Allow me to set the scene…

I’m teaching a yoga class and I’m guiding students into a specific shape. I’m giving students some time to ease into the shape to feel it in their bodies. Suddenly a student makes eye contact with me and asks, “Does this look right?”

I understand what the student is asking me. They want clarity. They want to know if they should make adjustments so that they’re landing in the exact shape. I, too, was once a student who desperately needed to know if the shape I was doing looked right.

Long ago, when the question came up from a student, I probably would’ve responded with something like, “Yeah! Your hips are exactly where they’re supposed to be!”

Now I tend to take a different approach.

If a student asks me if they’re doing a shape right or if a shape looks right, I respond with a question like, “How does it feel?” Or I’ll inquire with, “Tell me where you feel sensation.”

My hope is that the student understands that right is relative. Half Pigeon looks one way in your body and it looks another in my body. Dancer Pose might look a certain way in my body and it’ll probably look different in my neighbor’s body.

Long ago I had the privilege of taking an adaptive teacher training with Matthew Sanford. He said something that will live with me for the rest of my teaching career. While working with paraplegic and quadriplegic students he told all of us, “Know your shapes!” He wasn’t telling us to memorize the exact placement of the front foot in relationship to the back foot in Warrior II. He was expressing the importance of understanding the purpose, intention, and desired sensation in a shape.

In that training with Sanford we were told to teach someone who was unable to move their legs and arms how to do Triangle Pose. Sure, we could manually adjust the student’s body into the general shape of Triangle while they were lying in a bed, on the floor, or in a chair. But the purpose was to teach the feeling and sensations that live within Triangle Pose.

Now, when asked by a student if a shape looks right, it’s more important to me that they understand the intention rather than trying to duplicate the physical manifestation of a yoga shape. I commonly use Half Pigeon as an example because it frequently appears in modern yoga practices and it’s a shape that brings up a lot of questions.

Student: Does this look right? My front shin isn’t parallel to the front of my mat.

Me: Do feel any pain in your joints?

Student: No.

Me: If you feel a stretch, where do you feel it?

Student: My outer hip.

Me: Great! Then you’re doing it right for your body.

Of course I don’t want to just throw away the concept of technique and discipline in a yoga practice. Especially when working with beginner students, teachers just have to get students into the general shape of a pose in an efficient and concise manner. Regardless of how experienced a student might be, there’s a general outline for every yoga shape for a reason. The sensations experienced in Half Pigeon and something like Cow Faced Pose might be similar, but they aren’t the same shape. Each has their own purpose and intention. The expression of those shapes in our own bodies just might differ from person to person.

Plus, I think it’s worth it to remember that nothing is hard and true in yoga. We, the people practicing the yoga, change and it’s important that our practice changes too. What might feel or seem right today may not be what’s right for us in 10 days or 10 years.