Tell your students a pose is hard (for you). Don’t say a pose is easy.

Different variations of the crow pose. The first one is not necessarily the easiest.

From an outside perspective, the demonstrations of a yoga teacher always seem so easy. From the students view, the teacher can speak, teach and look around the room all while standing absolutely still. This can give the impression that the students struggling with an “easy” pose might be worse than the teacher or someone doing crazy contortions. The grass always seems greener in someone else’s garden. When I attend a strength class I am always surprised that the same weight plate looks larger on the shoulders of other participants than on my own barbell.

In each yoga class, there are easier poses and harder poses. There might even be poses that you as a yoga teacher find difficult, too. From the top of my head, willow tree pose or floating half moon come to mind that are also hard for me to find the balance. Another example is crow pose. Tell your students that you struggle as well. This makes you humble, human and you can win some sympathy points. I cannot do the splits even though I have been stretching and trying for five years now. My first yoga teacher said that everyone can do the splits, it just looks different in some bodies. The splits look horrible in mine. I gladly tell my students that, so that students that have their difficulties with the same pose feel comforted. Yoga is not a competition. It does not matter how the pose looks from the outside, but how a pose feels.

On the contrary avoid telling your students that a pose is supposed to be easy. For some it might be, but for others the same “easy” pose might already be a challenge. The same pose that was easy yesterday might be challenging today when your mind is racing and your thoughts are elsewhere, if today you just cannot find your balance, or if today you barely have energy to make it to class.

While teaching a Les Mills BodyBalance class recently, I told my students that the standing-strength track is quite easy but lasts for a whopping 7 minutes. After doing all the warrior poses on one side, I asked my students: “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” After saying that I immediately realized that just because it was easy for me, does not mean it was easy for all of my students. Can you imagine how bad a student has to feel if they gave their best effort and barely made it through the sequence. Then the teacher negates their victory by saying it should have been easy. After the track I wanted to correct my mistake and said: “In the end it still got challenging and a few pearls of sweat formed on my forehead, too.”

In conclusion, tell your students if you find a pose hard, but avoid saying what is easy and what is not. (And in case you tell it anyway, make a mental note to do it differently when teaching your next class. No teacher is perfect.)