Touch and Consent in the post-COVID yoga classroom

The pandemic has caused us asana instructors to take a mandatory break from touching students. Those of us who are fortunate enough to still be teaching —whether online or in person— have had to refine our language, educate our eyes, improve our demonstrations; in sum, to rely on tools other than touch to instruct. Now is a good time to take stock of what we have been doing with touch in our classrooms, and if/how/to what extent we want to bring it back.

Thank you Zadie Smith

“I found my mind finally beginning to turn from the elegiac what have we done to the practical what can we do?”

Yoga of Climate Action: Asana

All we know is that there are dead feelings, dead ideas and cold beliefs, and there are hot and live ones; and when one grows hot and live within us, everything has to recrystallize around it. -William James

The Weight of the Roof Tree

Aneka jati samsaram sandhavissam anibbisam gahakaram gavesanto dukkha jati punappunam. –Dhammapada, V. 153-154. ***********