Teacher-Student Relationships, Ethics, Abuse

Stay Focused on the Student’s Experience

The Foundation

• Stay focused on the student’s experience (as opposed to yours).
• Avoid giving advice. Focus instead on guiding students to find their own answers.

THE TEACHER’S ROLE IS TO GUIDE, NOT TO GIVE ADVICE

“When students are moving their body in yoga class, they’re connecting to… themselves in spiritual and emotional ways,” [Bo] Forbes says. “It’s natural for them to ask the person who is leading the experience about what’s going on.” The teacher’s role… is to guide—not to give advice. Teachers should facilitate the student’s process and evolution, explains Eddie Modestini…“Students are the ones who must navigate the territory of their journeys. It’s their responsibility to look at the congestion in their minds and hearts and take personal responsibility.” – Kristen Kemp 

SUPPORTING STUDENTS IN TRUSTING THEIR INNER GUIDANCE

It can be easy to tell people what they should do for healing when they come to us with a specific issue. Maybe we know someone with the same problem and a certain pose or diet healed them. But before we go giving out advice, it is important to remember that as trained yoga teachers, people may look up to us with certain beliefs that aren’t necessarily true… Every person has within themselves their own teacher, a guidance system, a higher being, that is leading them to where they need to be. This may bring them into our class, but our job isn’t to “teach” them our knowledge. Oftentimes it is our job to simply remind them to trust their own guidance and intuition. We are here to bring them into their own practice and to get in touch with their own center, the unshakeable core we all harbor a deep connection to, yet so often lose touch with.  – Rachel Nierstedt