the manual. Which archetype resonates with you and why?
two | three Write 3 Morning Pages following by 2 minutes of Listening to Silence each day.
four How will you language the important ideas you want to share while teaching?

geneva

Take a break this week.

SOUND - Week THREE: Session 1: Effective Cueing

SOUND - Week THREE: Session 1: Effective Cueing

Discussion
Common Mistakes

• Too many words: complicates/crowds the students mind which does not allow them to drop down into their own experience and experience the space of presence.

• W: why

• A: am

• I: I

• T: talking

• Complicated instruction: students don’t need to know as much as you think they do

• Passive cues: use commanding language and direct verb

• Little space to integrate: students may not be conscious of this, but they will feel this

Effective cueing speaks directly to the body, the nervous system, by using simple active verbs. The mind can process the information without having to think about it too much and stay steady, stable and quiet. 

• ex: “Step your right foot back.”

Cueing Formula

Pose 1 

• Transitional Cues: simple direction to move students from the end of one pose to beginning of the next pose.

• ex: From Wide Angle Forward Fold to Warrior 2: “Bring your hands to your hips. Inhale, come to stand. Turn your right toes out and bend your right knee. Extend your arms. Warrior 2”

Pose 2

On breaths 1-4

• Super Cues: 

• Moves student into pose simply and clearly with 3 to 4 cues 

• Cueing is active and precise

• Teacher pauses to give time for physical connection

• ex: Pyramid Pose: “Extend your front leg from the hip to the ground, elongate your spine.”

• If these cues continued for too long, your students would continue to listen to you, but their bodies would be challenged to relax.

Balance super cues with support cues.

• Support Cues:

• Silence: is golden, offer the gift of silence to your students

• Mental support: nuggets that feed your students just enough to keep them present

• Breath: is like silence, inhale exhale

• Physical support: additional information to provide physical support

• Personal experience: anecdote that is relative

On breath 5

• Exit Cues: a way of the completing the pose, how to move your student out of a pose

• A way to complete the pose

• Generally cued with a “final breath”

• Encourages student to challenge and/or deepen

• ex: Seated Forward Fold: “Take one more breath, exhale fully. Inhale, come back up.”

• Transitional Cues: simple direction to move students from the end of one pose to beginning of the next pose.

Pose 3

SOUND - Week THREE: Session 2: Cueing for flow + for alignment

Discussion
Ideally classes will have a balance of healthy alignment and flow. However, many classes favor one or the other and cueing will reflect that. The pace of the class will determine how and when to cue.

• In flow/Hatha we are generally moving a quicker pace and fluidly from pose to pose with breath; holding poses for 1-5 breaths 

• In a class focused on alignment, poses are held statically for 5-10+ breaths and there is more space within the practice to break down alignment details.

• It is helpful even within flow classes to break down poses for safety in the beginning or during and then allow students space to move at their own pace and have their own experience.

• Conversely it can be helpful to simplify language and refrain from giving all the information available about poses within a class where anatomical and energetic alignment is the focus.
  

Ashley Hagen outlines 5 different Archetypes of Yoga Teacher: the mechanic, the doctor, the magical creature, the storyteller and the therapist. 

• The mechanic uses a simple formula: verb + body part + direction. This teacher is direct and effective. Their language is easy to digest and makes sense with little to no nonsense.
  

• The doctor is knowledgeable about the body in a way a doctor is knowledgeable. Their classes are anatomically and biomechanically focused and they may or may not use words that everyone understands. However, they are able to explain and direct in a way that provides students with more knowledge about their own bodies - physically and perhaps energetically.
  

• The magical creature is able to take the class into another realm. A realm where the mundane becomes alive, or magical. This teacher can read minds and see details and use their perception to serve and support their students. 

There is a little bit of the magical creature in all yoga teachers. In the same way a mechanic can get your car running and a doctor can diagnose and support a body back to health, a yoga teacher heals, protects, and inspires, creating safe space for intentional work. Also, there is a little bit of all 5 in all of us.

• The storyteller masterly provides relatable anecdotes, stories, and perhaps myths pertaining to yoga poses, practices and philosophy. This teacher takes their students on a journey that connects their practice with all of life and its meaning.

• The therapist is deeply interested in behavior and patterns that are conscious, unconscious or subconscious and assists the student on their journey of self discovery. This teacher will invite and encourage thinking and ideas that are calming to the nervous system and edifying to their students authentic self.

SOUND - Week ONE: Session 3: Listening + Reflecting

Discussion
In her book, The Listening Way, Julia Cameron outlines 6 layers of listening (for 6 weeks). Her invitation is to write down what you hear to awaken yourself creatively.

• Listening to your environment: is this pleasant or unpleasant?

• Listening to others: are you listening or waiting to speak? Don’t interrupt, be patient. Watch your body language. Notice the dance between your turn, your turn, dialogue not monologue.

• Listening to the Higher Self:  listen/look for intuitive thoughts or feelings. Ask, direct your questions to yourSelf. Can I hear about … . Listen, and write down what you hear; what you receive is often simpler, direct, and more valuable.  A way to develop self-trust, inner wisdom, and authenticity.

• Listening beyond the veil: ask the ancestors

• Listening to our heroes: ask people you admire, when we reach for our heroes we are reaching out for attributes that we have ourselves that we may have not emphasized. Use your imagination.

• Listening to silence: move beyond the fear, just listen for 2 minutes

She offers (in The Artist’s Way) the following tools to cultivate listening: Morning Pages, Artist Date, Walking  

Morning Pages 

• first thing in the morning, when you are most vulnerable

• by hand, to capture authenticity and depth

• completely private, write about whatever crosses your mind, all thoughts are welcome

• you will likely hear from your inner critic, in response say: thank you for sharing; allows you to practice stepping past your inner critic, consider naming your critic 

Artist Date

• play and you will have ideas

• something that enchants or interests you, something light hearted

• alone

• enchant your inner child, the part of you that is exuberant, to experience Source (God, Mystery).

Walking

• meander, to tune yourself into the environment

SOUND - Week THREE: Session 4: Intentionality

Discussion
Intentional means done on purpose; deliberate. Our practice is a means to become deeply intimate with ourselves. We can begin to build this intimacy by paying attention to our experiences during our practice and taking the time to reflect post class.

Right Intention is a Buddhist precept, and as such, let’s turn there as we continue our discussion of intention.  

• According to Buddhist teacher Philip Moffit, intention is quite different from a goal. It is not oriented toward a future outcome. Instead, it is a path or practice that is focused on how you are “being” in the present moment. Your attention is on the ever present “now” in the constantly changing flow of life. You set your intentions based on understanding what matters most to you and make a commitment to align your actions with your values.

• Being grounded in intention is what provides integrity and unity in your life.

• Through the cultivation of intention, you learn to make wise goals and then to work toward achieving them without getting caught in attachment to outcome. The precept of Right Intention suggests that only by remembering your intentions can you reconnect with yourself during those emotional storms or other disruptions that cause you to lose touch with yourself. It is said that this remembering is a blessing, because it provides a sense of meaning in your life that is independent of whether you achieve certain goals or not.

• Intention manifests itself as “volition,” which is the power of using one's will. Literally, it is your intention that affects how you interpret what comes into your mind.

• Right intention is simply about coming home to yourself. It is a practice of aligning with the deepest part of yourself while surrendering to reality; reality that often gets lost in the thinking mind. 

There are only two things you are responsible for in this practice: Throughout each day, ask yourself if you are being true to your deepest intentions. If you’re not, start doing so immediately, as best as you’re able. The outcome of your inquiry and effort may seem modest at first. But be assured, each time you start over by reconnecting to your intention, you are taking one more step toward finding your own authenticity and freedom. In that moment, you are remembering yourself and grounding your life in your heart’s intention. - Philip Moffitt 

The following are notes gathered from an interview in which Judith Lasater talks about her book Teaching with Intention: The Essential Guide to Skillful Hands-On Assists and Verbal Communication, she says:

“Yoga isn’t meant to be about playing to our strengths and habits. It is about becoming intimate and falling in love.”  

As such, it pays to look deeply at our choices in our practice.

Teaching yoga is an honor and a privilege and not a right. You are the bucket, filled up by your practice and what you learn from your teacher, and your teacher's teacher, and your teacher’s teacher’ teacher, all the way down the line to the first teacher; so we are to take care of ourselves with our own practice, living our yoga, becoming the practice. Eventually so that there is a depth to what we say and it has a resonance with people because we speak from our own experience, our own practice, our own truth and with humility. 

“What I think we need to do as teachers is to stand in our own light, teach from our true experience, and offer our students something in an asana class that's a little bit deeper.”

• It is important to actively cultivate taking care of ourselves physically, mentally, spiritually, and psychologically. Learning, opening, letting go. Opening up and letting go, opening up and letting go, all day long, every day, all the time in our practice so that we can be the best bucket we can. We can be the bucket that offers someone an understanding about their true nature and teach them the most important thing a human being can learn which is, “I am not my thoughts, my true self is consciousness and thought is an epiphenomena of Consciousness but I am not that which I think.”
  

• You have to recognize that you're not your thoughts and then you have to remember to hold that sense of presence with you, not just in Triangle pose, not just in meditation or pranayama, but right now. We are each holding that separately and together we are rooted in something bigger than our ego. 
  

When it comes to adjusting people in classes, she says: 
It's a dance, it's a mutual experience of boundaries and power and choice. It's not to be done casually.

Hopefully I can deliberately create an atmosphere in which people can say no to me in my yoga class …. Allowing the student to say no also about getting the student to say yes. “When the student says yes out loud - they are not just saying yes to me rather they are saying yes to themselves. This means they are owning their choice and thus their neuromuscular system is now actually tuned into and in harmony with their wishes in other words … When they say yes firmly and clearly they are all in.

With intention as the focus, eventually “the integrity of the asana becomes vibrant without effort, it becomes clear without struggle, and it becomes a seat of refuge. Then, we experience a quietness that spontaneously arises.”

Echo Meditation Practice
Practice Daily - 8 minutes with 3 mudra options.

Sit in cross-legged pose with a light neck lock.
Eye position: focus at your third eye. 
Mantra: long sat, short nam

We chant for three and a half minutes. Your vocal chords may get tired, so drop into your belly and draw the sound from your diaphragm. Pull energy and power from deep within. 

Practice projecting out a sound that is deep, full, and reverberating.

Go at your own pace to feel as though the rhythm is authentic. If you feel awkward using your voice, work with the physical vibrations. Inform your physical posture to manifest what you want to express.

Choose one of the following mudras to hold:
Mudra one: hold opposite elbows at shoulder height. 
Mudra two: hold opposite elbows with arms lowered down to rest.
Mudra three: hands held in anjali mudra, hands to heart.
Breath: inhale full breath. exhale chant long sat. inhale half breath. exhale chant short nam.
To end: meditate.

7 Wave Sat Nam - Reify or Long Sat Nam - Joe Panzetta

Stay in this place of vibrant silence for as long as you can.

Affirmation/Mantra
I listen before I speak. I listen as I speak. I listen even after I speak.
I sort through all my thoughts and emotions so that I leave conversations feeling heard. My words carry healing energy. I sense a shift in my tone. I use my voice to inspire others.

Clairaudient
Clairaudience is knowing through your heart-brain. Auditory messages and rhythms are picked up through the beating of your heart. What does that mean? The heart has precognition (HeartMath says it can predict the future): meaning your heart is listening. 

Your heart is the 2nd strongest muscle in your body; the 1st is your tongue.

But another connection you might not consider is your heart and ear. When your heart-brain connects to your inner ear, it listens to the tones of a person's voice, knowing more than the words that are being said, picking up all the sounds and nuances to decipher meaning. I think this is why we love texting and why texting is a wonderful tool because it gives us direct words. If we were to hear the person's voice; our heart's clairaudient knowing would be picking up all the sounds and nuances to decipher meaning but texting has no nuance to decipher.

The voice is the statement of who you are. Although it matters what words you use, it matters even more what tones and inflections you use...the inferences contained within this tell more than your words can convey.  

I want to deeply encourage all of you to begin to find your voice. Work with a mirror; talk to yourself; continue to find a special friend in the group who helps you build an attitude of how important listening and believing in your message is.

Breakout rooms
Are you a speaker or listener?
I would like for you to describe your practice style; and after teaching Saturday, you got a taste of your teaching style, I would like for you to describe that too.
How are they different? How are they similar?
What felt natural and where and how may you have struggled? - so that you troubleshoot.
Here you will have time to practice Conscious Communication Practices: “I” statements: to own feelings and to listen with empathy, Co-listening, Reflective listening, Empowering feedback

“The more you witness and recognize your own voice, the less you’ll need external validation.” - Unknown

Winter
In his book, staying healthy with the seasons, Dr. Elson Haas says, “Winter’s power is deep and yin. It’s a time to conserve energy and resources and not be wasteful with your active, outward (Yang) energy. You need special care in the dome of nutrition, warmth, and rest.”

Morning Pages as Listening
We are beginning to use Morning Pages instead of the “journal” prompts. Morning Pages are a daily practice of three pages, stream of consciousness, written first thing in the morning. They are a powerful tool to practice listening. They are private and personal and written, pen to paper, long-hand as we are after depth and specificity. 

We want to record exactly what we feel and why. They are a form of meditation that move, or “corner”  us to action. They put us in touch with our own wisdom.  The practice of Morning Pages heightenes our intuition. Morning Pages are a “tough-love” friend and help us confront what we may be avoiding. They are a way to examine life. 

They are done first thing in the morning before our ego’s defenses are in place. “Catching ourselves off guard, we tell ourselves the truth. We listen - and record - our actual feelings, we become habituated to the truth.” It is a practice of self-acceptance. 

When you think “I have nothing to write about”, begin to count your blessings, note what you are grateful for. Like meditation and practice, Morning Pages makes time - time, the becomes your time. With Morning Pages, we dare to listen to and articulate our dreams. Morning Pages train us to listen - the creative art of attention. 

“Our daily pages tutor us in the art of attention. As we listen to each thought as it unspools, we come to trust our own perceptions. Each word marks a point of consciousness. Taken collectively, the words are the jotting of our souls.”
- Julia Cameron, The Listening Way

Listening requires attention and nothing sharpens our attention like silence, she says. Our thoughts become more spacious, each moment unfurls slowly - we set aside velocity in favor of attention, we feel peace.   

Steeping
Morning Pages are a way to steep yourself in your practice. Daily practice is a way to steep yourself in your practice. This training is a way to steep yourself until only what is essential remains. There is an essence to you that we are looking for and we want to see and experience because you - as a teacher - are a mirror. If you resonate .. authenticity .. then you will attract those who want that. 

Resonance
We are going to clarify cueing in a moment, but I would like to talk first about resonance. When you cue you want your body to hum the sequence. And the way you do this is by practicing your sequence so that it resonates in your body, so you know what it feels like, and because you have cultivated this sort of discipline with yourself and you know your postures, you will be able to articulate how it feels, without even saying a word.     (save for later)   In order to teach with intelligence in the body, and that speaks to hearts and minds, you need to steep yourself until you can wordlessly translate something of meaning. 

Cueing

• the simple, clear cueing formula: BREATH - ACTION - BODY PART - DIRECTION/LOCATION

• the effective cueing formula: POSE 1 Transitional Cues - POSE 2 Super, Support, Exit, and Transitional Cues - POSE 3 

Effective Cueing Formula 

Transitional Cues: simple direction to move students from the end of one pose to the beginning of the next pose.
ex: From wide angle forward fold to warrior 2: “Bring your hands to your hips. Inhale, come to stand. Turn your right toes out and bend your right knee. Extend your arms. Warrior 2.” 

Super Cues (on breaths 1-4): 
● Moves student into pose simply and clearly with three to four cues 
● Cueing is active and precise 
● Teacher pauses to give time for physical connection 
ex: pyramid pose: “Extend your front leg from the hip to the ground, elongate your spine.” 

● If these cues continued for too long, your students would continue to listen to you, but their bodies would be challenged to relax. 
● Balance super cues with support cues. 

Support Cues: 
● Silence: is golden; offer the gift of silence to your students 
● Mental support: nuggets that feed your students just enough to keep them present 
● Breath: is like silence; inhale, exhale 
● Physical support: additional information to provide physical support 
● Personal experience: anecdote that is relative 

Exit Cues (On breath 5): a way of the completing the pose; how to move your student out of a pose 
● Generally cued with a final breath 
● Encourages student to challenge and/or deepen 
ex: seated forward fold: “Take one more breath, exhale fully. Inhale, come back up.”

Questions and Closings

Referenced
Open Vowel Technique @vocal_transformation Maryn Azoff
Netflix series: Human | The World Within Sense episode

Cueing 

• the simple, clear cueing formula: BREATH - ACTION - BODY PART - DIRECTION/LOCATION and

• the effective cueing formula: POSE 1 Transitional Cues - POSE 2 Super, Support, Exit, and Transitional Cues - POSE 3

from pg. 181 - 182 in the Manual

Simple: Common principles create a foundation for understanding. Many postures have common principles among them that help simplify the complex human skeleton, muscular system, and nervous system. As a teacher, the more you can identify these principles, the easier it will be to remember the details of each posture. Look for the commonalities between postures to help you make space to focus on specifics.
ex: Mountain, Warriors, Tree, and Bridge pose are all aligned with knee stacked over ankle. Triangle, Gate, and Half Moon are all lateral bends that require core engagement, side body length, and extension of the spine. 

Clear: Clear language is direct and easy to follow. Too many words can get in the way of clarity. Consider the extraneous and remove. 

Simple, clear cueing formula: breath + action + body part + direction/location.
ex: Inhale reach your arms overhead and bring your palms together.

Action words/verbs
Relax
Rest
Allow
Soften
Release
Relax
Surrender
Let go
Let go of expectation

Action
Breath: inhale, exhale
Length: elongate, extend, reach, press toward
Strength: engage, support, stabilize, hug/draw in
Position: stand, come to a seat, align, locate
Movement: circle, lift, lower, open, move, open

Awareness
Focus
Feel
Pause
Become aware
Notice
Observe
Sense
Take a moment

from pg. 188 - 190 in the Manual

Effective cueing speaks directly to the body, the nervous system, by using simple active verbs. The mind can process the information without having to think about it too much and stay steady, stable and quiet. 

• ex: “Step your right foot back.”

Cueing Formula

Pose 1 

• Transitional Cues: simple direction to move students from the end of one pose to beginning of the next pose.

• ex: From Wide Angle Forward Fold to Warrior 2: “Bring your hands to your hips. Inhale, come to stand. Turn your right toes out and bend your right knee. Extend your arms. Warrior 2”

Pose 2

On breaths 1-4

• Super Cues: 

• Moves student into pose simply and clearly with 3 to 4 cues 

• Cueing is active and precise

• Teacher pauses to give time for physical connection

• ex: Pyramid Pose: “Extend your front leg from the hip to the ground, elongate your spine.”

• If these cues continued for too long, your students would continue to listen to you, but their bodies would be challenged to relax.

Balance super cues with support cues.

• Support Cues:

• Silence: is golden, offer the gift of silence to your students

• Mental support: nuggets that feed your students just enough to keep them present

• Breath: is like silence, inhale exhale

• Physical support: additional information to provide physical support

• Personal experience: anecdote that is relative

On breath 5

• Exit Cues: a way of the completing the pose, how to move your student out of a pose

• A way to complete the pose

• Generally cued with a “final breath”

• Encourages student to challenge and/or deepen

• ex: Seated Forward Fold: “Take one more breath, exhale fully. Inhale, come back up.”

• Transitional Cues: simple direction to move students from the end of one pose to beginning of the next pose.

Pose 3  

Review Class Design
Theme and Thread
Sankalpa
Aim 
Transformation
Peak

Taking points
Anatomical cues

Waves

Practice Teach in Partners
Opening - 5 min
Warm up - 10 min
Wave 1 - 10 min
Wave 2 - 10 min
Wave 3 - 10 min
Savasana -10 min
Closing - 5 min

SCRIPT

Hi, my name is ..
Welcome to this 60 minute all levels flow class.
We will be working with the 5th chakra which is the area of the body associated with the throat and neck as well as expression, communication and listening. Let's get started in a comfortable seat ...
2-5 min

Warming up: head circles, neck stretch, cat/cow focus on the cervical spine and neck; breath work
5-10 min

3 WAVES - working to a peak, weave in anatomical cues (+ transitional, super, support, exit cues) and talking points
ONE salutations, lunges, counter pose with shoulder openers. 
10 min

TWO higher lunges with shoulder openers, eagle arms, high lunges with spin/twist, warrior pose with shoulder openers, Eagle to warrior 3 with eagle arms, open to warrior 2.
10 min

THREE Downdog, child's, childs with shoulder opener, supine pigeon, bridge with focus on the throat .. heros to supine hero's with eagle arms as a variation, camel pose .. or fish pose, or supported fish pose with a block. You could add pincha/pincha variations for an inversion then/or a supine twist before savasana. 
10 min + 10 min savasana

Closing - spoken word, heartfelt wisdom, a moment of meditation, expression of gratitude - a clear ending.
2-5 min