The Quiet Shift: From Yin Yoga Instructor to Teacher & Guide

[00:00:00] Welcome to a Yin Yoga podcast. Today we have an episode that was inspired both by questions that come up in my teacher training that I’m currently guiding people through, and then also I saw something in the Yin Network group on Facebook that inspired this episode. So today we’re gonna talk about deepening your yin yoga teaching that quiet shift or deepening your yin teaching, the quiet yin volution, if I can be pun.

So when we move from being an instructor to a teacher and a guide, and what changes after we continue to teach yen yoga over time, what falls away and what without us even really noticing, it begins to deepen. That’s what we’re gonna talk about in today’s [00:01:00] episode. So if you’ve been teaching yin yoga for quite a while and you find yourself getting a little bored, whether it’s of the physical shapes or your sequences or whatever, I think you’ll find this episode gives you a different perspective.

And if you’re a newer yen teacher, this will give you some inspiration or some y inspiration, as to where you can go from here. All right, stay tuned. Welcome. If you are a familiar welcome back. So today’s episode is gonna be a little bit more about how as teachers we grow and shift and evolve over the course of our teaching career.

And especially I find with practices like yin, where the growth and the expansion, um, are a bit more subtle, right? So maybe if [00:02:00] you’re teaching a more active style of yoga, your growth as a teacher might be that you get way more anatomy knowledge, you start to understand biomechanics, you, , really master, sequencing, et cetera, et cetera.

But when you’re teaching a very quiet form of yoga, like yin, the growth, the shift, the changes from being a newer yin teacher or less developed yin teacher into a stronger. More deeper, more soulful in teacher can be a little more subtle. And so that’s what we’re gonna tease out today in this episode.

Welcome to a Yinny Yoga podcast. I’m your host, Nick Denu, certified yoga therapist, mentor of yoga teachers, yinny yoga teacher trainer, and total yin yoga geek. [00:03:00] If you have a crush on yin yoga and are ready to dive deep, then you’re in the right place. Here, myself and my guests will discuss all things in yoga, including anatomy, philosophy, traditional Chinese medicine, meditation, Taoism, teaching tips, and so much more.

You can expect these conversations to be long format, informal, lo-fi, and delightfully imperfect. So whether you are a yoga teacher or a yin yoga student, I welcome you to the inside.

I would say that largely in the yoga verse, there’s, we have a lot of yoga instructors. We don’t have a lot of yoga teachers, even though they’re called teacher trainings. Most people [00:04:00] leave those teacher trainings, learning how to air quotes, instruct yoga, but not to really teach it. And then beyond that, even beyond even being a teacher, , a true teacher always guides people back to themselves.

A true teacher knows that actually the information and the gut wisdom and the guidance is in the student itself. And our job is just to gently turn them back to themselves over and over, patiently and compassionately. So that they can learn to listen to their own inner teacher. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about today.

Uh, before we get into that, my friends, please, if you are not new around here, if you are a Yin Yoga podcast lover. If you’ve been here like a long, long time and you’ve been loving the podcast, if you have not rated the podcast, you could pause right now in whatever you’re [00:05:00] listening to this in. So if you’re listening in Spotify or Apple, just pause it. Please give me a five star rating, . And then if you’re on Apple, you can also do a written review.

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The other thing is, if you’ve already rated, reviewed and done that, it would be super great if you wouldn’t mind taking a screenshot of this and sharing it either with a friend or in your Instagram stories or just emailing the link to this. , If you find this helpful and there’s a teacher that you think would benefit from this, if you have a colleague or a friend that you think would get something from this episode, please share sharing is caring or so [00:06:00] they say, I don’t know if they still say that I might be aging myself.

They used to say that sharing is caring. Okay, my friends, let’s get into this, shall we? Now I do have some notes. So for those of you watching the video, you will see my eyes moving up and down back and forth to my document and then back to you. , And that is because I need notes to make sure I don’t forget things.

’cause between a, d, d and menopause brain, things could get forgotten. So I crafted a list of my talking points that I wanna hit on here so that I don’t miss anything. Okay. So deepening your yin yoga teaching the quiet shift. So when you then move from being an instructor, which I would argue that most so-called teacher trainings are instructor trainings, they don’t really give you enough time mentorship, knowledge, experience to be a teacher.

They’re really giving you [00:07:00] instructor guidance. And then as you begin to instruct over the years, hopefully that gives birth to being a teacher if you are intentional about it. And if that is a goal, there are people that maybe will spend their whole, career being an instructor, not a teacher. And then eventually we start to realize as we get more and more experienced as a teacher, that actually we’re just a guide.

Sure, we’re gonna give people information, we’re gonna give them, things that they can do. But that ultimately what we’re doing is we’re guiding people back to themselves. Especially this is the case in a quiet, more subtle practice like yin. So what changes as we continue teaching yin over time and what begins to fall away and what begins to deepen when we start listening to the subtle cues?

, Of [00:08:00] the class, the vibe and the beings in the room with you. So there is a phase to teaching yin yoga where it feels like you’re learning how to do it right? You’re thinking about timing, how long to hold the poses, what to say, when to say how to guide people into stillness. You’re setting a structure, a theme, maybe a set sequence.

And this is a super important phase, and it’s the foundation of everything else that we get to explore as a teacher. It’s where we build our foundation. It’s where we learn the language, the shape themselves, and then the rhythm of a yin practice. But one day, at some point, something quietly begins to shift when you start to move from instructing into teaching, and then maybe someday into guiding.

It may not be dramatic. There may , not be one clear moment where you can say, this is where it changed, [00:09:00] or there might be, but you start to notice you’re saying less, you’re doing less, and somehow the class feels more full. Couple of examples from my own life, , that I can clearly remember. , I used to get this little instinctual murmur, I’ll call it my inner guidance system that would pipe up and say things to me during class, like, you should share this story or you should say this, or you should one I got for years and years is you should chant to your students when they’re going in or out of Shava. Because I was still in instructor mode. I just squished all those things down. All those little inner insights that I got, just pushed them on down ’cause I was busy talking about hamstrings.

And then gradually, gradually over the years when my confidence built as a teacher and I didn’t need [00:10:00] to rely on some sort of external structure. When I stopped being so rigid about my lesson plans because I had the clear example of a time where I forgot my lesson plan and had to air quotes wing it, although I wasn’t winging it, I had years of experience sequencing.

But where I made it a request class and asked all my students, what is it that plagues you today? What do you need today? How are you doing today? And then I created the sequence based on that. So that was sort of the beginning of me starting to move from the role of an instructor. Into a teacher when I learned that despite my nerves, and believe me, I’m highly a type personality or I was much less a type, I’m like lowercase a type now.

, And also, someone who is anxious and I was taught in a style originally of yoga that is very rigid. Yeah. Younger camp. So believe me, with [00:11:00] all that going on, so I was very much instructing. And then in that class, when I showed up and realized I had left my lesson plan at home and it was Monday, so it’s not like I could just recollect what I had done the day before and I had to show up in front of those people wholly unprepared or so I thought to teach them.

That’s when I, one of the times that I started to notice that I slipping into the role of a teacher and less of an instructor,

so. What did I do? Well, I told them we were gonna do a special request class, asked everybody how they were, and then I sequenced it on the spot. Now, I don’t wanna say on the fly ’cause I wasn’t making shit up. I had been sequencing and writing them out for years. At this point, I think about two or three at least, I knew how to sequence.

I knew a logical order to put these shapes in. But what changed [00:12:00] was I was choosing the shapes that I was doing based on what I was hearing from the people that were there in front of me. Instead of a pre-designed collection of shapes that I had put on a piece of paper before class, before I even knew who was gonna be there and what state they were in, which is what I had been doing up until that point.

And then I had, was forced to take a different approach and so I did. I asked everybody how they were. How they were feeling was there, tight spots, sore spots, et cetera, et cetera. How they were energetically. And I took that information into account and then I taught the class. And that might have been the first class that I taught instead of instructed.

And universally, after that class, everybody except for two people who just kind of floated out, came up to me and said, that’s the best class you’ve ever [00:13:00] taught us. And now in hindsight, I might look at it and go, actually, that’s the only class I had ever taught them. Because before I was instructing other times where this popped in for me was I would get a little, little intuitive hit, like a little voice in my head that was maybe, uh, my higher self, we’ll call it that would say, oh, you should share this story.

Something based on my own experience, , some sort of a lesson learned or aha moment, you should share this story. And I would think, what, why would I suddenly share that story in this moment that makes absolutely no sense? So I would quash it down eventually. My higher self was persistent and I got a, you should share that story.

And so I shared a story based on my own experience of, you know, a transition or a life lesson or something. I can’t even remember what the story was ’cause it [00:14:00] wasn’t for me. And after class I had at least three people saying, thank you so much for sharing that story. It’s exactly what I needed to hear today.

So again, one more example of moving from instructing to teaching.

And I also used to get a spidey sense all the time. That same higher self voice that kept telling me that I should chant my students. Now, I don’t know why I was so resistant to this idea. I had been singing as child even, I used to do competitions and I wasn’t afraid of using my voice. I wasn’t afraid of sharing a Sanskrit mantra with my students.

I just kind of was like, not sure if that’s who I was as a teacher. Am I a teacher who sings to their students? Am I a teacher who chants to their students? I don’t know. And so it came up several times and then I remembered that one of my teachers in my primary teacher training near [00:15:00] the end of Shavas and used to sing us a little song.

It wasn’t Sanskrit, it was probably, I believe, Christian based, , at least it was based on God. And she just shared this small little part , this song. And I don’t even know the whole song. I just know part of it said something about. Being in his time, , something. Anyways, her voice was fine.

You know, you could tell she’d been church singing for most of her life, but it wasn’t remarkable. And yet, every time, even though I knew it was coming, every time she sang to us near the end of Shavas, and I was moved to tears. And so then I started thinking, wait a minute. If a yoga teacher can sing something to you when you’re coming outta Shavas, that’s not even yoga based, and she doesn’t even have the voice that you have and that can move you to tears, why the hell aren’t you chanting to your students?

So eventually I started to chant to my students. [00:16:00] Where the chant has gone has changed over the years. , Sometimes it was at the beginning of class then for years and years, it was to bring them outta shavas. I’m currently exploring, I’m not committed to it yet, but I’m currently exploring it, actually using the chant to bring them into shavas instead.

We’ll see how that goes. But just to say it, I had that little instinct for a few years before I actually listened, and when I did chant to my students universally amazing feedback, people told me that my voice pierced their heart, that my voice moved them to tears, that I had such a beautiful voice that it felt so nurturing to be sung to, et cetera, et cetera.

So years I had been hearing this and just pushing it away because I was too focused on being an instructor, not a teacher. So an instructor is just going to make sure that they are offering a safe class. [00:17:00] Hopefully they’ve got a structure and a schedule and everything all mapped out, but a teacher is gonna be able to fill the needs of the people in front of them.

When you start shifting from instructor to teacher, there’s less need to fill the space. There’s less urgency to fill every moment, less attachment to whether or not things are being air done, air quotes, right, and more flow, less structure. There’s instead more listening, more space, more trust. You begin to trust the shapes themselves.

You begin to trust the students. So when. I was newer teacher. If somebody were to take a shape in my class that I wasn’t instructing, or they weren’t sort of, you know, moving along or playing along [00:18:00] with the rest of the group, they were doing their own thing, I would’ve been a little irked by that. I would’ve been a little annoyed.

Why aren’t they just doing what I say? Things as simple as, and which I now understand could be a trauma response. Why aren’t they closing their eyes? Why aren’t they, why are they going into that pose? That’s not what we’re doing, blah, blah, blah. So when I was an instructor, these things would’ve bothered me.

And after the shift, which was, again, it wasn’t like a bing one point in time, there was a few little things that shifted, but when after the shift I realized that actually none of this is about me. None of it is about. Me my sequence, me as a instructor, that actually this experience was all about them.

And that if somebody came into heart bed near the beginning of class and they stayed there the whole time and [00:19:00] never did any of the other poses that I was offering, that I had to trust that that is what they needed that day and that it was my job to hold brave space for whatever it was that they needed that day.

And also what an honor it is that somebody feels safe enough in your presence to do that. I would’ve, as a instructor, been a little bit irritated when people fell asleep in Shavas because , it was grilled into my head in the anger camp that the point of Shavas is not to fall asleep. You are not to fall asleep in Shavas.

So I would’ve been a little irked and would’ve tried to bring people back with my voice. Now, if people fall asleep in the final stillness, practice, whatever that shape they’re in, I just think what an honor these people feel safe enough in my presence and in this room and in the [00:20:00] container that we’ve created here, that they can sleep.

Because sleep is the most vulnerable that we will ever be. It’s a beautiful thing. So another example of how I used to be more of an instructor. I used to be very attached to the way things were done, to people doing the way that I presented to them. I wasn’t okay with the students winging it, but eventually I began to trust the students and maybe most importantly, when you can begin to entrust what’s unfolding in the room.

Without needing to manage it tightly, and you loosen the reins, hell, you fucking throw the reins out the door without needing to manage the room so tightly. This is when the teaching starts to feel different, not because you’ve added anything new. [00:21:00] Nene quite the opposite, in fact. But because you have released and let go of the old, you no longer feel the need to prove your worth.

You no longer feel hesitant about taking the seat at the front of the room. There is no room for imposter syndrome if you are teaching. There’s no need to perform. No need to prove anything. No need to hold it all together. No need to entertain. And what’s left is far more quiet, far more humble, and far more honest and real.

Another episode that I could highlight here if you are new to the pod is there’s two, and I will put them in the show notes, um, how to Hold Brave Space with Grace Ani. And then I did another one on [00:22:00] how to teach Exceptional Yin classes. So I will spotlight those in the episode notes. They’ll be linked there if you want more on these things.

So what does change as we begin to teach yin yoga over time and what begins to fall away? So we start noticing the subtle cues of the moment. For example, if you show up with your lesson plan, now, I’m not saying you can’t have a plan. Just know what is it that they, the old saying, God looks at man’s plans and laughs.

So, you know, have a plan. Just know things sometimes don’t go according to plan. And that actually sometimes what the class evolves into, away from the plan is the most beautiful thing. I remember a day where I was leading a yin class and I was sitting at the front of the room and it was with a group of fairly [00:23:00] experienced nies that had been teaching for a while.

And so there had been plenty of quiet, and as I slowly just softly looked around at everybody to make sure everybody was comfortable and then moved into, you know, holding my own space, holding the space. When I moved into that, , the feeling in the room was palpable. The sense of peace and stillness.

Relaxation was so thick, it was like fog, like you could have sliced through it. And that was the first time that I noticed it in that way. And now I notice it that way all the time.

So why this episode now one, because I have been getting some questions from the teachers in my teacher training that are so beautiful, and I can tell that some of these instructors are [00:24:00] sitting right on the edge of moving into becoming a teacher. I can tell by the questions they’re asking because they’re far less.

Poses. Now, don’t get me wrong, we’re gonna get lots of questions about poses and modifications and how do we make these accessible and all of that. Of course, of course, of course. It is a teacher training after all. But a lot of the questions I’m getting are on much deeper. They’re on teaching skills, on holding space, on how do we kind of create for ourselves what I call the bookends of your class, the little special sauce that you as an individual teacher have that you kind of start and finish the class with and, and are they always the same and is there anything wrong with that repetition?

And there’s just so many beautiful conversations going about teaching skills that are far beyond just the point of this pose is to access your hit butt it band zone. So that’s part of the reason that this is top of my [00:25:00] mind. Then the other reason is that I was recently in a yin yoga network group and somebody was asking for, you know, guidance on where everybody’s getting all the rest of these poses that, you know, they only had, I can’t remember what the number was, 20 or 26 poses from their yin training and like, , where were all these other ones coming from?

And they wanted some inspiration. I think what they wanted basically was some free resource, , that offered these extra poses. And now I’ve also done an episode on yin yoga for the upper body. I will make sure that does have a resource PDF in it as well. So if you click the link in the episode notes to listen to that one and then look in that episode, , it’ll take you to my website.

When you listen to that episode, you’ll see a link there to the PDF. That I created on tummy. So sometimes I think that’s the case where somebody may, has, maybe has been trained with a teacher that kind of doesn’t include any upper body in, and then they’re like, Hey, what? Wait, wait, what, what? What’s this?[00:26:00]

And I’ve heard many teachers say that they’re getting bored of their sequences. And when, you know, this person was , brought to my attention by somebody tagging me in the comments and saying that they really loved my training because it offered them so much more than the average poses you’re gonna find in , the y yoga books.

, This person said, oh, I’m already certified. I’m just looking for a resource. And I thought, Ooh, yeah, I’m already certified to teach yin. So this can happen sometimes when you take a shorter course.

I’m just gonna say you take a course from someone who’s an instructor, not a teacher. And so they haven’t added anything. They haven’t looked at what they learned originally from their yin teacher. They may not have even studied originally with Paul Greeley or with a Paul Greeley teacher. They don’t add things and put their own voice and, you know, [00:27:00] bring more richness to this practice.

So if you have been led in a course by someone like that, , then of course you’re gonna be left feeling like you are not quite full. Not quite full. Like you just need a little extra snack. You need a little dessert. And I will say too, the other thing that was in that is interesting about that is when you are an instructor.

You think that having a certificate, one certificate qualifies you right to to lead, and that you’re, that’s it. I’m certified, I’m done. But when you are a teacher, you realize that is just the beginning. That is just the beginning.

The teacher is forever the student, and you will always be learning and growing. I’ve recently been attending a weekly [00:28:00] restorative class by a colleague of mine who teaches at one of the studios I teach at, and I don’t do this very often. I don’t go to public yoga classes often because I find as a teacher and a guide that most of the classes are being instructed.

And so although there’s not much when I leave, that I could really put my finger on being wrong with the class. They just leave me unsatisfied because there’s, a basic sequence of shapes and that’s it. And some kind of a playlist that they maybe weren’t even so conscious about creating.

And to be honest, I could do that at home. I can find some random playlist on my yin playlist and pull out some poses and crank ’em out on my own. I don’t need to go to a class for that. If I’m going to a class, it’s because I want somebody who is guiding that practice to be [00:29:00] sitting in their seat as the teacher and the guide grounded, humble, yet knowledgeable and wise, and that they’re offering the class from that place.

And believe you me, you can feel the difference. So anyways. I went to one of these classes with one of my colleagues just as a, fluke. ’cause like why not? It’s on my day off. Little self-care. I’ll just check this class out. They’re free for me ’cause I teach there and wow, what a fantastic teacher.

Shout out to Chantel. She’s probably not listening to this, but what a fantastic teacher. It’s restorative yoga with sound. So not only does she have all the sound skills, she’s got the skills to pay the bills with the gongs and the bulls. She’s also a singer, so she brings out her guitar at a point and she sings.

It’s a very beautiful class. Now are there things, if I was gonna get in my hypercritical mind that , I would tweak of course, but [00:30:00] I leave the class feeling like someone has held brave space and someone has sat in the role as the teacher and allowed it to unfold in a way that everybody is hopefully getting what they need.

So I have been teaching at the time of this recording, i’ve been teaching since 2004 and I’m still going to classes. And that class has inspired a couple of things in me where I was like, huh, I really like the way she does that in that order.

I wonder why I’m gonna sit with that. Which is why I’m currently experimenting with chanting to people as they go into shavas instead of to bring them out. And then I’m bringing them out with a different way, with a different sound. So that was sparked by me attending this class. So I’m already certified to teach yen.

There’s no such thing, by the way, you may have a certificate saying you attended a yen training, [00:31:00] but no one is certifying you. No one is saying yes. You have now moved from the role of basic instructor into teacher. So a teacher is forever a student. They know that in order for them to continue to grow as a teacher and as a guide, that they have to have the humility to study, to change, and to learn that there is no such thing as being already certified.

I have had so many people go through my trainings that have taken multiple yin trainings before me by some really great teachers and still manage to get a whole boatload of goodness from my training. And part of that might be my approach. I do have a bit of a different leaning with the therapeutic aspect to yin, and part of it is just that when you take a different training with a different teacher, you’re learning their perspective, [00:32:00] you’re learning their journey, and then you can take what serves you from that.

Add it to your own and leave the rest. So you’re never certified, you’re never done. It’s never complete. The humility to study, to change, to learn many trainings, many perspectives, and then the critical lens to think about which ones of those things you wanna keep for yourself as a teacher, which ones you don’t.

The humility to study and change and to change as you grow. Like I just mentioned, I just started thinking about it after attending Chantel’s class. I was like, why is it that I have the chance at the end? Oh, right. I did that because my teacher used to sing to us near the end of Shaan. And so I just logically slid it in there.

But actually I think it might be nice to start it at the beginning of the final stillness and then move into silence. Sort of like a little lullaby. [00:33:00] So we’re experimenting with that. I’m sure I’ll hear feedback from my students and then I can decide, do I wanna keep this new way of doing it, or do I wanna go back to the way I was?

We don’t know. It’s a mystery. That brings me back to the next point. When you become a teacher, although you have the humility, as I was just mentioning, to learn, to grow, to change, to study, to expand, you also have the confidence to sit in the seat of the teacher. You know who you are, you know what you’re offering, and you know why you’re doing what you’re doing.

You know, I’m gonna say that at least two more times. You know why you are doing what you’re doing. It’s not random. It’s not because I just pulled this pose outta my yin deck and I haven’t taught it for a while. You know why you’re doing what you’re doing, and that could be with the shapes [00:34:00] themselves.

This pose accesses this area, right? A functional approach. That’s the why behind why you’re doing the pose, but also with every little detail of your class. You know the why. So here are two or three examples. One of the lovely, the gals in my current round of teacher training noticed that I have what I call bookends, and I highly recommend that every teacher develop their own bookends, bookends, you know, sit in front and behind the books to hold them in place.

Without that, the books fall everywhere. So my bookends are, at this moment, I reserve the right to change them if they no longer serve the needs of my students is we start with gratitude. We do a mudra. You crisscross your hands over your heart, which is am mudra. But then we also practice conscious and deliberate gratitude.

Why do we start that way? Well, let me tell you my friends, because I have one foot. [00:35:00] Always in the woowoo or the yoga and one foot in the science. So from a yoga perspective, doing that mudra, taking a moment to focus on something, heart-centered, like gratitude is a nice way to arrive to your practice.

Especially because I always start it with first, taking a moment to thank yourself, right? For having the wisdom to be here. So that’s the sort of woowoo part or the yoga part. But then did you know that if you crisscross your hands in that way, dominant hand on your heart, the other hand over top, and you consciously and deliberately practice gratitude, that can help to rewire the neuro pathways of your brain so that these more positive mind states, centers of your brain are more easily accessible.

You’re rewiring your brain to focus on the positive and to be grateful. And this helps you when you’re not on your yoga mat. And if you wanna learn more about that. Read the book, Buddha’s Brain by [00:36:00] Rick Hansen, Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hansen. So why do I start the practice that way? Well, let me tell you, there’s, let me count the weights.

Number one, we need to do a grounding and a centering. I’m a very heart-centered person, as a human and as a teacher. So we put the, the dominant hand on the heart, we cross the opposite hand over top, over the heart center. Also, that particular gesture, when combined with gratitude has that neuroscience effect and gratitude is, has always been a massive part of my life.

A gratitude practice and being consciously and deliberately gratitude. There’s countless studies behind it. If you wanna, you know, spend a Saturday night, go Google that. , But for me personally, gratitude has been a big deal and a big game changer. So I bring that little glimpse of my personal journey and my personality into my yoga class.

I add that to a yoga mudra and I add that to [00:37:00] neuroscience and that’s how I start. Then the first pose that we start with is constructive rest. I’ve done a whole episode on that. I will also link that one in the show notes and why do I start almost always with that pose? Once in a while we’ll do a breath technique first.

If everybody’s feeling very anxious or something, we might do a breath first, or sometimes we’ll do the breath in constructive rest. But I do constructive rest because of its relationship to our parasympathetic nervous system, to pulling people away from that fight, flight or freeze or busy, overwhelmed, rushed, stressed, whatever you wanna call it, and into their parasympathetic, into that relaxation response.

So those are some of my bookends. Then at the end of practice, the last bookend is that we bring our hands to heart center again, and we take a moment. First and foremost, again, to thank ourselves for taking the time out of our busy life, et cetera, acknowledging that [00:38:00] when we do this, we have more to give and that we can take these practices then with us when we leave our yoga mat, when we go back out into the world more, when kindness and compassion for ourselves, for our loved ones, for our communities, for the world at large.

Now, why do I end it that way? I mean, it sounds nice, doesn’t it? But there’s more to it than that. It’s because as a human being, I am Buddhist and I am, , working on becoming a Bodhi Safa Bodhi Sattva. .

Um, but that is why I finished the practice with yes, gratitude for yourself. Yes. Notice how you feel now in comparison to how you felt at the beginning of class and. Can we remember that when we walk off our yoga mat and leave the studio, that we can take this with us. That this practice isn’t just for us, that it is to help us navigate the world and be more kind humans.

So that’s the other bookend. So in my yin training the teacher, you know, [00:39:00] that she noticed that I always do the same two things and why do I do them and et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, that’s why I do those two bookends. You as a teacher should come up with your own bookends, something that you always start the class with and something you always finish the class with.

They could be the same thing every time, the same words, et cetera. People will think, I know one, I know some of you out there, I know some of you out there instructors are thinking, yeah, but don’t the students get bored of that ne nay. I say, first of all, it’s a tiny part of the class. Second of all. Did you know that your nervous system actually responds to repetition, not variety.

So when people are stressed, knowing what’s coming helps them slip into their parasympathetic nervous system. Here’s an example that I gave in the training. Have you ever been in just a really rough time in your life? And [00:40:00] what do we do? We reread our favorite books. We re, we re binge our favorite TV shows.

We watch some of our favorite movies. We listen to our favorite music that we know so well. We can sing it in the shower note for note, because we know it so well. Why is that? Why do we go to the familiar in times of stress? Because of your nervous system? My friends? So for those of you that were sitting there thinking, yeah, but doesn’t that get boring?

Boring for whom? Boring for whom? No, it does not get boring for the students. They need that repetition helps the nervous system, and also there’s a sense of intentionality there. When you know who you are as a human and what you value in the world and what you think is important, then you can pull that into your class in a way that feels heartfelt, and that is what makes you unique.

That is your special sauce. Those are your bookends, and every teacher [00:41:00] should have those. If you don’t, then that’s something to work with. Maybe you’re in the position where you’re starting to move from instructor to teacher and that might be something you explore. So that leads me into knowing what feedback is valid and what can be released as you deepen into your teaching.

If you’re more clear and intentional with why you do what you do, the purpose behind your choices. Then you will acknowledge that not every student is gonna love every single thing about your class, and some feedback from the students is really good and really valid. Like if I had chanted that very first time and nobody came up afterwards and said, that was so lovely.

Oh my God, I love your voice, blah, blah, blah. That silence alone could have been feedback for me that don’t do that again. But because I got the feedback from them, I was like, aha, we’re on the right path. With that being said, I have had feedback online [00:42:00] about my class at a studio saying that, you know, the class is too similar, that even sometimes I’m using the same words.

Yes, in fact, I am. Especially at the beginning, at the end of class. The middle is not always the same from constructive rest until shavas not the same. And what that student doesn’t know is that that is a conscious and deliberate choice on my. The reason for it is the nervous system. And so if I have a student who’s, , used to a little more, bit more of a sparkly, showboat, class where everything’s different every time and there’s a pump and playlist and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That’s a sort of a immature student. I don’t mean that in an insulting way. I just mean they think yoga’s about a workout in music, right? They haven’t dove deep yet. So then yeah, I might get some feedback from them about my classes. But is it valid? Not really, no, because they don’t know my intention. They don’t know the bigger picture, they don’t [00:43:00] know the why.

They don’t know the science behind why I’m doing what I’m doing, right? All they know is they were kind of bored laying in the still and quiet, and that’s valid, boredom’s valid. But then you might get feedback from students that really, if you are approaching your teaching with that humility and growth and curiosity mindset, that you might go, oh.

I am gonna really think about that. Right? So it’s good to know, knowing which feedback is valid and what can be released as you deepen into your teaching and you’re more clear and intentional with the why you do what you do and the purpose behind your choices, right? Then when you, when that happens, you get feedback.

You know, this feedback , is worth it? I’m gonna pay attention to this. I’m gonna listen to this. I’m gonna ponder it, I’m gonna meditate on it. Or, oh, thank you for sharing. Anyway, slide it away. Okay? We move from getting better to becoming more aware. We move from adding more to [00:44:00] actually stripping things back.

We move from being performative to inhabiting being a teacher. It feels much more close to the spirit of yin or the Wu way, which is a Daoist concept. Um, sometimes translated as effortless action or non forcing, or actionless action. And it refers to aligning with the natural flow of life or the Dao rather than acting against it, allowing tasks to be done with efficiency and ease.

It’s not laziness, it’s acting with the flow.

When we start to move from being an instructor to a teacher and then a guide, we move from technique to discernment. So early on there’s often this focus on doing it right, timing, queuing, theming, sequencing over time that shifts to reading the room. Maybe instead of [00:45:00] following your plan, adapting to the needs of the people in the moment in real time.

Letting the pose serve the person, not the other way around. And shifting the shapes if they’re not a fit. One thing that I see that comes up often with teachers is they’ll spend, you know, five minutes that they have allotted for that pose. Trying to get the person comfortable in the pose, just give them a different pose for the same area.

If, I’ll use the example of pi of swan slash pigeon, ’cause it comes up all the time. Instead of giving them 29 million things to get comfortable it, meanwhile the clock is ticking and they haven’t even got in yet. Flip them on their back and give them something that’s a little more accessible and knee friendly.

So experience shows up as discernment, not just knowledge. This is one of the reasons also that I spread my teacher training out over a season so that the people that are in the course have the [00:46:00] time to let these things sort of filter in. To start bringing little things into their classes and noticing what lands and what doesn’t.

So when people ask me if I ever teach this in an intensive way, no, I don’t. And the only way I would do it in intensive is if I could do it the way that Paul and Susie did, where you’re all away from your life at a retreat center. So you’re not, you know, taking care of the kids, worrying about anything.

You’re not doing laundry, you’re not cooking meals, nothing. You’re just focused on learning in that way. If somebody’s already a teacher, I think it can work ’cause it’s immersive and , you don’t have anything else to worry about or think about. But I much prefer to spread these out over a season so that people really have the time to let these things percolate and to come back with good questions.

’cause I love questions. When we start to move from being an instructor to a teacher and a guide, we start to let go of certainty [00:47:00] In the beginning there’s this tendency that we want clear answers. But our teaching with confidence is rooted in how this works, right? That’s how we start.

How does this work? And we need that as a foundation, but with experience that often softens into being comfortable saying, well, you’ve often here on this podcast. It depends. Holding our anatomy, our fascia, and even our meridian theory. A little more light with an open hand instead of a tight fist. And allowing space for not knowing.

There’s less of a need to prove and more of a willingness to explore. One story about this, which some of you have heard before, if you’ve listened to all the episodes, I used to practice pre COVID at a studio I used to teach at. There was a woman who had a pulmonary condition, so she, if she laid down, she was always coughing and hacking stuff up.

She wasn’t, this wasn’t sick, she wasn’t contagious. She had a lung condition. [00:48:00] Yet she would come to my class, which is mostly sitting and laying around. Then she would cough and cough and she had to have a little tissue to, spit stuff into. And other students were glaring at her because they assumed she was sick.

And it was very uncomfortable for everyone involved for her, for the other students, for me, as the teacher. And so I asked her after class, , about it and about her experience. And she said, I said, , you might actually wanna choose like a Hatha class or something where you’re like laying and seated less.

And she said, yeah, but I really like, , this practice and feels like what she needs for her nervous system, et cetera. So I was like, okay. So I started thinking about it. How could I adapt the practice for the needs of this student so that she’s more comfortable and everyone else is more comfortable now because I was grounded and confident.

And I didn’t feel the need to prove anything. [00:49:00] I was willing to explore. That’s where the creativity comes in. Creativity doesn’t come when you’re panicking. , No. It comes when you’re feeling grounded and centered. And so I thought, well, why can’t I just make , the wall her floor? So anything everyone else was doing on the floor, I would put, instead of back on the floor, her back on a wall so that she could do this practice in a relaxed way, in a passive way, and be supported and not have to lie down and start coughing.

And wow. It’s amazing how much you can do that way actually when you get creative and you give yourself space to just try a few things. And , it wasn’t perfect the first class, but she kept coming back and she was just so grateful that I was being creative and trying to offer her solutions didn’t have to be perfect.

We learned about putting blocks under her arms and, . Gradually we made a practice that was just right for her, where instead of laying on the floor, she could put her back to a wall, and that way [00:50:00] she could also do the yin practice and feel relaxed and supported without the coughing. So groundedness allows for creativity.

When you feel, feel less like you need to prove something, you’re more willing to explore.

When we start to move away from being an instructor, we start to shift from leading to listening. A newer instructor often feels responsible for filling the space, guiding every moment, and keeping the students on track. However, when you start to shift into a yin teacher and guide, you start to trust the silence. You start to leave space for the students to have their own experience and to have 100% agency and choice over their own experience.

You begin to listen more deeply, both to the room, to what’s being [00:51:00] said and to what isn’t being said.

When we start to move from an instructor to being a teacher, we understand the, I’m doing air quotes here, edge. It’s not even a word that I use, but I’m gonna use it here because people, yin people understand what I mean. Understanding the edge more skillfully and letting it go. At first. Finding your edge can be taught in a very simplistic way, but there are many reasons why we might not want to go to our edge.

Over time, it can become clear that the edge is different every day, that some students habitually override their limits, right? They’re these really hardcore A type personality, et cetera, et cetera. Um, for those of you that have ever watched Monty Python, they’re the Black Knight people, right? So only a flesh wound.

[00:52:00] So those people will push past their edge because they think the point is to get further past their edge. Then others will never approach noticeable sensation either because they’re treating it like a restorative class or what Paul used to call their panda bear. So as soon as they feel like some even little tiny thing in their body, they’re like, Ooh, I don’t know.

Is this normal? Should I be doing this? I don’t. Is this what I’m supposed to be feeling? And so they back away completely. Or the opposite. They’re a bendy. Wendy is one of my students in the UK used to said, which I thought was funny. They’re a bendy, Wendy, and so they don’t approach sensation ’cause they’ve reached the limits of their skeleton and they might need other things in yin to practice with. I’m sure I’ve done a podcast on that too. I just can’t remember the name of it, but I will link it in the episode notes. So wisdom is being able to recognize those patterns in our students to offer different guidance to different people and to de-emphasize the intensity [00:53:00] as the goal. So I don’t use the word edge because I don’t feel like it serves me or my students.

I say, we’re looking to feel sensation here, and if people don’t feel it, then I can either go help them and come into a different version of the shape or a different shape altogether. Or if they don’t feel it because they’ve just reached the limit of their bone structure, now I can give them something else in yen to focus on like the mind.

For example, when we start to move from being an instructor to a teacher and a guide, we start to hold space for that inner experience. So the long holds can bring up restlessness, emotion resistance, fidgeting, a note on fidgeting. Sometimes fidgeting is just a symptom of being restless, but actually sometimes fidgeting is a nervous system response.

So in the case of trauma, or if [00:54:00] somebody has a DHD, it can also be a soothing technique that fidgeting. So if you think that you know you’re failing, if your students are fidgeting a little, you’re not. This question came up to me recently too. Now you can address it. You can mention that, you know, sometimes the hard parts about yin are these long holds in the still and the quiet and that this can show up in, you know, boredom, restlessness, fidgetiness.

Just know that’s part of the process, right? See how I just brought it up like it was no big deal and normalized it. So you can do that. But a newer instructor or someone who’s not yet a teacher might try to fix or distract or overexplain. The more experienced teacher allows space without rushing to resolve.

It doesn’t pathologize emotional responses. Notice how when I said that, I didn’t say, you know, something wrong with fidgeting. I just said, these things come up. And they know when to support [00:55:00] and when to step away. There’s a deeper trust in the process of the unfolding, and I would say a humility to know that it has nothing to do with you that what is unfolding for that person in that moment, in that class, on that day.

And that part of their life has nothing to do with you. And all you can do is hold brave space for them while they go through that there’s less performance and more presence. In the early stages, we are instructing. It is performative. We are trying to sound insightful. We may have brought all kinds of, you know, yoga philosophy texts that we actually we’re really honest with ourselves, don’t really understand because we don’t speak Sanskrit and we only took a little bit of it in our teacher training.

And yet we feel obsessed with offering the yamas and the niyamas even though we don’t really understand the greater cultural, architecture of that system. Et cetera, et cetera. So we fill the silence with cues or philosophy [00:56:00] that isn’t embodied, isn’t from your own experience and you don’t have a lot of skill in, but when you start moving like a teacher in your classes or a guide, then the teacher or the guide brings the students back to themselves.

You are saying less, being more grounded in your own body while teaching and letting the presence do some of the teaching. The students feel this, even if they can’t name it.

When you start to move to a teacher or guide, brings the student back to themselves and would want to bring the students back to themselves, often we’ll get this question in classes. Am I doing this right? And I always say, I don’t know. What are you feeling? Right? I’m always bringing it back to them.

If we’re gonna use philosophy when we’re a teacher, not an instructor, [00:57:00] we’re integrating it, not just referencing it. So instead of reading something from Patanjali or some Daoist idea of Yin Yang theory as it shows up, try embodying it. Non forcing in how you cue, allowing natural timing to pace the class, not pushing outcomes even subtly.

It’s less talking about Y and more teaching from it.

When we start to move from being an instructor to a teacher and guide, we start respecting individuality over aesthetics. We let go of what the pose looks like. We let go of uniformity in the room, or tidiness for that matter, and we start embracing variation use of props as intelligence, not a limitation.

The idea that each student’s practice is unique,[00:58:00]

and when we become a teacher and a guide, we move away from being an instructor. We’ve talked about this already, but we continue to question our own teaching. Being a teacher doesn’t arrive at a certain number of hours or certain number of certificates, and then we stop. Instead we, we keep questioning our own assumptions.

We stay open to new information and perspectives. We are winning to evolve, even if it means unlearning. Things that we learned in the past and have been doing in the past that maybe weren’t skillful. When you start to move from an instructor to a teacher and a guide. Then there’s a quiet kind of confidence, not the kind of confidence from having all the answers.

No, no, definitely not. [00:59:00] But quite the opposite. Trusting the process, trusting the students, trusting your ability to respond rather than react. Trusting curiosity rather than control. A deep knowing that it is not about you as the instructor, and that it is all about the students being okay with saying, you know what?

I don’t know, but what if we tried or maybe we could explore. It’s less visible, but far more grounded.

Okay, my friends. I hope that this gave you some inspiration. For those of you that are currently evolving from instructor to teacher, you’re right in that nebulous cloud of sometimes you’re still instructing, but sometimes you’re teaching and you’re kind of in that spot. I hope that this gave you some [01:00:00] guidance.

For those of you that are newer and you realize for listening to this, you’re like, oh, I’m instructing. That’s okay. That’s where we start. Maybe this episode will give you some y inspiration, pun intended, and a torch to sort of lead you on your path forward as you slowly get more and more experience as an instructor, and you start noticing these little inklings of being a teacher and a guide coming in.

And for those of you that are already teachers already guides, you have left being an instructor. I hope I got a few. Hell yeah. Hallelujah. Preach coming from you. And as always, dear friends, I hope that you found this helpful, and until we meet again, bye for now.

For those of you who stick around until the very end, thank you. If you love this podcast, I’d be grateful if you gave it a review. [01:01:00] It really helps other yin yoga lovers find it. If you’ve already given a review, would you consider sharing a screenshot in your Instagram stories? And don’t forget to tag me at Nick Danu Yoga or at Y Yoga podcast so I can share the love.

Before I sign off, some gratitude first for you, the listener, for spending time with me today. Big gratitude and deep reverence for my teacher, Paul Grille. Thank you to Fred Westra for the Hang Drunk Samples. You can hear more of his music by clicking the link in the show notes. A big thank you to my beloved for mixing the intro and outro tracks, and until we meet again.

May you be well, may you be content. May you be at peace. May you be free.