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31: The Cues We Use Pt. 2
914 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to Season 2 and Episode 31 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss three types of cues movement teachers like yoga teachers and strength coaches use—verbal, visual, and tactile cues. Namely, we look at the differences between these three ways of cueing, and the plusses and minuses of all three types. We also discuss:
- What deeper understanding we need to have about our students as well as the movement we’re teaching before we cue at all
- What a verbal, versus a visual, versus tactile cue is.
- The timing of verbal cues and how it relates to motor learning.
- A debate in the yoga community about whether or not teaching using verbal cues (only or predominantly) is preferable to demoing while teaching.
- How Laurel & Sarah’s teaching has changed with respect to cueing.
- Different ways of stage and contextualize a demo.
- Why highlighting the difference between what a movement looks like versus what it feels like can be helpful.
- Whether to use first person or second person pronouns (or even to talk at all!) while demoing.
- 3 main ways you can give tactile cues, tips for teachers when giving tactile cues, and the benefits and drawbacks of each way of giving tactile cues.
- Why obtaining consent is crucial before touching students.
- The perils of “creepy hands”.
- How trying to teach too many things means not teaching much at all.
- The importance of using multiple types of cues—verbal, visual, and tactile—and aligning them toward a clear movement goal.
Sarah’s Motor Learning Presentation
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Transcript
Introduction to Teaching Strength in Yoga
00:00:00
Speaker
Teaching strength can be a wonderful way of getting much better at teaching yoga. Much better. Because it's such a controlled curriculum, it is not a choreography, actually.
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts.
Understanding Cueing Methods
00:00:34
Speaker
Instead, we're here with up-to-date and cutting-edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
00:00:53
Speaker
Welcome to the MovementLogic podcast. I'm Laurel Beiberstorff, and I'm here in Puerto Vallarta with my co-host, Dr. Sarah Cort. Hello. This is our second episode about cueing. In our first episode, we dug into the difference between two types of verbal cues, internal and external. When you'd use both, as well as how some cueing subtypes, like metaphor, tactile cueing, and constraints fit into both categories.
00:01:22
Speaker
We also talked about bread, the movie Titanic, chewing gum, and doomed flies stuck between two panes of glass. In this episode, we're focusing on the difference specifically between visual, verbal, and tactile cueing, the pluses and minuses of all three ways of cueing.
Motor Learning and Its Importance
00:01:41
Speaker
Now let me stop right here because
00:01:43
Speaker
you might not be fully on board with calling a tactile cue like touch or a visual cue like a demo, a cue. In this episode, when we use the word cue, we mean any snippet of information or task-oriented info used to teach a student how to accomplish a movement task or learn a movement skill. Information like this can be delivered via many modes. Today, we're going to be discussing three.
00:02:10
Speaker
Before we do that, though, let's go back. In part one of this series, we talked about motor learning and how it's different from motor performance. Sarah, do you want to remind us of the difference? Absolutely. Motor performance is being able to do a movement one time and one time only,
00:02:31
Speaker
but you're not able to replicate it in any other setting at any other time versus motor learning where you have learned the skill set needed to get into that movement and you can replicate it in any setting at any time.
00:02:44
Speaker
Right, so I'm in the yoga class and I'm hearing the cue step by step to go from triangle to half moon back to triangle and it goes off perfectly and I feel like totally proficient like a rock star. Then I go the next day in my kitchen and try to do out on my own and it's a hot mess.
00:03:03
Speaker
That would be motor performance. Yes, that's right. And then motor learning would be, I learn how to go from triangle to half moon. And then the next day in my kitchen, I'm like, hanging out in half moon while the water's boiling. That is motor learning. Yes, I've learned the skill. Okay. So why should we be interested in motor learning as teachers, Sarah? Well, if you are calling yourself a teacher, then in theory you are teaching something.
00:03:34
Speaker
Motor learning is a really important thing for everyone because it ultimately helps you kind of injury-proof yourself because you become more proficient in understanding where you are in space, which a lot of people don't work on particularly outside of any sort of movement setting.
Effective Cueing Techniques
00:03:53
Speaker
The other thing that is very helpful is when you have transmitted motor learning to your students, you're not going to find yourself repeating the same cues over and over and over again. You actually are doing yourself a big favor and making your own life a lot easier. Nice. Before we cue it all, before we get into defining each cue, before we cue it all, what do we need to know first or what do we need to understand?
00:04:21
Speaker
root reason for how we choose the cues we use. That sounds like a Dr. Seuss story. I know. I mean, I'm just, I rhyme. I'm a rhyming type of gal. Except for that time right there, you didn't rhyme. I'm a rhyming type of lime. I thought you were going to say, because I rhyme all the time. I rhyme all the time as a green, green lime. Let's workshop that. Anyway,
00:04:49
Speaker
Why do we choose the cue is a really big question, but I think the most basic underlying answer is, what are you trying to make happen? You have to have a really clear understanding. What am I trying to achieve with this cue? Am I trying to get my students into a position? Am I trying to highlight a certain area of the body or a certain muscle?
00:05:14
Speaker
Am I trying to help them understand the similarities between this shape and that shape? Am I just wanting to make them flow and have a good time and get sweaty? So having a very, very clear understanding of what you're trying to achieve should be the basic element of every cue that you use.
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah. And what I'm hearing from that is like we are in order to do that, we need to understand a couple of things about our students. What is their level of experience? What are their goals? Why do they come to our class? What is it about what we're offering that they're looking for? And then also the movement, right? Understanding human movement, understanding the physical demands of the movement we're teaching. Yeah. All right. Let's define each type of cue. We're going to start with verbal. We talked already about verbal cues extensively in
00:06:02
Speaker
the first part of this series, we talked about two different types of verbal cues, namely internal and external cues. So a verbal cue, to define it, is information communicated orally with an O through our mouth.
00:06:16
Speaker
and received orally within AU through our ears. Is that like the Mary, Mary, Mary? Do you know the Mary, Mary, Mary test? I do not, but I think you're going to tell me. I mean, I am going to tell you. So there's a test that basically determines what part of the country you're from or what parts of the country have influenced the way that you speak. Mary. Well, no. So there's three Marys. Hold your horses, Mary. Wisconsin.
00:06:45
Speaker
Mary, like the proper name Mary, and they are why. There's Mary, like Merry Christmas, and there's Mary, like I just got married. And so, whether you say them all the same, or whether they sound a little bit different, you can go, I think, I think it might have been the New York Times that did it, but you can go and they test out like different, other ways you use vowels, and then they're like, okay, well you speak like someone, like I now speak like someone from Southern California. I find it very upsetting.
00:07:12
Speaker
Especially since you're from the UK. Yeah, well, I'm not English, but I grew up there. But yes, so my accent is like, Southern California with a hint of East Coast or something mixed in. It's very interesting if you find that stuff interesting. Merry, I got married. Merry Christmas. Where am I from? I'm totally exaggerating. I have no idea what my dialect communicates about me. I think you have moments of Wisconsin-nessity, but a lot of the time I think it's more sort of like just general American.
00:07:40
Speaker
I've had the dialect completely trained out of me from acting school, but yes, I do slip into various ways of speaking. I often adopt the dialect of my friends, so I probably sound so Cal right now. Probably. Back to our regularly scheduled programming. So that's verbal. Sarah. Yes. How would you define a visual cue? And can you give us some examples?
00:08:05
Speaker
So a visual cue is one that the student is receiving through their sense of vision, namely their eyes. It can be transmitted in a few different ways. It can be you physically demonstrating a pose or a movement in front of them. It can be the student looking at their own reflection in a mirror.
00:08:26
Speaker
Or it can even be a student watching a video and or a live zoom class and translating that movement that they're seeing on the computer into their body. Interesting. Yeah. So there's different, I guess temporal features of each right. One is they're watching you in real time, but then moving later, the others are watching themselves in the mirror in real time. And it's themselves that they're watching. Then they're watching themselves. If it's video footage of themselves, they're watching themselves after the fact.
00:08:55
Speaker
Or if it's zoom, they're watching themselves during the fact. That's interesting. Um, there's also the demonstration that we can do while our students practice, which I like to think of like a co-practice. And then there's the demonstration we can do after our students practice or even before they practice. So we can show beforehand, we can show in the middle of, um, I guess we could even show after the fact. All right, cool. That's a visual cue.
00:09:24
Speaker
Now let's define tactile cue. Sarah, how would you define a tactile cue? And can you give some examples? Sure. So a tactile cue is one that the student is receiving through their sense of touch. And there are lots of different mechanoreceptors is what they're called, but there are lots of different nerve endings specialized for different kinds of touch, whether it's light or hard.
00:09:46
Speaker
the level of pressure, the temperature, all those sorts of things. That's how the person is receiving them. The method that it is being applied can be either your hands or some part of your body as the teacher, or it can be an inanimate object, a yoga block, a wall. It can also be themselves to themselves. So there's lots of different ways you can receive it.
00:10:11
Speaker
as well as give it? Yes, like the teacher's body touching the student's body, probably the hands, right? The student's body touching the student's body, probably the hands, right? But then some inanimate object. Yeah, cool.
Verbal vs Visual Teaching Methods
00:10:24
Speaker
All right, now we're going to compare these modes of cueing and discuss what some of the relative pluses and minuses might be for all of them. We're going to start with comparing verbal and visual.
00:10:34
Speaker
And then immediately I'm reminded of a debate going around in the yoga world about whether teachers should teach verbally, whether it be predominantly or actually even exclusively, or if they should demo most or all of the time while they teach.
00:10:50
Speaker
And there are, believe it or not, two camps, two warring camps in the yoga world. Yeah. I can't believe it. It's a shocker. People get worked up about stuff like this. I think so. Yeah. Some say good teachers don't demo at all and can just teach exclusively through words. And that is actually a superior way to teach. And they have their reasons. One reason is you can see your students better. And I think that's really valid.
00:11:17
Speaker
Another reason is that if you are doing the class while the students are practicing, this is more of your performance and it's not about the students. And then potentially another reason is that you're going to wear your body down.
00:11:32
Speaker
because you're going to be so exhausted from having to do all of those hard yoga postures. That's fair, actually. That's fair. You're going to destroy your joints. Is it fair? Well, not destroy your joints, necessarily. But if you're teaching five group classes a day, it's going to be tiring. Yes, it will. Others say that that is silly. Where do you think I fall on this spectrum? Oh, I couldn't possibly tell. I don't think it's silly.
00:11:55
Speaker
that there are a lot of good reasons to demo while your students are practicing. We'll get into all of this right now. Okay. So Sarah, I'm assuming you've heard this debate or are you actually enmeshed in it at all? I'm not in any way enmeshed in it, but I have heard of it. Yes. Okay. I think this debate might actually be kind of a cool way to contextualize this comparison.
00:12:15
Speaker
because it's rooted in some relevant questions that people are actually sitting with right now. So when we think about demoing as a visual cue, we've already noted we can do it at different times. We can receive the demo at different times as well. What is your approach? Well, let's actually talk about what your approach was, how it's changed, what it is now. So when I first trained as a yoga teacher, and this was in the Jeevan Mukti Yoga style,
00:12:40
Speaker
it was very much emphasized that you did verbal cueing almost exclusively. And you would maybe do a demonstration if you were teaching a pose that the students weren't regularly engaging in, like maybe a more complicated balancing pose or a forearm stand or something like that. But for the most part, you were talking them through the practice the whole time. And I think for the large part, their reasoning was because in that
00:13:11
Speaker
style of yoga, there's a lot of hands-on cueing or assisting that you could then, by talking through the poses or through the class, you could then walk around the class and be giving hands-on adjustments while you were talking. Okay, because there was such a high priority placed on tactile cueing, you can't be simultaneously visually cueing and tactile cueing. Right. Okay, that's actually a pretty good point. I mean, tactile cueing in the sense that the teacher is touching the student because there are actually other ways to tactile cue. Yeah. Okay. How has it changed?
00:13:41
Speaker
Well, I have a whole story about my feelings around tactile cueing that we'll get into maybe a little bit later, but we're also going to get into a lot in another episode. But I went through an adjustment period where I almost bounced completely to the other end of the spectrum and I was like, tactile cueing is not something you're supposed to be doing. As a result, I had a period of time where I did almost no tactile cueing at all.
00:14:07
Speaker
which then meant I was doing a lot more demonstrating of the shape on myself. So now I'm sort of somewhere in the middle, I would say. All right, before I share a little bit of my background with visual cueing, what do you think is most important for a teacher to keep in mind when demoing in these various forms?
00:14:25
Speaker
I think there's things to consider as the teacher and I think there's things to consider from the student's perspective. And so from the student's perspective, are they having to completely stop what they're doing or crane their head around or get themselves into a really awkward shape to be able to see you? Is it really valuable enough, the visual cue?
00:14:43
Speaker
that it's worth making them do that or even stop the class. Then for yourself, are you demonstrating it in a way that is allowing you also to see what's going on in the room, or do you have your back to the room? Because often it does mean, even if it's not like everybody stop, come over here and look, there is a sort of interruption that happens with the visual cue where to some extent they're having to stop what they're doing and look at you.
00:15:09
Speaker
Yeah, I guess if you're co-practicing at the front of the room where everybody has a clear sight line to your mat and you're doing that continuously and you're not saying like, look over at me, look how I'm doing this, which, you know, to the people in the camp of like, you should exclusively teach verbally, I can see how if someone was doing that at the front of the room and being like, make this shape look like what I'm making, it could kind of come off as you being the performer.
00:15:38
Speaker
and it being all about you. But I guess there would be like more subtler, less interruptive ways of just being up at the front of the room, doing the practice with students, making sure that everybody does have a clear sideline to your mat, maybe that it's well lit.
00:15:53
Speaker
that like for those students who do need to take a glance up at your math, they can easily do that and that would be less interruptive. Then stopping the class is like a whole other thing where yes, that could potentially become annoying for some folks. And in fact, this kind of relates to how I started off as a teacher, which I was taught to co-practice with my students, but I wasn't encouraged to only do that. In fact, the teacher training that I took was like different teachers
00:16:20
Speaker
learn to teach in different ways. And so if it helps you to learn to teach by doing the poses with your students, then that can be your way. If you find that you are better able to find the words by watching your students, then you can do it that way. But see, that was a teacher training where actually the goal was to train a teacher. Then as you become a teacher and go out
00:16:40
Speaker
to teach your students, hopefully the goal is not for you to be working on your teaching. Of course it can be that too, but it should also prioritize the learning of the students. So what's going to be most of service to them.
Staging Effective Visual Demos
00:16:52
Speaker
And what I ended up doing was practicing probably majority of the class with my students. And that was I think beneficial for both me and them, but I ended up stopping the class a little too much. So using that type of visual demo,
00:17:08
Speaker
a little too much. And I do think that I annoyed a lot of students in the process fairly because they weren't there to watch me show poses and talk. They were there
00:17:20
Speaker
to practice to move and I don't think that I let students move enough but that actually relates to my beliefs about movement at the time and how I thought it was my job to keep students safe and in order for them to be safe they had to do the poses in the correct way. So it kind of all comes back to these like beliefs that we have about the human body about why we do the things we do. What I learned is that
00:17:40
Speaker
If I'm going to stop the class, I should do it probably no more than two times. And this is in the context of the yoga class. I should keep my demos very short and I should show one thing and one thing only. And to make sure that I was positioning myself in the room so that students could actually see that skill, whether it related to the elbow, the knee, the hip, the spine, or just like the overall quality of the movement.
00:18:05
Speaker
To help me do that, sometimes it was best for me to actually walk off of my mat at the front of the room and go into the center of the room where everyone now was in theater in the round versus proscenium stage where they're like, the people in the back can barely see what I'm showing. And they're only seeing one side of my body. I would sometimes, if it's happening at the wall, say, have all the students come to me, that's more of an interruption if you think about it. Yes. It's better for me to go to them. I'm one person, they're like 20 people, right?
00:18:30
Speaker
So these ways of staging the demo are really important. Are you going to go to them? Are they going to come to you? Are you going to keep everybody where they are? And make sure that the thing you're showing is going to be highlighted with whatever staging you choose so that they really get that information. That's what you're trying to do with a visual demo is give them information. If you give them too much information, they get no information. So keep the information at a minimum.
00:18:55
Speaker
I also learned that first-person pronouns might be more appropriate for a demo. So instead of saying, you're going to do this, and you're going to do that, and you're going to do this after I demonstrate this with you, try using watch as I do this. I'm doing this. I'm going to keep my elbows. I'm keeping my elbows straight. I keep my elbows straight. I push into the floor. I swing my leg up. Because I feel that the first-person pronoun might actually bring students more into the moment of what they're seeing rather than to the future of what they're going to do.
00:19:25
Speaker
and maybe their thoughts about that or their fears about that. If we're teaching handstand and people are a little bit trepidation about handstand or if we're teaching a post that students are like, I can't do that. They're suddenly in their own story thinking about themselves in the future rather than really watching the demo of what you're showing in the moment. I have had the exact opposite conversation. Oh my gosh. Around first person protocol. Let's talk about it.
00:19:48
Speaker
I mean I actually agree with you in terms of what you are transmitting to the student but also their expectation around what their body should or could be able to do because you're saying this is what and especially if you're describing a movement or describing a muscular engagement or something like that because you can also highlight that this is what it looks like on my body when I do this it might look different on your body when you do this but what I'm doing is I'm
00:20:15
Speaker
posteriorly tilting my pelvis or something like that yeah right but the conversation that i have had or or it wasn't even a conversation it was feedback on a way that i was queuing feedback that i did not solicit no i'm just kidding actually in fact i don't think i did solicit it but i was given it anyway was that first person pronouns make it all about you and it should be about the student
00:20:34
Speaker
and you want to be talking to your students, not talking about yourselves. I get that conceptually, but I actually think that there's a way to sort of intermix it where it's clear that you're not saying, do this like I'm doing this, but this is what I'm doing, and now you guys are going to do that same thing, and they may or may not, from the outside, look identical. Right. Let's say I was showing the deadlift with a barbell, and I had students come around, and I had them watch my shoulder blades, for example.
00:21:05
Speaker
and I was talking about maybe an external cue of pulling the barbell back into my shins. It could be something as simple as saying, watch as I pull the barbell back into my shins. Notice how my shoulder blades
00:21:20
Speaker
slide away from my ears. So I guess the example of like using handstand to your point would get really intimidating for some folks being like, yeah, but my body doesn't do that. Yeah, but my wrists don't like that. Yeah, but my lower back isn't going to tolerate that. But these demos could actually be very doable for everyone in the room. And you can use your body as a way to shine a spotlight on the human movement that everyone's body in the room can actually do. And yeah, it's going to look differently.
00:21:46
Speaker
So maybe don't go into so much detail about exactly how many millimeters away from my ears my shoulder blades just slid. And that's how far your shoulder blades need to slide, but rather that this action of moving the shoulders now has various benefits we won't get into because of TMI, but this is what we're going for. Or often, I mean, I am hypermobile.
00:22:08
Speaker
And so what I learned, I didn't know this in the beginning, and I was like, well, why can't everybody easily bind their, what's it called, side angle pose? What's that called? It's got a bound side angle.
00:22:23
Speaker
No, it's got a, I was about to say it's got a Japanese name, but that's not true either. Doubtful. I can't remember the Sanskrit word, but I have an excess of mobility in many of my joints. And I didn't understand that initially when I first became a teacher that not everybody found those sorts of things as easy as, you know, rubbing your own eyeball, which is so easy. It's the easiest of all the moves. It's the easiest one. So I sometimes when I'm cueing,
00:22:51
Speaker
I'll say, this is what it looks like on my body because I am hypermobile or I've actually got a little bit of curvature and I actually, it doesn't look like I'm posterior tilting as much as you might think, but I'm doing this as hard as I can right now or something like that. So highlighting that like here are the, uh, it's not a deficit. It's just who I am. Here's what my body, my body can do more importantly than what it looks like is the action that I'm trying to share with you that I want you to attempt.
00:23:20
Speaker
Also, you highlighted the difference between what it looks like and what it feels like, right? Where you were like, I know it might look small, but for me, it feels big. And this can be good information to give students, too, that like,
00:23:36
Speaker
you can never know what they feel, only they can know what they feel. But sometimes the mismatch between what something looks like, especially when you're looking at someone else doing it and you're not doing it yet, and then what it's going to feel like can be actually pretty, the difference can be very big. So that's an interesting point that you made. So actually that barbell example reminded me too that now when I'm teaching my small group strength training in the live classes for my virtual studio, that my relationship to demoing
00:24:06
Speaker
has changed a lot in that the way that I teach strength is really different than the way that I teach yoga, rightly so. These are very different ways of teaching and moving.
Challenges of Teaching on Zoom
00:24:15
Speaker
With strength, you teach an exercise, the students do the exercise, but they do it for a number of repetitions and a number of sets. So there's this iterative quality to strength where you're constantly doing the same exercise again and again and again. And as a teacher, this can be incredibly helpful because you get to see
00:24:33
Speaker
multiple people doing that exercise again and again, you get to see how your feedback is landing. In a yoga class, sometimes students are doing up post once, depending on your sequence. Strength can be actually a really great way, like teaching strength can be a wonderful way of getting much better at teaching yoga, much better. Because it's such a controlled curriculum, it is not a choreography actually. I demo typically before my students do an exercise,
00:25:04
Speaker
And then I might take a moment while they're working through their sets and reps to go, hey, look over here, check this out. And the thing about teaching on Zoom, which I think we can also talk about with visual demos, is that you can go right up to the screen if you're showing something with your wrist or your elbow.
00:25:20
Speaker
right up to the camera and everybody gets a zoomed in look at what you're talking about. Also it can be tricky that depending on the lighting and the way your camera's pointed and things like that to get them to see like certain details about your whole body though because you can't have students in the round, right? You can't bring them all around you. So how you point your body to the camera becomes really important. But yes, teaching strength versus teaching yoga and the way that the visual demo
00:25:48
Speaker
is utilized in both contexts is fascinatingly different. Did you also just make a pun about Zoom without realizing it? Ooh, yes I did. Okay, I know I'm jumping the gun on part three of this series, but Sarah, to wet everyone's whistle, that way of demoing where we actually stop students after they attempt a movement, whether it's in strength or yoga, and we show them
00:26:17
Speaker
some skill that we would like them to practice is a form of feedback, is it not? And can you say anything about how that way of giving feedback relates to motor learning? Yeah. So feedback generally is after someone's already done something because otherwise it would be
00:26:39
Speaker
Feed forward? Is it like fashion forward? It's like best foot forward? Oh god, now I'm stuck in a loop of forwards. More to the point. Is that like fast forward? So feedback.
00:26:52
Speaker
The timing of your feedback absolutely influences motor learning. And the short version is after the movement is when the feedback can land in a way that is the most beneficial to motor learning.
Learning Styles and Cueing Methods
00:27:07
Speaker
Cool. I'm excited for this episode.
00:27:09
Speaker
Thank you. My mom taught me that anytime someone compliments you, you should say thank you. And now I just say it to anything that might even be a compliment, just in case. I'm not sure that was even meant as a compliment, necessarily, as much as Laurel's just interested in talking about this topic. She wasn't like, I bet you've done some really exceptional research. Well, I think all of you, but, ah. Now the pluses and minuses.
00:27:36
Speaker
of these two queuing types, verbal and visual. Maybe a little bit about how they might be able to fill in the gaps for each other, compensate for each other's shortcomings. What can you say about perhaps some of the minuses of queuing verbally and how visual queuing might fill in the gaps? Well, one of the sort of biggest minuses of queuing verbally, why was that so hard to say? You did a great job.
00:28:06
Speaker
Thank you. That was a compliment. Laurel's pointing out that that was a compliment. I missed that compliment. See, I think there's compliments when there's not, and then I miss the ones that are. You have to open your ears and your mind and your heart. The more you know. Okay. So the biggest drawback to only queuing verbally is that not everyone is an excellent verbal learner. And I see this in the rehab setting as well when I have patients who are
00:28:31
Speaker
Dancers or gymnasts or yoga teachers or Pilates instructors people who have spent a lot of time Listening to people describe movement and then translating that movement into their body. They are excellent verbal cues They know exactly what I mean most of the time and I can cue them verbally oral learners oral Laurel learners. We're actually not drunk. That's the craziest thing about this entire thing. Not at all We're just excited to be in the same room So if you haven't spent a lifetime
00:28:59
Speaker
listening to someone tell you where to be in space and then doing it, it's not the immediately easiest thing for a lot of people to do. And most people haven't. Even people who've played a sport, they're not being taught things like, move your hips two inches to the left. They're being told, hit this ball with your foot as far as you can.
00:29:17
Speaker
Which is a better cue, frankly. Well, yes, depending on your goal. I mean, you know, if you don't believe me, try it. Teach a class. Only give verbal cues. Don't demonstrate anything and see what happens. And probably what you're going to have to do is talk a lot because the one way that you're going to say it is going to reach maybe 50 percent of the class. And then you've got to say it another way and you'll reach another 25 percent of the class. You know, like it's not an efficient way to teach. And I will also say that while we don't fall into
00:29:44
Speaker
a one single learning style, right? Everybody learns visually, everyone learns verbally, everyone learns tactically. Certain learners have certain preferences in certain contexts. We tend to learn all the ways, but for someone who has never even seen a movement before, let alone heard anyone describe it. Like a beginner in a yoga class. Exactly. I think we can probably all reasonably assume that that person is going to benefit from a visual demo. Absolutely.
00:30:13
Speaker
And the other thing about visual learning is that is how we, as tiny little people, those are also called children, learn to move, right? We watch the people around us, we learn how to sit up, we learn how to stand, we crawl, we walk, right? It's all based on a lot of initial visual input that we are then translating into our bodies and then kinesthetically learning from. But visual learning is like, I was about to call it a tale as old as time.
00:30:40
Speaker
But that's not, that's beauty of the beast. It's definitely the first way you learn how to do anything. So a lot of people do better with a visual cue if something is brand new to them. Absolutely. So much of learning is observational. I mean, I think that that right there, that example of how we learn as children... Don't you mean little people? Oh, as... Tiny little people. Miniatures.
00:31:03
Speaker
Miniature, but with a huge head relative to our bodies. Oh, enormous. I will also say that motherhood can be a pretty demanding job, so thank God I don't have to cue my child into walking. Let alone left and right. Right. That comes later. Okay. Now, some of the pluses and minuses of cueing visually.
00:31:29
Speaker
Well, so I think we already went over a little bit of the positives of queuing visually is that it's probably the most accessible across the board. But you might find yourself in a position where you can't see the room.
00:31:47
Speaker
or the students are seeing what you're doing, but like we said before, are having a hard time imagining their own bodies doing something? So the co-practice example of you not being able to see the room, or you set yourself up to co-practice where students have to crane their neck to see what you're showing. When you stop the class, some of the minuses of visually cueing are that you're taking time away from students moving, from students' strength training,
00:32:16
Speaker
from students practicing to really kind of interrupt their experience. And so I guess to counteract those minuses, we want to make sure that we stage our demos well, that we stage it well so that students in the room can see us, but also so that we can see them. Let me give an example. Say you're demoing triangle pose at the front of the class.
00:32:41
Speaker
Triangle pose typically, if you were to set your mat up so that the long edge of the mat is facing the students, you do triangle pose on one side and your front is to the students. So you can see what they're doing. You can only see one part of their body, but that's okay. You can see them. The second side of triangle, you set yourself up so that your back is to the students. And now you can only see the wall that you're looking at at the front of the room. So what you would maybe want to do in that sense is demo and straight triangle pose.
00:33:11
Speaker
with your front facing the room on the first side, and then completely reorient which shortage of the mat you're facing to do the pose on the opposite side. That's what I mean by staging a demo in a co-practice situation. In a stop the class demo, couple of things to consider. Are you showing something large and holistic? Or are you showing something very small and subtle? If it's something large and holistic, what is the most important thing for students to see?
00:33:39
Speaker
Is it, visualize yourself at the front of a room, 20 people, is it something that you're doing with your pelvis in the sagittal plane, your spine in the sagittal plane? How can you position yourself so that students can see the curvature of your spine or the tilt of your pelvis? Would it be front on or would it be maybe head on or even show from the back of the pose, the foot side of the pose, so that they can see what's happening with your pelvis as it relates to your head?
00:34:09
Speaker
Or is it something that you want them to see maybe about the right and left side of your torso? If you're showing something about the right and left side of your torso, well then yeah, maybe face them front on, or even turn your back to them in that case if it's something about, yes, the right and left side of your torso, but also how it relates to your pelvis or your relationship between your pelvis and the back of your head or whatever. So there's going to be
00:34:37
Speaker
potentially some forethought that you put into how you're going to stage your body so that you can see them, they can see you. Now, if it's something small that you're showing, maybe consider going into the center of the room, find the spot with the best lighting and tell everyone in the front of the room to turn around. Everyone in the back of the room suddenly has front row seats.
00:34:56
Speaker
Everyone on the sides of the room have front row seats and show it that way. If it's something where you want people to actually come to a part of the room, say the wall, but you're doing something at the wall, have them all come to you, really, you have to almost become like a photographer. And we're all photographers now because iPhones have exceptional cameras. We love taking pictures with them. What do you do to take a great photo? Well, you decide on what the subject of the photo is, and then you frame it and you zoom in.
00:35:23
Speaker
So you're the photographer, but in this case, the students are the lens. So you need to put the students around the subject, which is your body, some part of your body, and you need to zoom in appropriately. So if it's a holistic movement, zoom out. If it's a pinpointed movement, zoom in and have them come close. The other thing I wanted to say just real quickly was the impact on the class experience that you're having by doing a
00:35:49
Speaker
Visual demonstration and stopping the room is going to have like varying levels of tolerability to the students and if you're teaching a workshop Let's say and it's a two hour two and a half hour workshop and it's all about handstands the people taking the class Already understand that there is going to be some stopping and starting because that is the purpose of the workshop We're working on a specific skill
00:36:12
Speaker
So I think that's also something really important. How important is it that you stop the room to look at this thing? And if it's important, then great, do it, make that point. But also consider, is this a flow class where people are expecting to be moving most of the time?
00:36:27
Speaker
or even is this like a beginner class or a gentle Hatha something like that where it's less about constant movement and it's more about we're learning or we're refining this shape or we're doing a gentler or easier version of it or whatever.
00:36:43
Speaker
Yeah, is your demonstration based off what you're seeing? Do you see that there's actually a huge gap in understanding in the room? Is this a valuable time to actually teach that? Are these students ready to learn that? Also, what do they come to do, like Sarah, to your point? They come to move most of the time, or do they come to learn a few things? Does the thing you're showing relate to the overall theme of your class and why you're there to begin with? And then also, choose wisely, right? Maybe if it's a yoga class, try not to stop it so many times. Pick your battles. Use fewer words.
00:37:13
Speaker
really prioritize the visual component of your demo, and I've even heard advice to not speak while you demo. Tell them where they should look, don't talk, show, then say, did you see, and then maybe show again, and then maybe show again, and then maybe verbalize what they saw, because there's only so much information we can take in. So this is also another point I want to make, which is that in both cases, verbal or visual, our brain can only take in a percentage
00:37:41
Speaker
sometimes a really small percentage of what we hear or see, and the rest gets constructed by our brain. Our brains play an active role in interpreting visual and aural information. The degree to which depends on many factors. It can depend on something as practical as the lighting in the room. Was it too dark? Are they even seeing what you're showing? Attention.
00:38:10
Speaker
Are there so many distractions in New York City? There's sirens going by. There's protests going by. Or are there distractions in the student's mind? Did they have like a really stressful day at work? There's also the complexity of what you're showing. Is what you're showing actually too complex for that student to even take in at their current stage of learning?
00:38:31
Speaker
These are all things that we have to keep in mind because what happens when there are gaps is that our brains naturally fill in those gaps and just make assumptions. We make assumptions about what we're seeing or hearing based on our past experiences.
00:38:44
Speaker
contextual information in the room. So this is really important to remember while teaching to increase empathy and patience because this can explain why even though you've done everything the most optimal way, you're still potentially going to get 10 people who are interpreting what you're saying or what you're showing in 10 totally different ways because there's only so much we can know really about our students and what they're ready for.
Addressing Yoga Challenges
00:39:06
Speaker
So we have to be very patient and tolerant for the fact that
00:39:09
Speaker
we, despite our best efforts, are working with a process that's going to take more than just one workshop or one class. Sarah, I'm going to totally change the topic here because I have three questions for you. Why do yoga teachers have so much hip flexor pain? Why
00:39:30
Speaker
are yoga teachers who tend to be quite hypermobile, so tight all the time? And how the heck can all these yoga teachers with yoga butt get rid of their yoga butt, AKA proximal hamstring tendinopathy? How does this work? What's the deal? I mean, what?
00:39:51
Speaker
That's a lot of questions all at the same time. And that would be very hard and take up the length of this entire episode for me to answer. So the good news is I'm not going to have to do that. And the reason why I don't have to do that is that we already made a entire tutorial. Five hours. Five hours. Keep it forever. Forever. Review as often as you'd like. As often as you'd like. Five continuing education credits with Yoga Alliance.
00:40:17
Speaker
Those are important. Maybe. I mean, that's up for debate. But anyway, we've done a bunch of tutorials. This is our sixth tutorial. Count of people. Six. Wait, is that right? Low back. Pelvic floor. Feet. Shoulders. Neck. Neck. Hips. Six. This is our sixth tutorial. And incredibly, it was overwhelmingly our most popular tutorial when we first launched it last year. Does this relate to the three questions that I asked you? It absolutely does because this tutorial
00:40:46
Speaker
gives really practical answers in the form of movements and exercises to help you understand if these things are happening to you as a practitioner or as a teacher or to your students why they might be happening and what you need to do to help. Hypermobility, hip flexor pain, and yoga butt. There are more though, right? So many more. We talk about SI joint pain. We talk about tightness, just feeling tight all the time even if you're not hypermobile. Sciatica.
00:41:12
Speaker
IT band syndrome. All of these things that are very common for teachers and are exceptionally common for our students as well. Yeah, and it's not just the practical exercises that potentially address some of the symptoms that students might be experiencing that help fill in the strength gaps that might be contributing to the problem. Spoiler alert. There are some strength progressions that include kettlebells and barbells in this tutorial.
00:41:37
Speaker
And there is also some exceptional anatomy instruction. Thank you. That was my part. And so we're putting it all together with the theoretical and the practical to help you actually have more solutions to offer your students and to be of service to your students in a way that speaks really quite directly to
00:41:56
Speaker
a lot of the problems that they are going to probably come to you with as it turns out. So why are we talking about this right now? Because we're having a sale. We've actually discounted this course. You can buy it at a discount, which is more than 20%, which is probably the best sale we've ever had on a single tutorial, wouldn't you say? Definitely. Yeah.
00:42:19
Speaker
Wanting this tutorial, if you missed it the first time around, snap it up quick because this sale will end. It will go back to full price. So it was around $130. Now it's $100. So just in case you don't know, it's me, Sarah, but also Jason Perique, who is a genius and the co-host of the Yoga is Dead podcast, which I highly, highly recommend you check out.
00:42:41
Speaker
make sure that you click the link in our show notes, head on over to the page that tells you all about what's included, and snap it up before it's gone.
Tactile Cueing in Teaching
00:42:53
Speaker
Okay, let's now switch gears and compare tactile cueing with both verbal and visual. First, let's start with the scope of what we mean again when we say tactile. We'll root it within the context of teaching movement.
00:43:06
Speaker
Sarah again, what is tactile cueing? What does this include? First of all, I say tactile. Do you say tactile? I think I say tactile, tactile, tactile. I say tactile, tactile, tactile. That's very dope without it. No, I won't. I'll cut it. Thank you. No, I won't. I'm going to get canceled by all Italians.
00:43:26
Speaker
for doing such a bad Italian accent. Was that Italian? I thought it was Portuguese. Perfecto. Okay. No, that's not right. Anyway. So tactile cueing is anything a student is receiving through their own sense of touch and the specialized sensors that you have in the layers of your skin and the anatomy below it. What are those again? Mechanoreceptors. Which are proprioceptors, but not all
00:43:52
Speaker
Mecanoreceptors are proprioceptors, but all proprioceptors are mechanoreceptors. Yes. Baroreceptors are not proprioceptors. No. They sense your blood pressure. Right. The bigger point is it's being received through the student's sense of touch. And there are, you have lots of different ways that you can interpret the touch that you're receiving, like gentle or heavier or sharp or dull temperatures, things like that.
00:44:20
Speaker
broad or specific? Yeah, yeah. And it's being given to the student either by the teacher's body themselves, by their hands, possibly by another part of their body, or by an inanimate object, which could be a yoga block, it could be the wall, it could be a pound cake, it could be a hard-boiled egg, all of the above, and more. Oh, am I supposed to still talk?
00:44:49
Speaker
I think that I actually tuned out was looking at the ocean. I wonder if the temperature of the water is warm enough to go in it. If you can't tell, Sarah and I are gazing out at an absolutely breathtaking view of the ocean in Yalapa, Mexico. And somebody's paragliding? That I will not do. What if I paid you? No. No amount? Million dollars. Yeah. Five million dollars. My life is worth more. That's fair.
00:45:18
Speaker
Sarah, how do you incorporate touch and tactile cueing when you teach? And also when I do rehab? Of course. I have had, I sort of intimated this at the beginning. I've had a sort of interesting, let's say, relationship with tactile cueing from my yoga teacher training experiences. My use of tactile cueing now is very, I guess the word I want to use is specific, but it's always got a extremely specific goal. I'm doing it most often in my life now in a rehab setting because most of the time I spend
00:45:47
Speaker
in the clinic. I spend a lot more time there than I do teaching group classes, but I do the same thing. So one of the ways that I do it in a rehab setting is I might touch a particular muscle like a quadricep and kind of touch it like hard and percussively, not hard in a painful way, but like a tension getting.
00:46:06
Speaker
Wake this up. This is what we want to be working here. You just had a knee replacement and you have a very hard time sensing your quad. I'm going to tap on it really hard because that's one way to use that sensory feedback for your brain to remember where that muscle is, for example. I don't do that so much in a group setting because that's not so much of an issue. I might use my hands to physically place someone
00:46:29
Speaker
in an adjustment from where they have placed themselves and then remove my hands and say, do you feel where you are now? Do you feel how it's different than where you were before? Sort of a compare and contrast.
00:46:42
Speaker
I hear you a lot of times using the verbal to back up the tactile. Yes. Yeah. And I think that's important because otherwise a tactile cue, it then becomes up for interpretation. That's not good. Yeah, it shouldn't. We don't want there to be any debate or discussion in the student's brain around why did this person just touch me. Yeah.
00:47:03
Speaker
So even if the touch is a repositioning, your student might be thinking, oh, wait, was I wrong? Is this right? Should I always be here? It needs to be very, very clear. And I think the only way you establish that clarity is by using more than one type of cueing, either exactly at the same time or right after each other. Right. And then maybe also questions as well.
00:47:26
Speaker
Can you feel the difference between these two places to be in your body? Yes. That's usually how I do it. I'll also do, I mean, I do a lot of manual therapy at work. And I used to, when I was trained, I did the whole like in Shavasana, you put your hands on their shoulders and you kind of press them gently down to the floor and people find it relaxing in theory, or maybe they don't. I used to do a lot more of that kind of stuff when I taught classes or when I teach a workshop. And I don't really do that as much anymore. The types of tactile cueing,
00:47:54
Speaker
are all educational, I would say. I teach exclusively on Zoom, except for the occasional workshops now where I travel to teach. And I have to say that tactile cueing has, maybe you wouldn't expect it to, have become such a big part of my teaching. But I've figured out that an incredibly useful way to cue is to have a student hold on to an implement or to move against an implement.
00:48:20
Speaker
a block, for example, a blanket, a therapy ball, a wall, a chair. These implements all offer these types of cues that we named at the top here of the section, which could be
00:48:33
Speaker
sharp and pointed or broad or specific, you can take an implement like a rectangular block or a soft broad blanket or a spherical small ball and direct students brains to a very
00:48:51
Speaker
Specific or broad part of their body to then be able to Visualize that area of their body perhaps feel into that area of your body and then connect all of that Experience that they may be having through that very powerful Avenue of touch that very direct and immediate Avenue of touch to the words that are coming out of your mouth
00:49:12
Speaker
And I find that I have a hard time teaching without tactile cues because I find they are just really, really valuable. Can I ask you a question? Do you have them put their own hands on themselves? I do, but less now. And the reason is not because I don't think there's a place for that, but when we touch ourselves with our hands, our hands are one of the most sensory rich areas of our body.
00:49:36
Speaker
that there's now multiple avenues of input coming to the brain through the hand and then also through the part of the body that's being touched by the hand. And sometimes that can actually be TMI. That's a very good point. And in many cases, it's better to zero in rather
00:49:51
Speaker
specifically on the area being touched, not the area touching. Yeah. So using something like a block or a ball or a wall or a chair helps you to be able to kind of cut out the middleman, cut off your hand. No, don't do that. Don't do that. But it can be less information, which can actually be more information. It gives one clear channel as opposed to two competing channels. Exactly. Yes, that was a very eloquent way that you put that. Why thank you. Today's theme, compliments.
00:50:18
Speaker
And so tactile cueing can also have a temporal detail like, are you having them touch themselves before teaching the movement? Kind of like a demo. Oh my God, that was terrible. We're definitely cutting that. Since I'm editing this episode, I'll cut that one out. No, I think that's the lead. So there's a temporal quality as well that we can incorporate, which is we can have the student use the implement to
00:50:42
Speaker
place it against their body in some specific place or way, and then teach the movement sans implement. Or we can have them actually use the implement right alongside the movement, depending on what it is. So let me give you an example. Therapy ball is an implement. You can have them roll out their upper shoulder muscles and then have them move their arms around in space afterwards.
00:51:04
Speaker
and sense maybe the tonus of those muscles, the way that those muscles influence the movement of their arm and shoulder blades, what happens to the feeling there when we take our arms forward, backward, to the side, behind us. Contrast that with one of my favorite implements, which is a yoga block. Placing a yoga block, I like to take the yoga block, hold onto it, and place it against some side of my head, which is
00:51:28
Speaker
actually a wonderful way to get a sense of where your neck is in space which is not a very sensory rich part of the body as it turns out and often painful. Is there a connection there? Perhaps. So this can be a great way to teach say the transition from triangle to half moon to triangle and help students really feel upstream to how really their neck muscles relate to their core muscles which relate to their hip muscles and keep the entire torso and head and neck in one position as that transition is happening through space and be pretty
00:51:58
Speaker
helpful. So those are two examples of how tactile cues can be incorporated. Now here's the elephant in the room, Sarah. Back to when teachers touch students, what are maybe some of the really major more serious drawbacks of that one?
00:52:11
Speaker
This is, it's actually, uh, where do we start? Well, it's actually, yes, where do we start? But it, sorry, I am, I'm actually, it's, it is, uh, it's a weirdly hard thing for me to talk about because I have had a lot of personal experience with this and I am going to talk about it in an upcoming episode where we talk about somatic dominance. Whether the goal is this touch can be received as inappropriate. And so then it doesn't matter if that was your goal or not. Right. Right.
00:52:37
Speaker
the part of your body that you're using to touch, the part of your student's body that you are touching. All of these can be inappropriate. They can be uncomfortable. They can elicit a memory. They can trigger a stress response. You don't know, unless you do know, you don't know the life experiences of everybody in that room. Odds are, if it's a room full of mostly women, most of them have had some form of sexual abuse or assault. Unfortunately, it's true.
00:53:07
Speaker
some or all of them may have worked through it to some degree or not, right? So, so that was for me a big reason why I stepped away completely at one point from doing any tactile cueing is that I was just like, it is not appropriate for me to touch anybody without knowing what effect that's going to have on them, not just on their physical form, but on their psyche. And thankfully, I mean, I started as a yoga teacher in a time and, uh,
00:53:37
Speaker
style of yoga where
00:53:39
Speaker
an excess of touching was the norm. If you were in a class, particularly in the style that I was taught in, but in most classes, if you were physically present in a class, it was understood that the teacher was very likely going to put their hands on you. I took a Jeeva Mupti class and it was like, oh yeah, this is happening. Yeah. Yeah. I have no say in this. No, you have no say in it, and that's part of the somatic dominance issue. When I first trained, that was the style and that was the understanding in a lot of flow classes, not only in Jeeva Mupti,
00:54:09
Speaker
And then, thankfully, in the past 10, 15 or so years, maybe more like 10, it hasn't been as long as I thought, think a lot of the time, we've grown a lot in our understanding of what is appropriate, what's not appropriate.
00:54:25
Speaker
and what are appropriate boundaries to have around the choices that you're making and the ways that you cue. And who gets to decide that, the student or the teacher? The student decides that, 100%. And if it's not been decided by the student, then that's hugely problematic.
00:54:41
Speaker
This is why I like just using implements because I can avoid all
Consent and Boundaries in Tactile Cueing
00:54:46
Speaker
of that. Yeah. This is true, but it's going to sound like I'm joking, but I'm actually not joking. I think about when you go to the gynecologist and at least every experience that I have had with a gynecologist is before they do anything, they tell you, I'm going to insert this. I have not always had that experience with a gynecologist. Yeah, it does. It really sucks. And I mean, I go, I mean,
00:55:06
Speaker
This is totally relevant. I go to female gynecologists only. That's my boundary. But that is not always the case with them either. Maybe I've been lucky. Yeah. But in any case, it should be. Or frankly, any doctor putting their hands on you ever should say, I'm going to do this. So now when I am touching someone in a class setting in particular, I'll say, I'm going to put my hand on the side of your hip. Is that okay?
00:55:34
Speaker
And or I might even say, I'm gonna put the hand on the side of my hip to show you where I would like you to attempt to move yourself. Is that okay? Like I just, I probably too much. I over explain, but I'd rather over explain than under explain what I'm about to do and why.
00:55:50
Speaker
Yeah. And I always say, is that okay? And when I see patients in the clinic in their evaluation, the first time I meet them, before I touch them at all, I say, is it okay if I put my hands on you? And some people respond like, well, yeah, because they're like, that's why I'm here. But I always, always ask that because then it is not just, uh, then it is verbally understood between the two of us that that's going to be part of their experience. And it gives them the opportunity to say, no.
00:56:20
Speaker
Yeah, if they need to. Yeah, it gets tricky. We should probably do a whole episode about this, maybe interview someone about it. This topic of consent is very rich because consent is not something that everybody feels that they can have agency over in every single moment, depending on the context. We should definitely do an episode on that. Well, we kind of are. Oh, cool. I was actually thinking about interviewing experts on consent. We should definitely do that.
00:56:49
Speaker
So that's the big elephant in the room. It's one of the bigger considerations that we're going to ask you to make in this entire episode when it comes to touch, which is a form of cueing. And frankly, a very valuable one. And potentially a very valuable one that a teacher can give a student when it's done appropriately. So we don't want to discount them. We don't want to just throw them out. But they are one of the cues that we actually really have to take responsibility for the most.
00:57:17
Speaker
Because when we talk about safety in movement, this extends to aspects of safety that cannot be seen or known. All right, what are some of the smaller drawbacks of touch, Sarah? Where might touch fall short as a teaching tool? How can it become muddied or confusing? What can we do about it? Well, one of the things that I talk to new teachers and teacher trainings about is this idea of having creepy hands.
00:57:45
Speaker
Yeah, we don't want those. Yeah. And creepy hands are hands that I define as they don't know why they're there. The hands or the student or both? All of all of the above. And so often, if you don't know why you're putting your hands on someone,
00:58:00
Speaker
It's going to feel creepy to them. You're not sure. You don't know. Why are you doing what you're doing? If you don't know why you're putting your hands on the person, it is immediately transmitted to them in the way that you were touching. And that's what I call creepy hands. And so creepy hands not only get nothing across to the student,
00:58:17
Speaker
except they might actually get something they don't want or don't want. Except that you're creepy and they're never coming back, but you're not telling them anything about try to create this kind of movement more or see if you can bring your arm over here. They're confusing. They're just weird. The biggest thing about touching someone is it has to have a very clear beginning, middle, end, and it has to have a very clear intention.
00:58:46
Speaker
To your point about demos, visual demos, it's kind of the same thing. Make one point. I remember one of the most irritating experiences I ever had in a yoga class was there was a student teacher who was going around and giving manual adjustments to the people while the teacher of the class was up at the front.
00:59:03
Speaker
And we were doing, I think, side angle pose. And she came in, and she moved my ankle, and then she moved my knee, and then she moved my hip, and then she moved my spine, and then she moved my arm. And by the end of it, I was like, get the fuck off me inside my head. I, of course, did not yell that out because you don't do that in a yoga class. I wish you had. I wish I had too, to be honest. It was too much information. And because of that, it was no information. It was so unclear what this person was doing. I think that student in that moment was like,
00:59:30
Speaker
Well this should be here and this should be here and this should be here and this should be here which is that sort of older way of teaching which is make the student look like the pose. Being a new teacher is hard. It's so hard. I remember another time I was in a different class and I can't remember what we were we were doing some pose and the teacher was sort of making a beeline for me and I knew exactly what adjustment he was going to do. I think I might have been pigeon. I knew exactly what he was going to do on me and I knew that for my
00:59:56
Speaker
particular anatomy for my hips, it was a bad idea. So as he was coming over to me, this is the most aggressive thing I've ever done in a class, and it's not even that aggressive, but for our yoga class setting, it's like super aggressive. So as he was coming over to me, I made really intense eye contact and I said, don't, with exactly that tone. And he didn't come anywhere near me for the rest of the class. I know that listeners didn't see
01:00:23
Speaker
Sarah's eyes when she reenacted the eye contact that she gave the teacher. But I'm not wearing boots and still quaking in them. It was like just this side of murder. And maybe not. Maybe it was the other side of murder. But yeah, no, I mean, I wanted to make it very clear to him that he was not to touch me and I did.
Effective Cueing and Student Autonomy
01:00:43
Speaker
The
01:00:45
Speaker
other way that queuing, I think, can fall short is that when our verbal cues don't reinforce or even match what it is that we're having the students experience tactically, and this is true for hands-on or self-administered touch with an implement or not with an implement, when the verbal cues don't reinforce the thing that's happening through touch,
01:01:12
Speaker
The touch becomes, on the less serious side, really annoying, meaningless, why are we doing this? I do a lot of different stuff in my yoga classes that students probably have never done before, have never experienced before, and so I've learned that I have to be extremely straightforward and clear and simple with my verbal cues when they, especially when they accompany some type of tactile.
01:01:37
Speaker
cueing exploration, otherwise they're like, why am I pressing a block against my head actually? What? Well, but I've had that experience as well where it's something like put a block against your head and then the teacher's talking about your foot and you're like, well, why? What? Huh? That's kind of like that student teacher who was like touching everywhere on your body, but the teacher wasn't talking about any of those things. Yeah. All righty. Well,
01:02:03
Speaker
That was quite the episode and I feel like we should maybe summarize some of the bigger takeaways. What has stood out to you about our conversation? Why don't you list one and I'll list one and we'll go back and forth a couple of times. I'll start. One is verbal, visual, and tactile cueing all have a place. Ideally, one reinforces the other, which reinforces the other. There's going to be contexts in which one is more valuable than the other.
01:02:32
Speaker
I feel like that was three points. You're right. I might have just summarized the whole episode. Sorry. Your turn. Any type of cueing that you're using, know exactly why you're doing it. Can you actually communicate whether it's visual, verbal, tactile less in order to communicate more? Poundcake is not an especially useful prop.
01:03:02
Speaker
Some props that you might not have thought of as a source of touch can be exceptionally useful. If you're putting your hands on somebody, you better fucking know why. And they should have a say in whether or not that's okay. Before it happens. Right. Ideally, I would say in written form. Yes. When you're not standing next to them and going, is it okay now?
01:03:30
Speaker
Yes. I would, if I was a brand new teacher, I might not do any tactile cueing for the first six months to a year with my own hands. I think that's a fair piece of advice. Even if you were formerly a massage therapist, the purpose of the touch is completely different. And so educating your own hands on what to do is going to take some time. When you cue visually, think like a photographer. Ooh.
01:03:59
Speaker
Nice one.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:04:01
Speaker
When you cue verbally, think like an editor. A really, really vicious one, like Sarah. Like, that is true. She kills all my babies. Have you heard that analogy? Yeah. No, no, no. Let me explain. No, I know the analogy. Yeah. It's like, you've got to kill your babies. Yes. Yes. Or I've heard, kill your darlings. Kill your darlings? Which is a little nicer than babies. I have a baby, and I'm OK with it. No, the idea is that we have to be ruthless editors. Yes.
01:04:29
Speaker
And Sarah is one. And that's why I love her. One of the many reasons. Thank you. Laurel gives me lots of things to edit. That's why I love her. I have lots of ideas. Well, no, that's where you say thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. I think that pretty much wraps it up. I think we should wrap it up. I think, whoa. I think you're right. This one's going to need a little editing. Well, I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Why does that always sound so out of the blue?
01:05:00
Speaker
Okay, well, I hope you've enjoyed this episode and that it's given you some new ideas, some new ideas around the differences, the pluses, the minuses of verbal, visual and tactile cueing, as well as how to apply some of these ideas to your teaching to see how do they land for you and for your students.
01:05:19
Speaker
A note to you listeners that you can check out our show notes. For links to any references we mention in this podcast, you can also visit the MovementLogic website, where you can get on our mailing list to be in the know about sales. Speaking of sales, what? The HIPPS course is on sale right now.
01:05:38
Speaker
head on over there ASAP to get it before the sale ends. Finally, thanks so much for joining us on the Movement Logic podcast. It really helps us out that if you like this episode and you want to support Sarah and I and our efforts to create this content for you every week, please rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to this podcast. All right, let's go take a walk on the beach and have some lunch, Sarah. Sounds amazing.