WEBVTT
00:03:59.305 --> 00:04:00.605
Welcome back to the podcast.
00:04:00.695 --> 00:04:03.375
I'm Monica, and I'm so glad you're here.
00:04:03.576 --> 00:04:13.574
Here is where we talk about anatomy, injuries, the nervous system, and answer many of the questions you wish had been included in your yoga teacher training.
00:04:13.780 --> 00:04:21.772
I'm a yoga teacher who specializes in helping teachers work confidently with students who have pain and injuries.
00:04:21.942 --> 00:04:29.495
I facilitate anatomy trainings for yoga teachers, and I mentor teachers inside my six-month mentorship program.
00:04:29.865 --> 00:04:43.329
Today, I wanna talk about a term that you may or may not have come across, but that describes something you're already working with in every single class you teach, whether you know the name for it or not.
00:04:43.555 --> 00:04:46.810
That word is interoception.
00:04:47.117 --> 00:05:03.613
I wanna give you a clear understanding of what it is, why teaching it matters so much for your students, especially students who are dealing with pain or injury, and then give you concrete ways to actually teach it.
00:05:04.004 --> 00:05:12.693
because this is one of those things that can sound abstract, but I wanna make it practical and usable for you starting in your very next class.
00:05:13.079 --> 00:05:14.629
Let's start with the definition.
00:05:14.911 --> 00:05:19.560
Interoception is your sense of the internal state of your body.
00:05:19.831 --> 00:05:37.317
It is the perception of signals coming from inside you, your heartbeat, your breathing, hunger and fullness, the need to use the bathroom, your temperature, muscular tension and effort, nausea, pain.
00:05:37.507 --> 00:05:46.137
It's the general felt sense of whether you are calm or activated, comfortable or uneasy.
00:05:46.448 --> 00:05:51.499
It helps to place it alongside the other senses that we talk about more often.
00:05:51.772 --> 00:06:01.462
Exteroception is your perception of the outside world through your sense of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
00:06:01.685 --> 00:06:09.773
proprioception is your sense of where your body is in space, where your limbs are, how your joints are positioned.
00:06:10.062 --> 00:06:13.002
Interoception is the third piece.
00:06:13.185 --> 00:06:19.655
It is the inward-facing sense that tells you what is happening inside your own body.
00:06:19.865 --> 00:06:24.446
This is what I find so interesting about interoception.
00:06:24.446 --> 00:06:29.665
Every person has a different level of interoceptive awareness.
00:06:29.923 --> 00:06:33.533
Some people are highly attuned to their internal signals.
00:06:33.730 --> 00:06:36.060
They notice when their heart rate changes.
00:06:36.329 --> 00:06:45.802
They feel tension building in their shoulders long before it becomes pain They know when they are hungry or tired or anxious.
00:06:46.081 --> 00:06:50.062
Other people have very little access to this information.
00:06:50.304 --> 00:06:53.995
They do not notice they are stressed until they have a headache.
00:06:54.284 --> 00:06:58.674
They cannot tell whether they are pushing too hard in a pose.
00:06:58.961 --> 00:07:06.404
They are essentially living slightly disconnected from the interior of their own body.
00:07:06.634 --> 00:07:23.084
Interoceptive awareness is shaped by all kinds of things, including life experience, stress, trauma, chronic pain, and simply whether anyone ever taught them to pay close attention to this stuff.
00:07:23.302 --> 00:07:28.471
And here's the good news for us as teachers, interoception is trainable.
00:07:28.721 --> 00:07:31.151
It is a skill that can be developed.
00:07:31.268 --> 00:07:36.408
and a yoga class is one of the best environments for developing it.
00:07:36.654 --> 00:07:45.634
For your general students, developing interoceptive awareness changes their relationship with their body in a fundamental way.
00:07:46.084 --> 00:07:51.794
A student who can feel what is happening internally starts to notice things earlier.
00:07:52.048 --> 00:07:55.007
They catch tension before it becomes pain.
00:07:55.337 --> 00:07:59.887
They notice when stress is showing up physically in their bodies.
00:08:00.107 --> 00:08:03.997
They can feel when their breath has gotten short and shallow.
00:08:04.197 --> 00:08:12.345
All of that information helps them take care of themselves in class and outside of class in their everyday lives.
00:08:12.611 --> 00:08:22.901
For students who are managing pain or recovering from injury, interoception becomes even more important and also more complicated.
00:08:23.108 --> 00:08:27.517
Pain is itself an interoceptive signal.
00:08:27.617 --> 00:08:30.601
It's the nervous system communicating something.
00:08:30.737 --> 00:08:39.764
But for someone with persistent pain, that signaling system can become noisy and less reliable.
00:08:39.988 --> 00:08:47.721
The nervous system may be sending danger signals that are out of proportion to what is actually happening in the tissue.
00:08:48.147 --> 00:08:56.697
Some students in chronic pain become hypervigilant, monitoring every sensation with anxiety.
00:08:57.137 --> 00:09:06.367
Others go the opposite direction and disconnect entirely, tuning out their body because feeling it has become distressing.
00:09:06.685 --> 00:09:14.615
Careful, gentle, well-guided interoceptive work can be genuinely valuable for your students.
00:09:14.966 --> 00:09:28.925
Not to force students to feel more, but to help them rebuild a relationship with their internal signals that becomes curious instead of fearful, and specific rather than overwhelming.
00:09:29.418 --> 00:09:35.847
Interoception is closely connected with the nervous system and to emotional regulation.
00:09:36.182 --> 00:09:46.543
The ability to notice what is happening in the body is a foundational part of being able to recognize and manage your own state.
00:09:46.853 --> 00:09:59.802
When you teach a student to notice their breath, their tension, the quality of their internal experience, you are giving them a tool that extends well beyond yoga class.
00:10:00.232 --> 00:10:02.002
Okay, let's get practical.
00:10:02.245 --> 00:10:11.254
How do you actually build interoceptive awareness in a yoga class without making it vague or sounding preachy?
00:10:11.674 --> 00:10:18.485
I'm gonna share how I teach my students interoception, and I don't even have to use the word in class.
00:10:18.839 --> 00:10:24.000
The first approach is to name what to notice specifically.
00:10:24.250 --> 00:10:32.879
This is the most important shift, and it is the difference between interoceptive teaching and just saying words.
00:10:33.049 --> 00:10:38.879
When you say,"Notice how you feel," most students do not know what to do with that.
00:10:39.049 --> 00:10:40.579
It's too broad.
00:10:40.789 --> 00:11:02.692
But when you say,"Notice the temperature of your breath as it moves in and out," or,"Notice whether your jaw is holding any tension right now," or, Notice where you feel the effort of this pose the most," you have now given them a specific example of what to look for.
00:11:02.932 --> 00:11:13.705
You are teaching them what to look for, which is how the skill gets built the second approach is to build in actual pauses.
00:11:14.026 --> 00:11:16.855
Interoception requires time.
00:11:17.076 --> 00:11:28.806
You cannot notice your internal state while you are being cued through a transition, so you need moments where nothing is happening except the attention to the feeling.
00:11:29.143 --> 00:11:32.832
This could be three breaths in a pose where you say nothing.
00:11:33.048 --> 00:11:35.838
It might be a pause between sides.
00:11:36.022 --> 00:11:45.633
It might be a moment in a resting shape where you invite a single specific noticing and then follow that with silence.
00:11:45.949 --> 00:11:51.259
These pauses might feel long to you as the teacher, but they're not long for your students.
00:11:51.288 --> 00:11:52.878
They are necessary.
00:11:53.469 --> 00:12:01.229
The third approach is contrast, which is one of the most effective teaching tools there is for this.
00:12:01.558 --> 00:12:08.322
So do one side of a pose and then pause before the second side and invite comparison.
00:12:08.712 --> 00:12:20.783
Ask students to tense a muscle group deliberately and then release it so they can feel the difference between held or engaged and relaxed.
00:12:21.242 --> 00:12:28.822
Ask them to take one slightly deeper breath and then return to normal breathing and notice what changed.
00:12:29.056 --> 00:12:36.016
Contrast is one of my favorite ways to teach internal feeling and interoception.
00:12:36.472 --> 00:12:42.742
The fourth approach is to use language of curiosity rather than evaluation.
00:12:43.022 --> 00:13:00.985
This is a real difference between saying,"Notice if you are doing this right," and,"Notice what you feel here." The first asks the student to judge themselves against a particular standard, a right or a wrong.
00:13:01.286 --> 00:13:05.455
the second invites them to gather their own information.
00:13:05.756 --> 00:13:16.272
for interoceptive work especially, it's important for students to not lean into judgment, but instead lean into curiosity.
00:13:16.516 --> 00:13:33.067
And for students in pain, this matters enormously because they are often already evaluating every sensation with a bit of anxiety The fifth approach is to give students permission not to feel much or anything.
00:13:33.298 --> 00:13:46.038
This is important because if a student has low interoceptive awareness and you keep asking them to notice things they cannot detect, they will feel like maybe they're failing at yoga.
00:13:46.238 --> 00:14:03.285
So say something like,"You might notice a lot here, or you might not notice much at all, and both are completely fine." Offering this keeps students present in class instead of concluding to themselves that they are just bad at yoga.
00:14:03.855 --> 00:14:11.035
Now, I'll be honest, interoceptive work sits close to a line that we need to be thoughtful about.
00:14:11.565 --> 00:14:24.974
When you start inviting students to pay close attention to internal sensation, especially students with pain and injuries, you may find that they start telling you more about themselves.
00:14:25.375 --> 00:14:29.434
They might notice something and they wanna know what it means.
00:14:29.615 --> 00:14:30.704
Is this normal?
00:14:30.825 --> 00:14:32.065
Should I be worried?
00:14:32.174 --> 00:14:35.115
What is that clicking feeling that I feel?
00:14:35.444 --> 00:14:38.105
Why does this always hurt on the left side?
00:14:38.565 --> 00:14:53.022
And that is where a lot of teachers get nervous because the line between supporting a student and giving medical advice can feel blurry I wrote an article for Yoga Journal Magazine about exactly this.
00:14:53.093 --> 00:15:00.462
It's titled Yoga Teachers: Here's How to Support Students With Injuries Without Giving Medical Advice.
00:15:00.762 --> 00:15:10.288
And it helps you understand how to have these conversations in a way that is helpful to your student while staying clearly inside your scope.
00:15:10.550 --> 00:15:20.550
I'll add the link to the article in the show notes, and I would encourage you to read it alongside this conversation because the two go hand-in-hand.
00:15:21.060 --> 00:15:30.651
Teaching interoception opens the door to more student disclosure, and you wanna feel confident about what you do when that door opens.
00:15:31.020 --> 00:15:37.721
You can absolutely help a student notice, describe, and explore their own sensation.
00:15:37.894 --> 00:15:41.355
That is squarely within your role as a movement teacher.
00:15:41.644 --> 00:15:50.371
What you're not doing is telling them what that sensation means diagnostically or what is happening structurally in their tissues.
00:15:50.688 --> 00:15:53.528
You are helping them gather information.
00:15:53.677 --> 00:15:58.948
What they do with that information and who they take it to is a different conversation.
00:15:59.357 --> 00:16:07.438
To guide interoception well, you need to have some idea of what your students might actually be feeling and why.
00:16:07.857 --> 00:16:21.035
When you cue a student to notice sensation in the front of their hip in a lunge, it helps if you understand what structures are there and what might be creating that sensation.
00:16:21.434 --> 00:16:34.335
When a student says they feel something deep in their shoulder in a certain position, your ability to ask useful follow-up questions depends on you having a mental map of that joint.
00:16:34.540 --> 00:16:53.459
You're not diagnosing, but the more clearly you understand the body, the better your noticing cues become and the more useful your conversations with students become Anatomy makes your interoceptive teaching more specific and specificity is so important here.
00:16:53.838 --> 00:16:59.408
this is actually part of why I've been building a mini course called the Anatomy Refresh.
00:16:59.608 --> 00:17:16.527
It's an approachable, not overwhelming way to build real usable understanding of the joints and structures that matter most in your teaching so that everything we talk about on this podcast feels like it actually clicks into place.
00:17:16.866 --> 00:17:29.326
If you have been wanting a refresher anatomy training that will help make your cueing more specific and your conversations with students more confident, I am building this just for that.
00:17:29.817 --> 00:17:34.446
Okay, I promised you some questions to ponder, so let's get to them.
00:17:34.817 --> 00:17:42.057
Get your journal, your notes app, or a piece of paper that you can write these down and refer back to whenever you like.
00:17:42.423 --> 00:17:51.076
First, ask yourself,"In my classes, how much time do I actually leave for students to notice anything?
00:17:51.376 --> 00:18:00.702
Not to hear me talk about noticing, but to actually be quiet with their own experience." Be honest with yourself here.
00:18:01.166 --> 00:18:15.650
Second question, when I invite students to notice something, am I being specific about what to notice or am I just saying something broad like,"Feel your body," and hoping they know how to do that?
00:18:16.093 --> 00:18:28.343
Third, do I use language that invites curiosity or does my noticing language subtly ask students to evaluate whether they are doing a pose right?
00:18:28.792 --> 00:18:43.779
Fourth question, have I ever told my students that not noticing much is completely okay or might some of them be feeling like they're failing at noticing the interior part of the practice?
00:18:44.150 --> 00:18:49.309
And fifth, when a student tells me something they noticed, how do I respond?
00:18:49.450 --> 00:18:56.643
Do I feel confident in that conversation or do I get uncomfortable and try to change the subject?
00:18:57.106 --> 00:19:08.846
All right, here are a few specific things you can try in your very next class Because I want you to have a takeaway from this episode that you can apply into your classes.
00:19:09.192 --> 00:19:18.442
Pick one specific interoceptive cue and use it well rather than sprinkling vague ones all throughout class.
00:19:18.692 --> 00:19:27.462
Something like inviting students to notice the temperature or texture of their breath at three points in your class.
00:19:27.757 --> 00:19:34.650
Remember, teaching one thing clearly teaches more than trying to teach 10 different things vaguely.
00:19:35.067 --> 00:19:39.000
Another thing you can try is to use a contrast moment.
00:19:39.267 --> 00:19:45.527
Do one side, pause, and ask students to compare the two sides before moving on.
00:19:45.906 --> 00:19:50.930
Give them a full breath or two of silence to actually do it.
00:19:51.517 --> 00:19:56.626
A third thing you can try is to add in one good chance to pause.
00:19:56.956 --> 00:20:09.692
Find a single moment in your sequence where you stop talking for three to four to five full breaths after offering one noticing invitation.
00:20:10.052 --> 00:20:12.333
You can count it out in your head if you need to.
00:20:12.633 --> 00:20:19.663
It might feel like an eternity to you, but I promise it will feel like relief to your students.
00:20:20.012 --> 00:20:27.057
And finally, give your students permission to be okay with feeling something or not.
00:20:27.359 --> 00:20:33.846
You can say, You might notice a lot, or you might not notice much at all, and both are fine.
00:20:33.856 --> 00:20:38.359
Just notice what it is." Then watch what happens in your class.
00:20:38.613 --> 00:20:41.742
Here's what I want you to take away from this episode.
00:20:42.182 --> 00:20:45.863
Interoception is not a mystical concept.
00:20:45.903 --> 00:20:46.982
It's real.
00:20:47.182 --> 00:20:49.333
It's a describable sense.
00:20:49.552 --> 00:20:56.792
It is trainable, and yoga classes are one of the best environments there is for developing it.
00:20:57.029 --> 00:21:08.289
Your students are going to be better at taking care of themselves, better at communicating with you, and better at navigating their own bodies when they have this skill.
00:21:08.563 --> 00:21:22.808
And the way you teach it is not by talking about it more or naming it It's by being specific, leaving space, using contrast, and teaching students to become curious.
00:21:22.984 --> 00:21:31.430
Thank you so much for being here and joining the conversations we deserve to have to help continue your education and evolve your teaching.
00:21:31.703 --> 00:21:32.094
Okay.
00:21:32.267 --> 00:21:35.987
Check out the Yoga Journal article that I've linked in the show notes.
00:21:36.227 --> 00:21:37.557
All right, bye.
00:03:59.305 --> 00:04:00.605
Welcome back to the podcast.
00:04:00.695 --> 00:04:03.375
I'm Monica, and I'm so glad you're here.
00:04:03.576 --> 00:04:13.574
Here is where we talk about anatomy, injuries, the nervous system, and answer many of the questions you wish had been included in your yoga teacher training.
00:04:13.780 --> 00:04:21.772
I'm a yoga teacher who specializes in helping teachers work confidently with students who have pain and injuries.
00:04:21.942 --> 00:04:29.495
I facilitate anatomy trainings for yoga teachers, and I mentor teachers inside my six-month mentorship program.
00:04:29.865 --> 00:04:43.329
Today, I wanna talk about a term that you may or may not have come across, but that describes something you're already working with in every single class you teach, whether you know the name for it or not.
00:04:43.555 --> 00:04:46.810
That word is interoception.
00:04:47.117 --> 00:05:03.613
I wanna give you a clear understanding of what it is, why teaching it matters so much for your students, especially students who are dealing with pain or injury, and then give you concrete ways to actually teach it.
00:05:04.004 --> 00:05:12.693
because this is one of those things that can sound abstract, but I wanna make it practical and usable for you starting in your very next class.
00:05:13.079 --> 00:05:14.629
Let's start with the definition.
00:05:14.911 --> 00:05:19.560
Interoception is your sense of the internal state of your body.
00:05:19.831 --> 00:05:37.317
It is the perception of signals coming from inside you, your heartbeat, your breathing, hunger and fullness, the need to use the bathroom, your temperature, muscular tension and effort, nausea, pain.
00:05:37.507 --> 00:05:46.137
It's the general felt sense of whether you are calm or activated, comfortable or uneasy.
00:05:46.448 --> 00:05:51.499
It helps to place it alongside the other senses that we talk about more often.
00:05:51.772 --> 00:06:01.462
Exteroception is your perception of the outside world through your sense of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
00:06:01.685 --> 00:06:09.773
proprioception is your sense of where your body is in space, where your limbs are, how your joints are positioned.
00:06:10.062 --> 00:06:13.002
Interoception is the third piece.
00:06:13.185 --> 00:06:19.655
It is the inward-facing sense that tells you what is happening inside your own body.
00:06:19.865 --> 00:06:24.446
This is what I find so interesting about interoception.
00:06:24.446 --> 00:06:29.665
Every person has a different level of interoceptive awareness.
00:06:29.923 --> 00:06:33.533
Some people are highly attuned to their internal signals.
00:06:33.730 --> 00:06:36.060
They notice when their heart rate changes.
00:06:36.329 --> 00:06:45.802
They feel tension building in their shoulders long before it becomes pain They know when they are hungry or tired or anxious.
00:06:46.081 --> 00:06:50.062
Other people have very little access to this information.
00:06:50.304 --> 00:06:53.995
They do not notice they are stressed until they have a headache.
00:06:54.284 --> 00:06:58.674
They cannot tell whether they are pushing too hard in a pose.
00:06:58.961 --> 00:07:06.404
They are essentially living slightly disconnected from the interior of their own body.
00:07:06.634 --> 00:07:23.084
Interoceptive awareness is shaped by all kinds of things, including life experience, stress, trauma, chronic pain, and simply whether anyone ever taught them to pay close attention to this stuff.
00:07:23.302 --> 00:07:28.471
And here's the good news for us as teachers, interoception is trainable.
00:07:28.721 --> 00:07:31.151
It is a skill that can be developed.
00:07:31.268 --> 00:07:36.408
and a yoga class is one of the best environments for developing it.
00:07:36.654 --> 00:07:45.634
For your general students, developing interoceptive awareness changes their relationship with their body in a fundamental way.
00:07:46.084 --> 00:07:51.794
A student who can feel what is happening internally starts to notice things earlier.
00:07:52.048 --> 00:07:55.007
They catch tension before it becomes pain.
00:07:55.337 --> 00:07:59.887
They notice when stress is showing up physically in their bodies.
00:08:00.107 --> 00:08:03.997
They can feel when their breath has gotten short and shallow.
00:08:04.197 --> 00:08:12.345
All of that information helps them take care of themselves in class and outside of class in their everyday lives.
00:08:12.611 --> 00:08:22.901
For students who are managing pain or recovering from injury, interoception becomes even more important and also more complicated.
00:08:23.108 --> 00:08:27.517
Pain is itself an interoceptive signal.
00:08:27.617 --> 00:08:30.601
It's the nervous system communicating something.
00:08:30.737 --> 00:08:39.764
But for someone with persistent pain, that signaling system can become noisy and less reliable.
00:08:39.988 --> 00:08:47.721
The nervous system may be sending danger signals that are out of proportion to what is actually happening in the tissue.
00:08:48.147 --> 00:08:56.697
Some students in chronic pain become hypervigilant, monitoring every sensation with anxiety.
00:08:57.137 --> 00:09:06.367
Others go the opposite direction and disconnect entirely, tuning out their body because feeling it has become distressing.
00:09:06.685 --> 00:09:14.615
Careful, gentle, well-guided interoceptive work can be genuinely valuable for your students.
00:09:14.966 --> 00:09:28.925
Not to force students to feel more, but to help them rebuild a relationship with their internal signals that becomes curious instead of fearful, and specific rather than overwhelming.
00:09:29.418 --> 00:09:35.847
Interoception is closely connected with the nervous system and to emotional regulation.
00:09:36.182 --> 00:09:46.543
The ability to notice what is happening in the body is a foundational part of being able to recognize and manage your own state.
00:09:46.853 --> 00:09:59.802
When you teach a student to notice their breath, their tension, the quality of their internal experience, you are giving them a tool that extends well beyond yoga class.
00:10:00.232 --> 00:10:02.002
Okay, let's get practical.
00:10:02.245 --> 00:10:11.254
How do you actually build interoceptive awareness in a yoga class without making it vague or sounding preachy?
00:10:11.674 --> 00:10:18.485
I'm gonna share how I teach my students interoception, and I don't even have to use the word in class.
00:10:18.839 --> 00:10:24.000
The first approach is to name what to notice specifically.
00:10:24.250 --> 00:10:32.879
This is the most important shift, and it is the difference between interoceptive teaching and just saying words.
00:10:33.049 --> 00:10:38.879
When you say,"Notice how you feel," most students do not know what to do with that.
00:10:39.049 --> 00:10:40.579
It's too broad.
00:10:40.789 --> 00:11:02.692
But when you say,"Notice the temperature of your breath as it moves in and out," or,"Notice whether your jaw is holding any tension right now," or, Notice where you feel the effort of this pose the most," you have now given them a specific example of what to look for.
00:11:02.932 --> 00:11:13.705
You are teaching them what to look for, which is how the skill gets built the second approach is to build in actual pauses.
00:11:14.026 --> 00:11:16.855
Interoception requires time.
00:11:17.076 --> 00:11:28.806
You cannot notice your internal state while you are being cued through a transition, so you need moments where nothing is happening except the attention to the feeling.
00:11:29.143 --> 00:11:32.832
This could be three breaths in a pose where you say nothing.
00:11:33.048 --> 00:11:35.838
It might be a pause between sides.
00:11:36.022 --> 00:11:45.633
It might be a moment in a resting shape where you invite a single specific noticing and then follow that with silence.
00:11:45.949 --> 00:11:51.259
These pauses might feel long to you as the teacher, but they're not long for your students.
00:11:51.288 --> 00:11:52.878
They are necessary.
00:11:53.469 --> 00:12:01.229
The third approach is contrast, which is one of the most effective teaching tools there is for this.
00:12:01.558 --> 00:12:08.322
So do one side of a pose and then pause before the second side and invite comparison.
00:12:08.712 --> 00:12:20.783
Ask students to tense a muscle group deliberately and then release it so they can feel the difference between held or engaged and relaxed.
00:12:21.242 --> 00:12:28.822
Ask them to take one slightly deeper breath and then return to normal breathing and notice what changed.
00:12:29.056 --> 00:12:36.016
Contrast is one of my favorite ways to teach internal feeling and interoception.
00:12:36.472 --> 00:12:42.742
The fourth approach is to use language of curiosity rather than evaluation.
00:12:43.022 --> 00:13:00.985
This is a real difference between saying,"Notice if you are doing this right," and,"Notice what you feel here." The first asks the student to judge themselves against a particular standard, a right or a wrong.
00:13:01.286 --> 00:13:05.455
the second invites them to gather their own information.
00:13:05.756 --> 00:13:16.272
for interoceptive work especially, it's important for students to not lean into judgment, but instead lean into curiosity.
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And for students in pain, this matters enormously because they are often already evaluating every sensation with a bit of anxiety The fifth approach is to give students permission not to feel much or anything.
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This is important because if a student has low interoceptive awareness and you keep asking them to notice things they cannot detect, they will feel like maybe they're failing at yoga.
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So say something like,"You might notice a lot here, or you might not notice much at all, and both are completely fine." Offering this keeps students present in class instead of concluding to themselves that they are just bad at yoga.
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Now, I'll be honest, interoceptive work sits close to a line that we need to be thoughtful about.
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When you start inviting students to pay close attention to internal sensation, especially students with pain and injuries, you may find that they start telling you more about themselves.
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They might notice something and they wanna know what it means.
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Is this normal?
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Should I be worried?
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What is that clicking feeling that I feel?
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Why does this always hurt on the left side?
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And that is where a lot of teachers get nervous because the line between supporting a student and giving medical advice can feel blurry I wrote an article for Yoga Journal Magazine about exactly this.
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It's titled Yoga Teachers: Here's How to Support Students With Injuries Without Giving Medical Advice.
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And it helps you understand how to have these conversations in a way that is helpful to your student while staying clearly inside your scope.
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I'll add the link to the article in the show notes, and I would encourage you to read it alongside this conversation because the two go hand-in-hand.
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Teaching interoception opens the door to more student disclosure, and you wanna feel confident about what you do when that door opens.
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You can absolutely help a student notice, describe, and explore their own sensation.
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That is squarely within your role as a movement teacher.
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What you're not doing is telling them what that sensation means diagnostically or what is happening structurally in their tissues.
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You are helping them gather information.
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What they do with that information and who they take it to is a different conversation.
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To guide interoception well, you need to have some idea of what your students might actually be feeling and why.
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When you cue a student to notice sensation in the front of their hip in a lunge, it helps if you understand what structures are there and what might be creating that sensation.
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When a student says they feel something deep in their shoulder in a certain position, your ability to ask useful follow-up questions depends on you having a mental map of that joint.
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You're not diagnosing, but the more clearly you understand the body, the better your noticing cues become and the more useful your conversations with students become Anatomy makes your interoceptive teaching more specific and specificity is so important here.
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this is actually part of why I've been building a mini course called the Anatomy Refresh.
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It's an approachable, not overwhelming way to build real usable understanding of the joints and structures that matter most in your teaching so that everything we talk about on this podcast feels like it actually clicks into place.
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If you have been wanting a refresher anatomy training that will help make your cueing more specific and your conversations with students more confident, I am building this just for that.
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Okay, I promised you some questions to ponder, so let's get to them.
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Get your journal, your notes app, or a piece of paper that you can write these down and refer back to whenever you like.
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First, ask yourself,"In my classes, how much time do I actually leave for students to notice anything?
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Not to hear me talk about noticing, but to actually be quiet with their own experience." Be honest with yourself here.
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Second question, when I invite students to notice something, am I being specific about what to notice or am I just saying something broad like,"Feel your body," and hoping they know how to do that?
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Third, do I use language that invites curiosity or does my noticing language subtly ask students to evaluate whether they are doing a pose right?
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Fourth question, have I ever told my students that not noticing much is completely okay or might some of them be feeling like they're failing at noticing the interior part of the practice?
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And fifth, when a student tells me something they noticed, how do I respond?
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Do I feel confident in that conversation or do I get uncomfortable and try to change the subject?
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All right, here are a few specific things you can try in your very next class Because I want you to have a takeaway from this episode that you can apply into your classes.
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Pick one specific interoceptive cue and use it well rather than sprinkling vague ones all throughout class.
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Something like inviting students to notice the temperature or texture of their breath at three points in your class.
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Remember, teaching one thing clearly teaches more than trying to teach 10 different things vaguely.
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Another thing you can try is to use a contrast moment.
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Do one side, pause, and ask students to compare the two sides before moving on.
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Give them a full breath or two of silence to actually do it.
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A third thing you can try is to add in one good chance to pause.
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Find a single moment in your sequence where you stop talking for three to four to five full breaths after offering one noticing invitation.
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You can count it out in your head if you need to.
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It might feel like an eternity to you, but I promise it will feel like relief to your students.
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And finally, give your students permission to be okay with feeling something or not.
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You can say, You might notice a lot, or you might not notice much at all, and both are fine.
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Just notice what it is." Then watch what happens in your class.
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Here's what I want you to take away from this episode.
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Interoception is not a mystical concept.
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It's real.
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It's a describable sense.
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It is trainable, and yoga classes are one of the best environments there is for developing it.
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Your students are going to be better at taking care of themselves, better at communicating with you, and better at navigating their own bodies when they have this skill.
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And the way you teach it is not by talking about it more or naming it It's by being specific, leaving space, using contrast, and teaching students to become curious.
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Thank you so much for being here and joining the conversations we deserve to have to help continue your education and evolve your teaching.
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Okay.
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Check out the Yoga Journal article that I've linked in the show notes.
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All right, bye.
