What if becoming a more confident yoga teacher isn’t about having more answers, but learning to ask better questions?

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Sometimes the most useful thing a yoga teacher can do isn’t make a correction—it’s ask a better question.

In this week’s video, I’m exploring why the difference between what we observe and what we assume matters so much in our teaching.

Watch: Yoga Teachers… You Need Better Questions →

You’re teaching a class, and you notice something unexpected.

A student’s heel lifts during a movement.

One hip appears higher than the other.

Someone tells you their hamstrings feel tight.

A student balances easily on one side but struggles on the other.

And almost immediately, your teacher brain starts working.

What’s causing that? What does it mean? How do I fix it?

It’s a familiar response, especially when you’ve spent years learning anatomy, biomechanics, alignment principles, and modifications.

But before you decide what needs correcting, there’s a more useful question to ask:

What do I actually know?

Observation Is Not the Same as Interpretation

This is one of the most important distinctions we can make as yoga teachers.

When you observe a student’s movement, you’re gathering information. But what you see doesn’t necessarily tell you why something is happening.

Consider a few examples.

Observation: A student’s heel lifts during a squat.

Interpretation: Their ankle mobility is limited.

Maybe it is. But a lifting heel alone doesn’t establish that conclusion.

Observation: One side of a student’s pelvis appears higher than the other.

Interpretation: Their pelvis is misaligned.

That’s a much bigger claim than the observation supports.

Information from your student: “My hamstring feels tight.”

Interpretation: Their hamstring is shortened and needs stretching.

The student has described a sensation. That doesn’t automatically tell us which tissue is responsible or what intervention, if any, is appropriate.

Interpretation isn’t inherently wrong. We interpret information constantly when we teach.

The problem arises when we move from noticing something to believing we understand its cause without recognizing the assumptions we’ve made along the way.

And once we’ve decided what something means, it’s very tempting to correct it.

What If Your Next Move Was a Question?

Instead of immediately trying to fix what you’ve noticed, consider what else you could learn.

You might ask your student:

• Where do you feel that?
• Does it feel different when you change your stance?
• What happens if you bend your knee?
• Does reducing the range change the experience?
• Is there a difference between your right and left sides?

These questions help us combine two important sources of information: what we can observe from the outside and what our students can report about their own experiences.

And sometimes, we can learn even more by changing one variable.

Adjust the stance.

Reduce the range.

Change the position.

Modify the load.

Then reassess.

What changed?

Perhaps the movement became more comfortable. Perhaps the student felt more stable. Perhaps nothing changed at all.

Each response gives us additional information.

But here’s an important distinction:

More information doesn’t necessarily mean we have a definitive answer.

It simply means we have a better foundation for deciding what to do next.

Why Yoga Teachers Feel Pressure to Have an Answer

I think there’s another reason teachers sometimes rush toward corrections.

Not knowing can feel uncomfortable.

Many yoga teachers enter training believing they’ll learn how bodies are supposed to move, what common movement patterns mean, and how to correct anything that looks different.

And when something happens that doesn’t fit neatly into what they’ve learned, they may begin questioning their own competence.

Shouldn’t I know what this means?

Maybe I need more anatomy training.

Would a more experienced teacher know how to fix this?

Additional education can certainly deepen our understanding and improve our teaching.

But no amount of training will give us the ability to determine everything happening inside another person’s body simply by watching them move.

And that’s not a failure of education.

It’s a limitation of the information available to us.

After more than twenty years of teaching yoga, I’ve come to think about confidence differently.

Confidence isn’t knowing what everything means the moment you see it.

Confidence is being able to say, “I don’t know yet,” and still know what to do next.

That is a skill worth developing.

A Better Framework for Teaching Decisions

When something unexpected happens in your class, you don’t necessarily need an immediate explanation.

You need a process that helps you respond thoughtfully.

1. Observe

What are you actually seeing?

Describe the movement or situation without assigning a cause.

Instead of “Their hips are misaligned,” start with “Their pelvis appears different on one side.”

Keep the observation separate from the interpretation.

2. Ask

What information does your student have that you don’t?

Ask about their experience without assuming you already understand it.

Their response may change how you interpret what you’ve observed.

3. Change Something, When Appropriate

If there’s a reason to explore a different approach, change one variable.

You might adjust the stance, range, position, or demand of the movement.

Make the change purposeful rather than automatically treating a difference as a problem.

4. Reassess

What happened after the change?

Did the student’s experience improve?

Did the movement change?

Was the adjustment useful?

Or did you discover that the original movement was perfectly acceptable for that student?

5. Recognize When to Leave Something Alone

This might be one of the most overlooked teaching skills.

Not every difference needs a correction.

Bodies vary. Movement strategies vary. Individual experiences vary.

And something looking different from what you expected doesn’t automatically make it wrong.

Sometimes the most appropriate response is to let your student continue moving.

Other times, the situation may be outside your scope of practice and warrant referral to a qualified healthcare professional.

Good teaching includes knowing the difference.

Your Students Don’t Need You to Know Everything

Your students need a teacher who pays attention.

Someone who listens.

Someone who can distinguish observation from assumption.

Someone willing to explore possibilities without manufacturing certainty.

And someone who understands that teaching yoga isn’t the same thing as diagnosing or treating the human body.

When we stop treating every unexpected movement as a problem to solve, we create more room for curiosity, individual variation, and thoughtful decision-making.

We also take some unnecessary pressure off ourselves.

Because being a good teacher doesn’t require having an explanation for everything.

It requires knowing how to work responsibly with the information you have.

The next time you notice something unexpected in a student’s movement, before reaching for a correction, ask yourself two questions:

What do I actually know?

And what could I learn next?

Those questions might improve your teaching far more than another correction ever could.

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Want Help Thinking Through Real Teaching Situations?

This is exactly why I created The Yoga Teacher Companion.

Drawing on more than twenty years of teaching experience and fifteen years of training yoga teachers, I built four interactive tools to support the thinking and decision-making that happen beyond the pages of a training manual.

One of those tools is called What Happened?

You bring it a real teaching situation—something unexpected you observed, a question a student asked, or a movement you aren’t quite sure how to interpret.

Instead of handing you a diagnosis or pretending there’s one universally correct answer, the tool helps you examine what you observed, what your student reported, what you’re assuming, and what you might explore next.

It’s designed to help you think, not to do your thinking for you.

Explore The Yoga Teacher Companion

Because becoming a more confident yoga teacher doesn’t mean eliminating every “I don’t know.”

It means getting better at deciding what to do next.