Why do students keep trying to predict the future in classes?

This is Ashtanga Yoga Tech Support. Real questions from the yoga community, answered.

The Question

I've been teaching for almost a decade, and there's not much students can do on their mats that bothers me. I always encourage them to move at their own pace, take variations, skip poses, etc. But I recently started teaching at a new studio, and the students are moving ridiculously fast, and nothing I'm doing seems to help. The main reason I want them to slow down is because they keep trying to predict the future, and it's throwing me off! For example, I'll say, "Inhale right leg to three-legged dog; exhale knee to nose and…" and I look around and there are a handful of people in warrior 2?! But I wasn't going to take them to warrior 2. And then I almost have to close my eyes and ignore these people to try to remember my sequence, but I obviously want to observe my students as I teach. I feel like I teach pretty fast as it is. Usually, if I tell people to move at their own pace, I get one or two students moving slower than my cues, which does not bother me or throw me off at all. And I do want people to feel.empowered to make their practice what they need it to be. But the place I'm teaching doesn't have a set sequence, so I'm just very confused why the students keep jumping ahead to the wrong poses. Any tips for cues to mitigate this?

— via r/yogateachers

Our Response

Yeah. Stop finishing their sentences.

You're giving them half a cue and a dramatic pause. Of course they're filling in the blank with whatever they learned last week.

"Exhale knee to nose and…" — and what? They're waiting. They're guessing. They're moving.

Say the whole thing. "Exhale knee to nose. Inhale step forward. Exhale hands down." Complete thoughts. No cliffhangers.

Also — you're teaching vinyasa at a new studio. They've been trained by someone else's patterns. They're not predicting the future. They're repeating the past.

First few classes? Overcue. Tell them you sequence differently. Say "wait for the cue" when you sense the jump. Not as a correction. As information.

And if someone lands in warrior 2 when you're going somewhere else? Let them. Observe without absorbing. Their confusion is not your emergency.

Your job is to cue clearly. Their job is to listen. You can't do both.