https://www.yogajournal.com/teach/art-yoga-hands-on-adjustments
The Art of Inside-Out Hands-On Adjustments
Matthew Sanford teaches with a focus on subtle inner sensations, rather than physical actions. Reverse-engineer your hands-on adjustments.
Yoga Journal LIVE! presenter Matthew Sanford teaches with a focus on subtle inner sensations, rather than gross physical actions. Learn how to reverse-engineer your adjustments.
Like most alignment-based teachers, the majority of my adjustments are aimed at helping my students find more optimal alignment for their physical body in asanas. Yoga Journal LIVE! presenter Matthew Sanford approaches adjustments from a radically different perspective, though. Rather than offering physical corrections of a posture, Sanford believes that the real art of adjusting lies in revealing the pose’s effects on the subtle body.
Inside-Out Adjustments
Sanford, who due to his paralysis cannot make adjustments that require any sort of body leverage, was forced to take another look at adjustments, as well as the asanas. He now use an inside-out rather than the outside-in approach and focuses on shifting awareness from the actions of the muscles, bones, and joints to the subtleties of how consciousness moves and flows in poses.
“I think an adjustment is trying to reveal to you the subtlety in a pose — the way that the prana moves in the pose,” Sanford says. “And then the student has to explore how to sustain that sensation through the actions of the asanas.” Simply put, Sanford is reverse-engineering asana adjustments.
Also see A-ha! Adjustments
How to Make Inside-Out Adjustments
Let’s take Warrior II for example. As a teacher, you could lightly support the underside of each of a student’s upper arms from behind, eliminating a little bit of gravity and bringing some ease into the pose. Then you’d ask the student to find a way to maintain that ease. They may figure out that they need to use their legs more to support the pose, say.
Sanford points out that there’s a big difference in receiving an adjustment and taking an adjustment and that a good student will learn from an adjustment on the spot, paying attention to what is being revealed and where or how they need to work to support the sensation.
The Goal of Good Adjustments
At the end of the day, all good adjustments aim to do the same thing—create freedom, ease, and a sense of space in a pose. Arguing that the “sense of becoming a pose isn’t necessarily achieved through physical action,” Sanford believes adjustments should also reveal the internal direction and flow of subtle awareness through the body in asana.
3 Tips for Making Subtle-Body Adjustments
As a teacher, you can begin by asking yourself, what am I trying to reveal with each adjustment I give? Then play around with different ways of helping your students experience it through your language and touch.
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