A Good Yoga Teacher Doesn’t Need to Have All the Answers

Has a student ever said something like:

“I feel something weird in my knee when I do this.”

And your brain immediately started scrambling for an answer?

Maybe it’s their patella.

Maybe their glutes aren’t firing.

Maybe their hips are tight.

Because you’re the teacher.

You’re supposed to know…right?

And if you don’t know, it’s really easy to wonder if that means you don’t know enough to be a good teacher.

I think a lot of yoga teachers feel that pressure.

We study anatomy. We learn about movement, injuries, biomechanics, modifications.

And somewhere along the way, it’s easy to start believing that being a good teacher means having an explanation for everything we see.

But sometimes…

we just don’t know.

And when we think we’re supposed to know, there’s an enormous temptation to fill in the blanks.

You Don’t Need an Answer Yet

I’ve been teaching movement for more than twenty years.

And one of the biggest things experience has taught me isn’t how to have more answers.

It’s how to get more comfortable not having one yet.

So let’s go back to that student with the knee.

Instead of deciding why they’re feeling something, what if you got curious?

Where do you feel it?

What does it feel like?

When do you notice it?

And then maybe you change something.

Change the range.

Change their position.

Add some support.

Change the demand.

And then ask:

What happened?

Did that change anything?

Better?

Worse?

Just different?

Now you’re not pretending you know what’s happening inside their body.

You’re gathering information.

And that information can help you decide what to do next.

Observe. Ask. Modify. Reassess. Refer.

There’s a process I teach for this:

Observe → Ask → Modify → Reassess → Refer when appropriate.

Notice what’s not on that list.

Diagnose.

That’s not our job.

And neither is proving to our students how much anatomy we know.

Sometimes the most appropriate thing you can say as a teacher is:

“I don’t know.”

And I don’t think that’s a failure of expertise.

Sometimes it’s evidence of it.

Because expertise also means recognizing the difference between what you can observe, what you can reasonably explore within your scope, and what you simply don’t know.

That Magical Day Isn’t Coming

There isn’t some magical point in your teaching career where you’ve learned enough anatomy that you’ll know exactly what to do with every body that walks through the door.

That day isn’t coming.

People are too wonderfully variable for that.

And thank goodness.

Good teaching isn’t knowing what to do with every body that walks into your class.

Good teaching is learning how to think when you don’t know the answer.

And that’s exactly why I created The Yoga Teacher Companion.

I call her Little Miss Smarty Pants.

The next time something happens in class and you catch yourself thinking:

“I have no idea what to do with that.”

Open her What Happened? tool and tell her what happened.

She won’t diagnose your student.

She won’t pretend there’s one magical correct answer.

She’ll help you think it through.

Try The Yoga Teacher Companion →

Keep learning. Stay curious. And take good care of your people.

— Heather