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Implicit and Explicit Therapeutic and Pedagogical Beliefs of Yoga Instructors
T. Reeves1, M. Sullivan2, K. Hawes1, P. Pirkey1, N. Muse1,
1.The University of Memphis 2.Maryland University of Integrative Health
•Absent from current yoga research is examination of
•Instructional delivery
•Therapeutic relationship
•Beliefs and values that teachers hold are influential to student outcomes
(Fives & Bhuels, 2012).
•Many potential instructional techniques (i.e. mechanisms) have been
identified (Riley & Park, 2015), yet little is known about differences between styles.
Introduction
Data Collection
•Part of a larger mixed methods
•Purposeful sampling (Patton, 1990)
•Elicitation through semi-structured interviews: conversational
partners (Rubin & Rubin, 2012)
•Audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim
Participants
•Yoga instructors recruited through national organizations
•Inclusion Criteria: upper level certification in a specified style of
yoga, at least 5 years of instruction, consent
•Styles represented: General, Ashtanga, Holistic, Hot Yoga, Iyengar,
and Power
Analysis
•Qualitative comparative analysis (Ragin, 2007) using grounded theory (Charmez,
2003)
•Emergent themes identified by lead investigator
•Apriori coding by blind research team members
Clusters of styles of Yoga
Clusters
Example
Holistic
Sivinanda
, Kripalu, Integral, Ananda, Vivekananda
Hot
Hot 26, Bikram, Surya
Power
Baptiste, Core Power
Gentle*
Silver, Yin, Vini,
Generic
Hatha, Variations, Vinyasa
Alignment Based
Iyengar, Ansura
Ashtanga
Mysore,
Ashtanga
Kundalini*
Note: Clusters were identified by authors
using personal knowledge of styles and
components;
expert input; and public ations of bo th empirical and commercial nat ure.
Further systematic cluster/classifications should be don e to better understand how
styles group together.
*Kundalini Yoga and Gentle Yoga participants were unable to make the interviews due
to scheduling restrictions
Holistic
18%
Hot
9%
Power
9%
Generic
28%
Iyengar
18%
Ashtanga
18%
REPRESENTATION OF STYLE
IN INTERVIEWS FOR CURRENT STUDY
01234567
20 - 30
30 - 40
40 - 50
50 +
Age Range of Interviewees
37%
36%
18%
9%
Regional Representation of Interviewees
east coast
west coast
midwest
south
Methods
Findings
Persistent Themes of Beliefs
Apriori Codes Pedagogical Therapeutic
Implicit
Environment
Home Practice
Body(ies) learn
Transformati o n
Body(ies) feel
Explicit
Authoritative vs Support
Scaffolding
Lineage-specific
Anatomical/Physical
Prevalent Across Beliefs
Past experience as a student
Identity
pedagogical
environment
i
think that relationship is directly correlated to the relationship that i
have with my students. the energy of
the relationship between me and my teacher is something that
ilook to emulate with my own students.
home practice
when
i get "too busy" to practice, or i skip it for some reason, or a couple days go by and i have not taken
care of myself,
iknow it right away. my husband says i'm like a fancy car, one little thing goes wrong and i
can't operate. when
i'm not tuned up with my practices, i definitely see the difference.
all that stuff comes from me practicing at home.
body(ies) learn
and
i realized that those challenges on the mat are there to strengthen us, to strengthen those moments
when we want to fall into our patterns.
i
think that the cool thing about teaching yoga is that we're teaching something physical and asking our
students to be completely present in that moment. when you require that presence of mind in the
students for this practice, then it becomes safer for their physical bodies, but
ithink there's this release of
their mental control that people have while they're walking around doing their day to day life.
the human body can't not express. even trying to neutralize and keep the humanity out of the human body
is saying something on a very human level." so if the human body can't not express then it is always
expressing something and
i think that that, as a dancer that was really profound for me, but then when i
started to practice yoga and teach yoga, and as a teacher observing what the bodies were saying on a
deeper level than just "my leg is here, my arm is here.
authoritative vs support
there are some teachers that
i
have taken classes from, and they were so authoritarian and it was not from
a compassionate place. they never had any friends on the playground so now they are going to boss
everybody around, and since they are yoga teachers they are going to boss everyone in the studio. some of
those teachers are very, very popular and they have very loyal students. you would think, an authoritarian
teacher will drive people away, that is not necessarily true, if fact
ihave seen it a lot.
word choices
always talk in imperative sentences. "lift your leg high. move your head to the right." you know, it's not a
question mark, and
ithink some teachers are more kind of metaphorical or bulky in their language.
saying like, "float up to the ceiling as if you were riding on a cloud," or
ithink there's a tendency to get
really wordy with yoga teachers in the west, and
ithink that does a disservice because you never know
what kind of trauma you're triggering or what memory
when really we're just talking about bones and muscle, and we're talking in such a particular way with such
exact vocabulary that
i
think that gives people the relief to no longer own their bodies so that they can own
their thoughts a little bit more.
sequencing
when classes are really well sequenced logically and there's good breath to body movements, teachers
don't have to say anything,
ijust walk out of class and i feel so good physically, emotionally, and mentally.
therapeutic
transformation
body(
ies) feel
you know my own practice and study,
i use yoga as a transformational tool, as a system for
transformation… there are specific practices in yoga that ... let's start here, as human beings we
have a tendency to push away things that feel like they're too much for us to deal or to look at or
to be with, right? this is not unique to the west or the east, this is sort of part of the human
condition, right? from yoga perspective these ... he would say that there's big energies and we
push them away, and they're not good energies or bad energies, they're just big.
learned from my teacher and the practice itself, and then trying to pass those on to my students.
ultimately, yoga for me is the practice of inner transformation, and
i want to empower my
students to have that autonomy in their practice so that it can also be a practice for them, of inner
transformation;
anatomical/physical
i
think, you are developing these kinesthetic or neurological connections in the body as you
practice yoga. it's developing your awareness of your feet while you're doing some other aspect of
the posture, right? you're linking in or growing in all these neurological connections.
once a student has been practicing a year or two, what
istart to see is improved functioning of
the body, improved digestion, improved menstrual cycle for women, continue to improve stamina,
things like that that are more subtle but they're still related to the physical body
body(
ies) feel
we expand our container ...
i'm sorry, strengthen our container and expand our awareness so we
can be with all of who we are
the asana is like the map, the road map, the hills and valleys and mountains and rivers that we,
our awareness sort of travels on. and through traveling, figuring out how to climb this mountain,
which is this pose, we learn about how the breath assists us. we learn about the internal
dialogues that either obstructs us or helps us. but we, the asana is what we travel on the path of
going in. on the path of discovering ourselves. and what we discover on that path is ahimsa and
satya
, the eight, the yamas and niyamas. what we discover is one point of focus and sense
withdrawal and all the other limbs. those are the, sort of the, you know like when you're traveling,
like going on a road trip and you find a beautiful view when you turn a corner. that's like a
moment of meditation that you discover in the midst of traveling through the asana.
pain isn't always pain. it's all just information coming from the body and it's still up to how we
interpret it.
you can give them ownership of their right leg and you can give them ownership of if they want to
be touched or not.
but then, eventually, the trust transfers to her own experiences. she has to have enough
experiences with her body to be able to trust. and it's a process of facing fear.
“affectual hot spots” –affectual peak
pedagogical rigidity
surrounding context
competitive
you can get the general gist of it to people but
i'll go to classes of people that have been teaching longer than me and you know like in the first five minutes of class we're
doing standing splits. well
ilove standing splits but not in the first five minutes. to me that's just doesn't make any logical sense.
lineage -
style
loyalty
“
i'm a bit of an evangelist for the <removed> method because ido think there's such a striking difference between teaching students one on one and teaching students in a
group class. the beautiful thing about micro style is that there are many students in the room at one time, it's just that ev
ery
one is practicing sequence at his or her own pace.
i'm
able to give adjustments to each person. i'm able to have relationships with each student.”
experience -
style
experience
that's the message i want to get across to these people. yoga is not some fancy, expensive, fashionable thing for skinny whit
e g
irls. it's not. it's for everybody, and i want them
to know they have every right and ability to get these benefits.
training –
style
judgement
bad teachers see that ideal manifestation and then demand that students meet it.
othering -
style
•Body(ies)seems a persistent theme
across yoga teaching and therapy
discussion
•Interviews support the idea that yoga
teachers have both unique and
similar pedagogical choices and
therapeutic choices
•Identity and experience seems a
persistent theme across yoga
teachers
•Affect surrounding yoga discourse
seems to be linked to lineage and
raised through loyalty, competition,
and identity
•More discourse around yoga teacher
beliefs should be done to properly
understand how intersectionality and
discord
•Unity and discord is an important
construct to explore across yoga
teachers and therapists
Discussion