Balance

This episode is all about Balance - why we teach it, how it applies to better mobility in everyday life and some creative new ways to talk about balance to your students. 

Teach balance poses throughout your class and use some of these synonyms for variety: stability, steadiness, evenness, level, grounded symmetry, harmony, equity, equanimity.  

And for balance poses that move, try some of these: sway, toggle, wobble, rock, roll, rotate, reverse, circle, stabilize, level, stack your joints, energetically shift. Move your gaze. 

Balance poses give us a opportunity to talk about Proximity and Proprioception. Encourage your students to go into inquiry about why they feel off balance. Do they know if their foot is lined up — or not lined up with the hip, are toes ground in opposition from their center of balance. Where is the CENTER of balance? 

Balance poses also give us an opportunity to teach Yoga Anatomy:  Which bones, joints and stabilizer muscles are involved in the balance pose? What adjustments regarding stacking the joints, or contracting muscles can they make to get feel more stable? 

Have you used Balance as a theme for a class or workshop? Reach out to me and share your story, [e-mail] 

Thank you for listening!

Creators and Guests

RS

Host

Rebecca Schmidt

DP

Producer

David Palacios

Podcasting Producer at WPRK Studios in Winter Park, Florida.

What is Yoga Teacher Talk?

Yoga Teacher Talk (YTT) is authenic yoga conversation with your favorite yoga mentors, trend-setting yoga teachers, and wellness experts who are changing the paradym on traditional instruction. YTT invites you add to your 200 or 500-level yoga teacher training and elevate your presence as an instructor. Host Becca Schmidt, E-RYT5000/YACEP, has more than 20 years experience on the lead mat, having taught more than 10,000 classes, workshops and wellness retreats. This show, formerly, The Language of Yoga, offers a fun, engaging platform for yoga teachers of all branches of yoga to gain confidence and continue their YTT for years to come.

The Language of Yoga - Balance
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Becca: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Language of Yoga. I'm your host, Becca. Well, our theme today is a ubiquitous topic. It's something we yoga teachers use in almost all the classes we teach. It's often our apex pose. And it's definitely something your students need for everyday life, especially if they walk, or run, or ride a bike, or surf, or do tai chi, or yoga, of course.

And they definitely need this skill for hopscotch. Hmm, what could it be? You guessed it. Today we're talking about hopscotch. Balance. So we all hear the word balance in regards to balance between work and home life, mind body balance, getting on a balanced sleep schedule, get a balanced diet, have a balanced relationship, and yep, a balanced body.

bank account. But I feel like we as yoga teachers could do a much [00:01:00] better job in connecting the dots around how mastering a balance pose on the mat in our yoga class, how that can help with the balance of everyday living. So I want to bring that, , under, underrated yoga tool into living color today with three ideas.

Intentions, creative use of language, and real world applications.

We talk about balance a lot in our classes. But how can we help our students become aware of these balance tools we use on the yoga mat and apply them outside in the real world. So I want to start with the, the intention of you, the yoga teacher.

So like me, I'm pretty sure your intention is to help your students feel better, feel better, At the end of class, [00:02:00] then, , as they walked into class, and I'm kind of picturing this scenario of, , two dozen students running into class and say it's a 530 class and everybody's late. They are this big cacophony of unsettledness.

If you will, they have their their mats, their purses, their shoes are trying to get their props on the studio floor. And it's just kind of a. This randomness and this chaotic scene, very unbalanced. And then compare that to what these very same set of students look like at the end of class. Just imagine that harmony where these students are lying in Shavasana in a state of calm and stillness.

Wouldn't you say that that is about a 180 degree shift? In their [00:03:00] balance. That's one thing I, Think about and sometimes I even articulate that to my students. I'll say well look like it was a rough start. I Intend to help you feel much more balanced at the end of class and sometimes even at the end of class I'll say now.

I hope you feel more balanced Than when you arrived and people usually sort of chuckle at that.

Music Transisiton
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Becca: So I wanna help you with a couple of things. The first one is just your language, how you can use the language that's going to keep asking your students to be aware of this, , energy. I like to even call it a bio energy of balance throughout their class.

So here is a quick list of synonyms for balance because we all know we want to change up our language every once in a while just because it's more interesting to the students and it's more interesting to us, frankly. So [00:04:00] some of the synonyms for balance include stability, Steadiness, Evenness, Level, Grounded, Symmetry, Harmony, Equity, and even Equinemity.

I'll have those posted in our show notes so you can refer. And here are some verbs that you might integrate into some of your cuing.. So those verbs might be sway, toggle, wobble, rock, roll, rotate. Reverse. Circle. Stabilize. Level. Stack your joints. energetically shift. And on top of that, you might also remind them to occasionally shift their [00:05:00] gaze, because shifting your gaze, even though it feels very small, it's actually pretty dramatic in, , that stability versus instability.

, no matter what pose they're in.

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Becca: A neat thing about balance poses is that balance poses offer the teacher an opportunity to talk about a couple of really cool concepts and that is proximity and proprioception. So have a little fun with proximity. Proximity to the mat, ask your students to maintain balance while floating their arms or their lifted leg.

Away from and toward the midline. Or out to the side or up and down, just ask them to change where their leg is in sort of specific terms. And then proprioception sort of adds on to that [00:06:00] proprioception, as you know, is where, , where the limbs are, right? Where the limbs are in relationship. to the other limbs or toward the midline.

So I always think proprioception is such an added value to the students. So encourage your students to think about the proprioception, ask them to go into some inquiry about why they feel off balance. And typically it's that they're not quite sure where Maybe that, , grounded leg is, maybe their leg is, , a little bit too much open rotation or a little bit too much internal rotation in the hip.

Maybe their foot is not even lined up under their knee. There are all kinds of things that are really, they boil down to proprioception, not quite knowing where the body parts are, and then trying to force back. balance when you're not even [00:07:00] set up for success. So I, I love working on that with people. And also I think it has a real important real world application, which we'll get into.

So in other words, you're asking them to realize where all the body parts are, but more importantly, where their center is and where the proprioception, where their limbs are from the center line. Okay. Balance poses also give teachers an opportunity to teach yoga anatomy. So we talk about which bones, which joints, which stabilizer muscles are involved in the balance pose.

So I like to even throw in some fun facts about, um, things like the lumbar spine is built for stability. So when you're in a balanced pose, the reason why we want a very straight, long spine is because our lumbar spine [00:08:00] is there to help us, right?

So we want to be really aware of where that lumbar spine is and what its purpose is. A couple other things, and they seem sort of pedantic, but you can talk about little things like your, your legs are heavier than your arms. ? So if you're in a, a big warrior three pose, your arms are acting as a counterbalance to that extended leg.

And you want to have that sort of teeter totter, , mindfulness, right?

, every once in a while, if, especially if you students who you know really well, think about bringing in , yoga anatomy books that demonstrate all the poses and then they highlight in a different color, which muscles are being extended, which are being flexed, and which are the stabilizer muscles, which bones are involved.

And I, I find that really interesting. I know not everybody is a anatomy geek, but it [00:09:00] still helps them visualize. And maybe that will help them with the pose.

Music Transition
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Becca: And finally, I, I encourage you to get creative in using real world examples of why balance , , poses can be so important. So let me preface that by saying, really a question, do you start that balance sequence and you have , students kind of looking at their watches or thinking, Oh, this is the part I don't like.

I find that kind of typical. Students don't necessarily want, it's like doing core, right? They don't really, it's like the work for them. They don't really want to do it. So, , I give him a reason this is why we want to do core and this is why we want to do balance. So balance poses are going to be applicable off the mat, , just in sheer mindfulness, right?

Balance of knowing, , how to [00:10:00] balance, , A big, , handbag and car keys and a laptop and all these things. , we want to understand what it is, , to have stability, right? That mindfulness of, , staying in balance as you move. Okay, I think about somebody getting out of a car, right?

And they reach way over and they have a package in the passenger seat. They have something in their left hand and their right hand and they realize, wow, I, I'm not going to be able to even get out of my car, I need, I need a better sense of balance. I need to be mindful about, , taking this maybe in stages, just exactly how we approach a balance pose on the mat, right?

We're mindful. And we go in stages, we have an idea where our legs are, we have a good idea where our arms are, and of course our gaze on top of that, right? So, if you're teaching students that maybe are baby boomers , finding some challenge in their [00:11:00] balance, I like to take it really off the mat and say, how are you doing in your own home?

What do you find yourself unstable? And let's take a look at what those literal tripping points are. Do you have rugs on the floor? If it's holiday time, maybe you have new decorations. You have a Christmas tree or boxes on the floor. So just be aware of how you're balancing, , more esoterically in the house, like what is causing you to be a little bit off balance?

And on top of that, you know, where is your mindset, you might be thinking of 10 other things. And you're just going through What seems like the way you'd navigate, but with these new obstacles, your navigation is going to be off. So you have to take a step back, be mindful, [00:12:00] know where your focal points are, your drishti, and then go from there using some of those tools that you learned in yoga.

Sometimes in the holiday season, , I talk a little bit more about balance than other times of the year. So one of my favorite real world examples is understanding where your center of gravity is when you're doing something that might be a little bit out of the box.

So if you're, let's say on the yoga mat, you're reaching. straight up, but you happen to be on one leg. So maybe you're in tree pose or just standing on one leg and you reach straight up. You know where your center of gravity is, right? , let's say now you're back in your house and you need a vase.

You got some nice flowers and you need a vase. You're standing on one leg, but now you're reaching forward. Where's your center of gravity? You have to compensate for that. If you're leaning forward, then you may [00:13:00] need to bend your knee or, or take that second leg out for that, again, that sort of seesaw balance, right?

So we just have to think about when we do something maybe a little bit different, We think about what we do on the yoga mat and that can help us in everyday life. So, I also jotted down, , some of the things that are interesting, , especially for those students that roll their eyes when it's balance time.

For one, two different things you can do. One of them is to integrate balance throughout the class rather than just, you know, Taking that, you know, middle chunk after you do your standing poses and you go into balance poses and you go into seated and people are sort of expecting that chunk of time to be balanced poses, throw balanced poses and during the whole class, have them start in a balanced pose, right?

Or add balance into cat cow, then [00:14:00] have them do a flying cat pose, something that's just going to add balance right from the get go and continue using balance poses throughout. So here are a couple of interesting sort of transitions. Fierce pose. We know what that looks like. \ , but try fierce pose to drinking bird pose.

So drinking bird pose is, , very close to fierce pose, but we're up on the balls of the feet and our heels are lifted and maybe our arms are in a different place that they would be in our fierce pose. Crescent pose to warrior three, and then back to crescent. That's the hard part. Goddess pose to surfer pose, Garland pose to crow pose, and then back to Garland Pose.

And one of my favorites, and I think really all levels of students can do [00:15:00] this one, especially if you're using blocks on either side of that front foot pyramid to standing needle. All right. So pyramid, you've got both legs nice and strong and you have to shift your energy forward while you lift that back leg.

And then the more you shift forward and sort of do an arm balance, if you will, on those blocks, then you're. , flying leg can go higher and higher and higher and you have a real sense of why that is happening. You have that inquiry, how, how is this so easy for me? It's because you slowed down and you shifted mindfully, so I hope some of that was helpful. I would love to hear from you. I'd like to, to know how you integrate balance into your classes and even some of your, , your hurdles and obstacles, maybe in [00:16:00] how you teach those balance poses, but I'd also love to hear. And how your students are talking to you about balance.

Are they dreading them? Are they enjoying them? And then another follow up question is for you. And that is, have you ever taught a complete workshop on balance? And I'm kind of curious how well attended that was. If you would like to jot me a note, you can send an email to me at Becca at blue moon dot yoga. You can also reach me through my website, which is blue moon.

Again. Some of these concepts will be listed out in the show notes. When you get a chance, like the podcast and definitely share it to your 300 closest friends. Thanks so much for listening.