Part 3 of Sequencing and Personalized Yoga

As promised here is part three of Sequencing and Personalized Yoga.

If anyone has any questions or comments feel free to e-mail me at blog@yogascope.com and perhaps we can get your perspective onto the front page of this blog.

Re: The Sequencing Thread and Personalized Practice.

From: Carl Horowitz

I guess I should make a few comments on what I mean when I use the term personalized practice. I think I was practicing yoga for about 8 years before anyone had ever asked me, “What do you want from this work we will do together? What are your goals in practicing?” It was a private session with a teacher I truly admire. It is worth understanding that these kinds of questions need to be asked and answered before a teacher can help a practitioner uncover some of the deeper aspects of a personalized approach.

In a group class you could lead a practice that addresses a particular issue in personalizing a practice; you can lead a session that is loosely based on the principles of personalizing a practice; you could even teach the principles themselves. You can also adapt individual postures to the current needs of a student. There are some techniques that can be used to get pretty much everyone into a posture that will be appropriate without practitioners necessarily being in the same posture. But this would be such a small part of personalizing a practice. What I mean when I use that term is so much more that it is hard to explain and it is not really something that I would associate with a group asana practice.

I work with some people who are so high strung and stressed out that they need to do something quite strong before their systems will allow them to let go of some of that stress. I work with others who are so lethargic that they have trouble getting out of bed or getting up the energy to do much of anything. It would be irresponsible to even contemplate similar practices for people so different. A routine for the first type might start with the practitioner standing and might be a very active session finishing with the practitioner in a position lying on the ground resting. This is a very traditional formula. However, a routine tailored to the needs of the second type might start with the practitioner resting on the ground and take the whole session to build up to a mild intensity. A practice for this type of person may end with the person standing, energized and ready for the rest of his/her day instead of the more traditional ending of resting on the ground. If two people so different were looking for group classes it is unlikely they would end up gravitating towards the same ones. And while there are many popular group classes that might be appropriate for the first type there are far fewer that would be appropriate for the second.

I work with people in wheel chairs and people who are athletes; people who practice for physical reasons and people who practice for spiritual ones. I work with people who want a structurally therapeutic approach and others who want a spiritually therapeutic approach. I work with people who don’t want a spiritual approach but would benefit greatly from one and others who don’t want a therapeutic approach but would benefit greatly from one. Interestingly the people who are most interested in a spiritual approach often don’t need much help from me in that regard because they usually already have their own understanding to enough of an extent. Frequently, all they need is encouragement in following their interests and connecting with what inspires them.

In helping such different people develop their own personalized practice, I feel it would be problematic if what I was doing was arbitrarily applying tools and techniques without first considering whether they were relevant to the actual individual. Certain people connect with and understand anatomically based directions to inform their asana alignment while others are helped more by metaphorical imagery to help them understand what they are doing with their bodies. One person’s practice might look like a religious ritual while another’s might look like a workout. One practitioner might gravitate towards the use of yantra imagery for visualization techniques, while another might do better with nature imagery, and a third might benefit more from a contemplation technique that has to do with ways of improving the current circumstances of his/her life. One person might benefit from the use of Sanskrit chants and another might benefit more from the use of Gregorian chants. I had one client who used Nigerian songs which reminded him of his childhood and another who used his guitar and some Beatles songs as part of his practice.

I have also had plenty of clients who would not have been as interested and might have even quit practicing if I had tried to have them chant or use visual imagery associated with a foreign culture’s spiritual tradition in the first place. It is worth understanding that over time people change. As this occurs the techniques that will be most beneficial might change as well. A technique that, at one point, was not useful might become quite valuable as the person’s practice develops, and another technique that at one point might have produced powerful results may no longer be appropriate or may even become harmful.

Without the person practicing present, the only real practical detail that I am capable of disclosing about a truly personalized approach is that a teacher would do well by attempting to match the practice to the current needs of the individual. Based on my experience, one of the best pieces of advice I could give to a teacher wanting to work in this way would be to encourage the teacher to ask his/her clients a lot of the right questions—what do you want from this? how does this feel? what are your interests? your goals? is this working for you? did you feel this?—rather than having the teacher assume he/she knows the answers to the students questions before the questions have even been asked.

I can see a lot without asking but even when I think I know the answer to a question, I would often rather ask in order to let the student put the answers into his/her own words. This is a process of empowering the student to make the decisions that enable him/her to actively participate in the development of his/her own personal practice. It requires that the teacher have a consistent dedication to the process of actively attempting to understand the student more completely; it also requires that the teacher have the receptivity and openness to change his/her conceptions and perspective when the student needs something different than the teacher had originally speculated.

Something unique happens when, as a teacher, you open yourself to the possibility that the student can use your services to help him/herself develop his/her own methods of practice and that what you are doing is actually helping facilitate the process rather than giving the student a preformed routine. There are many benefits to group practices that are well worth acknowledging and in a group setting there are a lot of things you can do to teach based on the principles of personalizing. However, this is not exactly what I would mean when I refer to Personalized Yoga.

Peace.
blog@yogascope.com