Lil Thoughts: Session 1 - Accessible Yoga Training
Take Aways from my Accessible Yoga Training Jan-Mar 2024
These thoughts are not endorsed by Accessible Yoga. I am sharing my personal thoughts that have arisen during classes. Any direct quotes from teachers in class will be clearly credited! Assume otherwise that anything written here is my own interpretation.
Class 1: Introduction
Word count: ~364
Reading time: 1-2 min
Consent as an orientation: touch
If we are to assume all students hold and show up with trauma, then we should challenge the conventional belief that touching students is necessary for correction.
As a mind-body living with CPTSD from childhood and adult sexual assault, racism-based & cisheterosexim-based trauma, and forceful corrections of neurodivergent stims, I know how touching students can make a space so IN-accessible regardless of how much we change a pose to create access for a particular body
Consent is not general; consent is specific--and therefore:
consent for touch cannot be given generally at the beginning of class
consent cannot be given by subtraction (i.e. touch cannot be assumed acceptable unless told otherwise)
Teachers who insist on touching students without ongoing established consent operate from a place of harm (himsa) and both center and reinforce the kleshas within themselves
Teaching from consent orientation re: touch
Trauma-informed teachers should operate as though touch is intimate, and teachers should therefore:
correct without touch first, always
ask for consent with each touch, except where recurring students have directly established a different pattern with the teacher for ongoing consent
accept that consent does not automatically extend to future touches
students can establish non-verbal cues with teachers to ease the ongoing consent process, if desired
accept that consent is more important than correction
extend this understanding to extensions of a person’s body (e.g. wheelchairs)
Teachers must understand the essence (intended energetic impact) of a pose to understand the essence of the adjustment & therefore to understand how best to imagine and guide a correction without touch
Teaching, including corrections and modifications are relational movement practices, and therefore a trauma-informed teacher should consider the act of correction to be an asana flow in itself.
In instances where students whose disabilities might require contact for communication (e.g. a blind-deaf student).
students should still be seen as the authority on their own experience and must be given the opportunity to communicate their boundaries & desires around touch.
communication that does not rely on constant or direct touch should be researched because constant touch can also eliminate a student’s own self-inquiry and self-empowerment processes by involving a 2nd body in every movement.
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