ethics in teaching and touching during yoga class

The ethical precepts given in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are a useful starting place in approaching physical cues, beginning with the intertwined values of ahimsa, not hurting, and satya, truthfulness.
Respecting ahimsa in offering tactile guidance starts with being truthful with yourself about what you know and what you don't know as well as your intention in touching.
As with teaching in general, it is important to share and give from a place of truthful understanding, loving kindness, and respect. If you don't understand what's happening with a student in an asana, you are not prepared to give that person a physical cue. As noted above, we all experience the touch of others in different ways. It is vitally important to appreciate that many students' relationship to touch is deeply conditioned by trauma, and many of these students are doing yoga as one way of healing and living in greater balance and joy.
For some students, any form of touch can feel uncomfortable, invasive, or traumatic, possibly causing repressed feelings from traumatic experiences to resurface.
As we will discuss in the next chapter, this underlines the basic principle that all yoga teachers should always ask permission before touching a student. Touch is inherently intimate.

1. ETHICS IN TEACHING AND TOUCHING

2. ETHICS IN TEACHING AND TOUCHING The role of the yoga teacher is to provide inspired support and informed guidance to students pursuing their varied and changing aims in doing yoga. When teachers create safe and nurturing yoga classes where students can explore and experience anew in their body mind, amazing things start to happen. New sensations arise. Breathing consciously becomes a powerful tool of awareness. The body mind becomes clearer and stronger, emotions even out, the heart opens, and one's sense of spirit soars. One simply feels better—more vibrant, more alive. Where one goes with this—how one sets and cultivates intention in doing yoga and living their life-can be profoundly affected by the teacher-student relationship. And whatever effects there are will be magnified through touch. Indeed, the physical intimacy of human touch brings ethical and personal considerations to the forefront in giving hands-on guidance and support. Everyone comes to their experience of physical intimacy in unique ways.

3. The same adjustment can feel welcome to one student but invasive to another. What is comfortable for one student might trigger deeply embodied emotional trauma in another. What is welcome with a particular student one day might not be on another day or even in another moment. The ethical precepts given in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are a useful starting place in approaching physical cues, beginning with the intertwined values of ahimsa , not hurting, and satya , truthfulness. Respecting ahimsa in offering tactile guidance starts with being truthful with yourself about what you know and what you don't know as well as your intention in touching. As with teaching in general, it is important to share and give from a place of truthful understanding, loving kindness, and respect. If you don't understand what's happening with a student in an asana, you are not prepared to give that person a physical cue.

4. By allowing the clarity of your intention in giving physical cues to arise from your knowledge and skill in seeing and relating to students in asanas—including at least a basic understanding of the functional anatomy, risk issues, and contraindications of any asanas you teach—you will be more e effective in giving appropriate cues that help your students to deepen their practice. Comforting a student in Balasana (Child's Pose). The intimate quality of touch can also stimulate reactions that bear on matters of brahmacharya , the yama loosely translated in recent times as "right use of energy" or "moderation" but which originally meant "celibacy"—a perfectly unambiguous term—in the renunciate practices of classical yoga and some contemporary approaches. There is a wide range of views on sex and yoga and on sexual relations between teachers and students. At one extreme is an insistence on celibacy, particularly in renunciate lineages, which might settle the matter (but often doesn't).

5. At the other extreme we nd near-complete license given to teachers in acting on sexual attraction to students, as in John Friend's (2006, 92) clearly problematic guidance given in his Anusara teacher- training manual: "When a sexual attraction occurs between you and a student, wait some weeks before acting on the attraction." "While most yoga teachers today are not choosing to be celibate, our ethical practice as teachers requires brahmacharya in relation to our students." When this attitude is embedded in our intention, we're better able to approach any student with clarity expressed through our physical energy that unambiguously conveys compassionate caring free of any confusing, distracting, or otherwise inappropriate thoughts or feelings. Should such thoughts or feelings arise, let that signify that it is time to step away and reexamine your intention and purpose in working closely with your students.

6. Should you perceive such feelings arising in a student, consider creating more distance between you and the student and give only those adjustments that you are con dent of being clearly understood by the student as support for their practice and not an expression of personal interest or desire. These considerations and sensibilities are forms of external guidance generated by what are widely regarded as authoritative texts and underlined in the ethics statements adopted by Yoga Alliance and other professional yoga organizations. She offers the example of hugging a student who is grieving and who has asked to be held in contrast to hugging a student who has expressed romantic or sexual interest. When the internal locus is clear and strong, one knows the right thing to do with reference to external codes, rules, or standards.

7. While the standards are important in creating a community-wide consensus that helps teachers and students alike to better understand and undertake responsible and acceptable interaction, the fact remains that we are far from having such consensus, and in the end internal values will tend to override external rules. As noted above, we all experience the touch of others in different ways. It is vitally important to appreciate that many students' relationship to touch is deeply conditioned by trauma, and many of these students are doing yoga as one way of healing and living in greater balance and joy. For some students, any form of touch can feel uncomfortable, invasive, or traumatic, possibly causing repressed feelings from traumatic experiences to resurface. As we will discuss in the next chapter, this underlines the basic principle that all yoga teachers should always ask permission before touching a student. Touch is inherently intimate.

8. As we revisit these and other ethical questions later in this book, it's important to revisit and reflect upon your own experience and practices in giving and receiving touch so long as you are teaching or practicing yoga. Today, as we nd more and more yoga teachers applying Hatha yoga to healing interrelated physical and emotional wounds, this takes on growing importance. In the view of some, touch is absolutely vital in the process of healing and transformation, while for others it is a likely cause of pain or trauma. Like the practice of yoga itself, finding and maintaining a balance between giving considerate and appropriate physical guidance and maintaining clear and respectful boundaries is a lifelong process that will evolve just as you evolve in your awareness as a teacher and practitioner.