Four tips for yoga teachers on supporting emotional yoga students.
Yoga is a practice where we can invite students to arrive authentically in their bodies, minds, and feelings. For some practitioners, there aren’t many safe spaces to connect to their feelings. When they arrive on the mat and begin to experience their sensations – maybe for the first time in years – yoga students can become emotional as unexpressed feelings rise to the surface. For me, many times the first few moments I arrive on my mat will bring me to tears, as I become more present to whatever is going on. Even if I’m not particularly sad, sometimes simply being present is poignant enough to cause me to cry. We don’t need to be happy to practice yoga.
Our issues are in our tissues.
Bernie Clark
Most often, feelings will arise when students are moving into a quieter space and are softening to what is arising. Through any feeling may be disconcerting, the most obvious emotional expression is sadness and tears. Here are some tips to create a safe space for supporting emotional yoga students.
1. Acknowledge The Process
If students are not used to feeling emotions (or if they’ve been conditioned to suppress them publicly), they may feel ashamed and embarrassed by their feelings. What an enormous kindness to create a space where feeling their emotions is normal, and in fact, healthy! Create an inclusive space by acknowledging the process to the whole class. For example, you may say, “When we do hip openers, it can be common for strong feelings to come up as we start to unwind deep, habitual patterns of tension in the body” or “It’s normal to start to sense feelings and sensations; give yourself space to let anything that comes up to arise, stay with your breath, and notice that the feelings will shift and change.” Simply acknowledging that feelings may arise will help create space where students can feel that they are “normal.”
2. Acknowledge Your Students
This one requires a little finesse. Often, emotional yoga students will try to hide the fact that they feel emotional (ie: crying) in class because they feel embarrassed. While I will never intentionally single anyone out or draw unwanted attention to them, at the same time there are ways to sensitively acknowledge students who may be having lots of feelings.
Simply placing a tissue box near a student is a way of saying, “It’s okay, I see you, and it’s okay to need a kleenex.”
If you do hands on assists, then giving students a stabilizing press when they’re in child’s pose can be a way of making non-verbal contact.
3. Lots Of Emotions
If a student is having an emotional moment, it may not feel safe to lie with their front body exposed in savasana or to be in motion in asana. If I notice a student is struggling, I will invite that student to come into child’s pose or a prone position where they can feel “hidden” and have some privacy. You can address the class generally, “hey everyone, child’s pose is an option here!” (giving your student a graceful way to take the pose without anyone really the wiser), or you could suggest the option to the student privately in a low tone of voice.
4. Manage Your Class
If a student is visibly or audibly upset, other members of the class will become distracted and be concerned about them. If a student is obviously struggling, you cannot ignore it. At that point, you have to consider protecting the emotional safety of the whole group. Frankly, this level of emotionality is very rare in a public class. However, if a yoga student is obviously emotional, I ask the student to come into child’s pose and focus on their breath. In this situation, I am more interested in using yoga tools to calm the student down than processing feelings. In my experience, coming into child’s pose is usually enough to support students to transition out of a more intense experience.
If this does not resolve the situation, then put the rest of the class into a resting pose, and find out what is necessary to support the student. I treat this kind of situation in the same way I would treat a student who injured themselves physically in class. It must be addressed before the rest of the group will feel easeful about moving forward. If you have desk staff, you may consider asking the student if they wish to take some privacy outside of the class, and leave them in someone’s care.
The most common displays of emotion that come up are tears and sadness. Displays of anger are never appropriate in a group class setting. If a student is behaving in a manner that threatens the emotional or physical safety of another student, then the student must change their behavior, leave the class, or the class must be stopped.
5. Know Your Limits
We are yoga teachers; not therapists or counsellors. While it is within the scope of our practice to create a safe and supportive space for students to experience their feelings, it is not our purview to diagnose, treat, or manage extreme emotional distress. If you have a student who needs additional support, consider referring them to a professional with those skills.
