When Yoga Teaching Method Gets Confused With Anatomical Principles (EP.394)

0:00Hi there. Welcome to Conversations for Yoga Teachers. I'm so glad you're here. I'm your host Karen Fabian, the founder of Barebones Yoga. On the show, I help yoga teachers make sense of the parts of teaching that often feel harder than expected, especially around anatomy and how to apply it to your cues and your sequences and how to truly feel confident when you're teaching your classes. Here, you'll learn easy, practical ways to understand anatomy using my step-by-step blueprint and how to apply it directly to your cues and sequences, so teaching feels clearer and more grounded so you feel present and more confident. We'll also talk honestly about the inner side of teaching, things like self-doubt, growth, and what actually helps you feel confident over time. You can find daily videos and additional support over on my Instagram and my TikTok channels. I'm both those platforms. I'm at Barebones Yoga. All right, let's get into today's episode.

1:11Hi there. Welcome to Conversations for Yoga Teachers. I'm your host Karen Fabian, and this is episode 394. I'm recording this on March 5th, 2026, and this will go live on Monday, March 9th, and today we're going to be talking about a really sort of central concept to teaching yoga, but it's one that people rarely talk about. It's about the comparison between teaching method versus anatomy principles, and I'm going to obviously go into that in more detail, but I just want to sort of float that for you. You know, really sort of the sub topic here or another way to say it is when teaching methods get confused with anatomical principles, that's what we're going to be talking about today. Now, I want to take just a brief hit stop before we go into today's topic,

2:17because I'm fresh off a call with one of the amazing teachers who enrolled in the Yoga Anatomy Accelerator Program. And I'm just so glad that I shifted the format for the program to one where there are group sessions as well as one-on-one sessions, because I've learned through years of supporting yoga teachers in my other offer, which is a one-on-one program exclusively, that that format working with a teacher, just me and them, is transformational. It's where people make the most progress. It's where people have the most aha moments, the biggest epiphanies, the biggest realizations, and I can just see it on their faces. I can just see it on the face of a teacher and then hear it in the words that they use. And what this one teacher said at the end of our call was, I'm so excited. And this was someone who, when we first started talking before

3:20she enrolled in the Accelerator, she was really struggling with how am I going to get back to teaching, I took a break and I want to go back to it. And I really want to make it my life's work as I look ahead at the next, you know, number of years in my life. But I feel confused about what steps to take. I'm not sure how to sort of rejuvenate my teaching skill. And I've got questions about anatomy, I've got questions about where I'm going to teach, how do I begin. And to shift from all those questions and all that questioning to being in a place where after just our very first call, she said, Oh my God, I'm so excited. That to me is transformation in 3D. And just to look on her face, just like the relief and the joy and the excitement that now she's got optimism

4:20for what's ahead, rather than confusion and feeling like I'm just not qualified enough to teach. And the one specific thing that we did that I want to just really briefly share with you. And this is something that you and I would do potentially if you enrolled in the program and we worked together, is we started out just top level with what do you hope students get out of your classes. And she just started laying out for me. I hope people feel rejuvenated. I hope people feel a sense of challenge as well as a sense of relaxation. You know, and then she went on and on with different characteristics, different qualities. And then we took those concepts and we made them actionable by doing a second column that outline, okay, well, if conceptually, I want people to feel rejuvenated, what does that look like as a teacher? What does that look like in the sequence

5:27that I offer, in the cues that I share, in how I carry myself in the room? Like, how do I make that happen? And so as a result of that one conversation, not only did that shift how she felt, but what it did was it gave her a clear roadmap to work from so that now she's authentically teaching. Now she's creating a sequence and sharing her cues from a place of authenticity, rather than just all the canned stuff that so many yoga teachers are out there saying, because the people that trained them say those canned things, you know, that do what's in your practice. If it's in your practice, do it. Do what feels good to you. You know, modify as you need to modify. And I'm not mocking those things. I'm just saying that so many things that teachers say are programmed

6:29into them. They're the things that so many teachers say. That's why when students go to a yoga class, they often hear the same stuff, because so many teachers say the same things, because so many teachers are just living in this bubble, living under this aura of this is what we say, or what teachers say. It's not what I say. And when you shift from bursting that bubble and realizing that all of that is just yoga speak, that, oh my god, I've been teaching for over 20 years, and I can remember people saying that 20 years ago, and I hear it today. And when you burst that bubble and you see it for what it is, which is just sort of common things that teachers say, and instead you replace it with speaking intentionally, speaking from your words, from your heart, and then making that inform what you do in the in the studio. Now, you're at another level. You're teaching at another

7:35level. You are at the master class level. You're not at the amateur level, because now you are taking back your power. You're teaching from what you want to teach from. You're using words that are authentic to you, instead of all the canned stuff that people say over and over again. So I want it to just briefly share with you that literal exercise we did, that is such a powerful exercise to do. Matter of fact, I may actually somehow stick this exercise into the agenda. I'm going to Cleveland next month, April 2026, to teach a weekend training with the teachers at Cleveland Yoga. And I may actually pick a couple of people to do this exercise with, because it's not only powerful to do, it's powerful to witness. And I know for me witnessing this teacher going through this exercise with my guidance was so powerful to me to witness. I literally witnessed

8:41shift her way of being from one of, I don't really feel connected to what I'm saying to, oh my God, I love this creation. We've curated that comes from what I actually want to be doing in my classes. The environment, the vibe, the container that I actually want to create for the people who come to my classes, that is exciting. So I wanted to share that with you first. So let's shift now to the topic for today. And I want to start out with just kind of a, I don't want to say a triggering statement, right? I mean, in marketing terms, they call it the hook. I'm sure you know that. Just a statement to kind of get the ball rolling. One of the things that I often see in the yoga industry, the yoga world, I see cues or

9:43rules about poses being presented as if they're based on sound anatomical principles. When in reality, they're just the teachers preference or method or way of teaching. So I want that to land on your nervous system and your brain, which is part of your nervous system, and see if that makes sense to you. One of the things I often see in the yoga world are cues or rules about poses being presented as if they're based in sound anatomical principles. When in reality, they're just the teachers preference or just the teachers teaching method. So you could say, for instance, things that fall into this category and these are specific examples. So this is not at the 10,000 foot level of a theme for a class. These are specific examples,

10:44but these examples bear this out. This concept I'm speaking to you about now. Things like it's unsafe to move from warrior one to warrior two. Or women that are older can't do low push up. Or someone who has bad balance is unsafe to do a balancing pose with if they don't have the wall next to them. Or it's dangerous to put your foot on the inside of your knee joint in tree. It's unsafe for the knees to go into child's pose. Or I mean, I could go on, but I think you get the drift. And you can fill in the blank with

11:45things that you've heard, things that you were trained on, things that you hear when you go to people's classes. So I just gave you those examples as principles, but you can also think about when you go to take a class and you hear a particular cue, things might be presented in the cue like this. So there's lots of specific examples. I just threw some out there. But the real question is, are these actually anatomical principles? Or are they simply someone's teaching method? Or are they simply a reflection of the teacher's belief about anatomy as it's expressed through a yoga pose? So today I want to talk to you about why it's important to understand the difference. So the thing that got me thinking about this, really two things.

12:48And I think I might have talked about, maybe I didn't talk about it last week, but the first thing that made me think of this was last week I did a live group training session inside the accelerator program. And I had a question from one of the teachers about triangle pose. And she was talking about how in the studio where she teaches, when she teaches triangle pose, she was talking about what she often sees in students as a misalignment. And then she was also talking about when she takes class at that studio, one of the teachers teaches triangle pose and asks the students to open the back hip in triangle. And she was asking me, is that correct? What exactly is happening in the back hip in triangle? And so we got into this

13:53long discussion about triangle, the alignment of triangle, and the muscular actions in triangle, and the cues. Because that's what's really needed. You can't just ask about the cue and then not take the time to go back to the actual pose that it applies to. And just look at the pose objectively and ask yourself, what are the joint movements? What are the muscles creating those movements? And then what are the cues I'm hearing? And are those cues a match for the joint movements and the muscular actions in the pose? So in this particular instance, the back hip in triangle is internally rotating and extending. So a cue to open the back hip in triangle is clearly incorrect. Because the anatomical movement in triangle with respect to the back hip is internal rotation, which is a function of the anterior fibers of the gluteus medius and the tensor fascial lana. But there's additional context. I suppose you could make case as niche

14:58a scenario as this is that maybe somebody in your class has so much internal rotation happening in their triangle that you actually need to cue them to open their back hip. But that is so rare and that is so unlikely to happen. And what's most likely happening in this scenario is the teacher teaching this pose actually thinks that the back hip is open in triangle and it is clearly not. It is internally rotating. Thus the cue and triangle to the back leg to roll your inner thigh back to turn your back foot in a little bit, you know, cues that refer to internal rotation. So that was one thing that made me think of this. And then just last night, I got an email from one of the teachers in the accelerator and she said to me in the context of reflecting about an email I had just sent out to my list. And by the way, if you're not on my email list, I really encourage you

16:02to jump on there if you like this podcast because I share thoughts to my email list as well, as well as resources, as well as teaching principles. So you won't going to want to do that. But she said to me, you know, Karen, I read your email last night or today and you were talking in the email about, you know, this idea of hearing particular cues and wondering what the reason is for them. And you know, I'm teaching in the studio where, you know, I'm, I don't want to say I'm told, but the person running the studio has certain sort of rules like don't move people from airplane to half moon or don't ask people to square their hips and warrior one. And you know, she was saying she was hearing those quote unquote rules and, you know, wondering the why behind them.

17:03So both of these things made me think about this idea to bring to you today around making a distinction between teaching method versus anatomical principles versus just beliefs. And I am going to be so bold as to say beliefs are at the bottom of the barrel because beliefs are not based in fact, a belief is simply defined as something you tell yourself over and over again until you believe it's a truth. You often don't do any research on it. You often just hear it from somebody who you have deferred power to and you just think that must be true because you trust the person saying it. So this is what we're going to talk about today. And I'm curious if what I just shared with you resonates with you at all. Do you have things you were told in training? Do you have things you hear when you go to take class that you wonder about? You wonder

18:06about the why behind the queue? Are you and I'm going to be sort of gently offering or gently asking you this, are you maybe saying things in your classes where you're not exactly sure if you're speaking from belief or speaking from knowledge or speaking from preference? So I'll just sort of let that sit for a second to see what comes up for you. So when I talk about this kind of stuff and I hear these statements, what stands out to me isn't that somebody has a different way to teach? That's sort of completely normal. The issue is that these kinds of quote-unquote heavy on the quotes, principles or rules are being presented as if they're anatomical truths rather than teaching choices or just beliefs. And I'm going to actually highlight the word truth because right now

19:08in our world, truth has become sort of a throwaway phrase because people just seem to be, and yes I'm talking about politics here, people just seem to be defining things as a truism if it suits their belief system, not as if it is just a fact. And that has unfortunately co-opted the concept of what is true. And so if we drill down now to you and me teaching yoga classes and you and me using anatomy in our cues, can we say that something is true versus something is untrue in the context of sharing an anatomy-based cue? I would say we can, although a big caveat that we're applying what we're saying to human beings moving around and human beings who all have different levels of joint mobility and range of motion. And so that throws into the soup a big confounding factor

20:11that we don't have when we look at things from the point of view of, hey, you have a femur and I have a femur. That's a fact. But how you stand in tree pose is different from how I stand in tree pose. That is also a fact. And it's a fact influenced by a whole bunch of different things that are different between you and me when it comes to our muscles, our joints, our age, our level of functional movement, our range of motion, things like that. So the problem here is in yoga education, we often see that teachers are presenting cues as rules or safety requirements. Like don't do this, don't do that or this will happen, this bad thing will happen, or they're presenting things, this is the thing I actually love the most and by love I mean, hey, presenting is fact. Oh, this is a fact. You must, you must lock down through your SI joint as you're moving into twisting

21:16triangle. Otherwise, you're going to rotate through your lumbar spine and that can create disdamage. That can create damage in your SI joint. I mean, again, we could go on and on. So in yoga education, we often see teachers presenting cues this way, rules, safety requirements, anatomical facts. When in reality, they may more be a reflection of their teaching method, what they choose to do in their class, what they choose to offer, what they choose to say, and also, and I'm just going to say the quiet part out loud might not be true because they don't know what they're talking about. But nobody calls these people out. Nobody is asking hey, can you explain the reason for that cue? You know, maybe in 200, 300 to 500 hour trainings,

22:20people ask questions, but let's be real. The difference is to the person leading the training. And so even if the answer they get doesn't make sense to them, they're most likely just going to say, well, this person must know what they're talking about. And then that becomes implanted in their mind and they go off and they teach their classes thinking it's bad to put your foot on the side of the knee and tree, et cetera, et cetera. So the other aspect that can influence this is the teacher's interpretation of movement. So let's take, for instance, the teacher who says, I teach classes in a senior center and none of my seniors are able to do plank to low plank. So I do downward dog, but I move them right from, I don't know, I move them right from downward dog to walking forward. I don't have them to do plank or low plank. And that is just an interpretation of movement. That person is interpreting that an older student can't do plank to low plank,

23:23which is just their belief. It's not a fact. Go to any gym in the world and you'll probably see older people doing non yoga stuff, plank and or pushups, right? There's a way to modify it, where you have people doing it against the wall. There's all sorts of reasons why it makes sense to have older folks do plank to low plank, but you have to understand anatomy in order to teach it in a way that meets the moment of where the person is at from a functional movement standpoint. So again, interpretation of movement. Now, the result of all this is that newer teachers often think, well, in a very binary way, there's one correct way to queue oppose. There are strict safety rules that I must follow. And the last one, if I do something different, I'm doing it wrong. And this creates that feeling of, I'm not expert enough, I'm sharing things and I'm not exactly sure of the reason why, but I'm following along with what I was told. And I mean,

24:28gosh, honestly, just Google it. I mean, any of this stuff, just Google it and go down a rabbit hole into PubMed, into NASM docs documentation, into exercise movement videos on YouTube. Do some research around this stuff that you've heard and find out for yourself if any of it's true. Before you just say these things in your classes and just defer or power to somebody else. So again, I'm getting into sort of the why this happens. Let's talk about why this happens. So number one, one of the reasons why this all happens is that teacher training programs sometimes simplify things. They simplify things into rules because it's just easier to teach that way. They sort of want to give people these guardrails around queuing and sequencing. And I guess to some extent, maybe that makes sense, but at the end of the day, the foundation of knowledge of anatomy

25:33has to be there long before we get into setting up the guardrails. The next thing is teaching lineage or style. You know, I'm calling it here in this conversation we're having teaching method. And I want you to start to be like a smarter consumer about stuff when you go to take somebody's class or when you take a teacher training or when you watch a social media video and the teacher is saying, this is the way we do it or do it this way or don't do it that way. Start to ask yourself, is that person stating an anatomical fact? Or are they simply expressing the way they want to teach? They're teaching method. And I bet in a lot of cases, it's the latter, not the former. And the real problem is that when someone creates teaching method coming from a lack of knowledge, well, now you can call it method all you want, but if it's not based in sound anatomical principles, it's not a helpful method for anybody, student or teacher. And that brings me to the last point.

26:39The reason why this happens is also connected to just a lack of anatomy understanding. No requirement in the yoga industry that teachers be tested with respect to what they understand about movement. No consistency in the yoga industry with respect to how anatomy is taught in 200-hour trainings. What about anatomy is covered? Hundreds and hundreds of beliefs that are out there that are fueled by poor, if not wrong, information about anatomy, very little distinction between teaching methodology versus anatomical sound principles. So all of this, you know, fueled by this lack of understanding of anatomy. And so this is why we're in this pickle that we're in. And you may not have thought we were in a pickle. You know, I sort of, I see this so clearly, and it obviously creates such conflict for me, such angst for me, which is why I get heated when I talk about it. But for a lot of teachers, it's like they're teaching with this veil over their

27:41eyes. Oh, well, this is how I was trained. Or oh, well, this is what I hear that person say when I go to take her class. So I'm going to say it too. And it must be right. And they're just sort of operating in this fog with this veil of like, well, this must be what's correct to say. And again, I just encourage you, just when you hear stuff now, just just Google it, just Google it and see what you come up with. So let's get to the reframe part, right? Let's start to kind of shift the energy here from talking about the problem to talking about how can we, how can we sort of reframe this? So the first thing we want to do is we want to make a distinction between sound anatomical principles, sound principles around movement and teaching method. So anatomical principles relate to things like how joints work. What are muscular actions? When I look at this particular posture,

28:41what are the joint actions? What are the muscular actions? They relate to things like when I walk into a yoga class, I need to appreciate that I know nothing about the medical history of these people. And so I can't go in there with a hard set of rules and say this is how it has to be because or this is going to hurt, you know, this is going to be a potentially injurious movement because I don't know anything about the medical history of these folks. Teaching method relates to how a teacher chooses to cue oppose how a teacher chooses to put their sequence together. What style of yoga they choose to do? What transitions they offer? All of that is teaching style. I mean, we can certainly look at the history of yoga and look at the big names in the history of yoga, the ayangar, the

29:42the uh, the uh, the uh, the, the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, the, the methods that they created that are tied to them personally. And quite frankly, those, you know, original yogis didn't really talk that much about anatomy. They were heading into method. This is what you need to do. This is the order you need to do it in. Right? So that's a really good example of a difference between teaching method, teaching methodology and sound anatomical principles. I mean, honestly, all you have to do is look at some of the older pictures of, you know, yogis from thousands of years ago pushing people into postures and you can tell that there's no sound anatomical principle behind that. So the next reframe I want you to think about is what is the why? Ask the teacher

30:45at the end of class. And I know you're probably not going to do this because it's an awkward conversation to have, but I'm going to say it just to make the point. If you could ask the teacher, what's the reason for that cue? Can you share with me the why? You didn't say it when you shared the cue, but you gave us this red flag warning or you didn't say it when you shared the cue, but you said it has to be done in a particular way. Why? I'm curious. I'd like to know why. Now, again, you could do that. You certainly could do that in a teacher training. But in a general class, you're most likely not going to do that, but I want you to realize that means you're missing out on a big important piece, which is the why, especially if the teacher is teaching to the negative, meaning they're teaching to a warning. Don't do this, don't do that. So why is that movement considered unsafe? What joint action are we trying to avoid? What potential injury do you think is going to happen? And that's the context. That's why it's

31:48really hard for me when somebody asks me about a cue and says, is this right? I need to know the bigger picture. I need to know what that teacher was thinking that informed the cue that they used. I can sort of guess, like in that example, I gave you about triangle pose. I can sort of guess that maybe there's an odd chance that that teacher saw somebody externally rotating the back hip and triangle. Thus they queued to, I'm sorry, they saw somebody internally rotating the back hip too much in triangle. Thus they asked them to open their hip. But that again is such an edge case. I can't imagine that would be happening. So the next reframe is I want you to start developing discernment. I want you to stop giving your power away to anybody that you see on the internet

32:48that you train with and start being more discerning. You know, yoga historically because it's so grounded in method, because it's original history is grounded in the concept of a guru. Yoga is just full of beliefs and people deferring authority to people. It's just a paradigm. It's just a structure and infrastructure that is just ripe with all sorts of opportunities for that kind of thing to happen. And when you do that, I want you to see that you're giving your power away. Be more discerning when you hear rules or guidelines and start to ask yourself, is this a rule that's grounded in anatomical principles or is this more just this teacher's preference, this teacher's method or red flag? Is this maybe what this teacher believes because they're not educated about movement with respect to maybe this one aspect of it? So that's the next part. So I want to leave you

33:54with some practical takeaways here. So the next time that you hear a cue presented as a rule, I want you to ask yourself, does it sound like an anatomical principle? If so, what one? Does it sound like preference teaching method or does it sound like maybe this person is just repeating something and they actually don't know what they're talking about? Now you can't get in the teacher's head, but I want you to start to think about those three categories. The next thing I want you to do is and we'll take this triangle example as a perfect example. Go home and I want you to look up that pose and I want you to analyze that pose in terms of what are the joint movements? What are the muscles creating that movement? What are the cues that I would use based on the knowledge of those first two things? And then let me compare it to what I heard. And if we use this triangle example, when I analyze triangle, that back hip is an internal

34:55rotation. So if I hear a cue to open the back hip, I know that's not correct. If I ask the teacher, what inspired you to use that cue? Because my understanding of triangle is the back hip is internally rotating and the teacher says, oh, you know what? I saw somebody internally rotating so much. Their back foot was turned in a lot. So I've actually said, open the back hip, specifically meaning for that one person, not for everybody in the class. Again, this is such an edge case. But do you see how now you can get into this teacher's mind and you can hear the rationale? And then the next thing is what is the goal of the cue? You know, I've talked before about types of cues, action, alignment, anatomy, and somatic. What's the goal of the cue that you're using or what's the goal of the cue that you're hearing? So look, in closing here, I want to just kind of

35:57share just an overall theme here. The yoga world is full of different teaching styles, lots of different lineages and teaching methods. And it's only getting, I don't want to say worse, it's only getting to a next level because there are so many niche styles and hybrids where yoga is involved. And that diversity is what is actually great for the consumer of yoga because they get lots of different options to choose from. But when you start confusing teaching preference with sound anatomical principles, teachers can feel, can end up feeling like they're constantly doing something wrong or worse, feeling confused about what's actually the right way here. So the more you understand the why behind the cues you share, the more you will be teaching confidently. Because now you're speaking from what you know. And I've said this a hundred times

37:00when you speak from what you know, your confidence grows. When you speak from what you know, your confidence grows. So I hope you found this conversation interesting and intriguing. I hope at a bare minimum, it sort of pulled the veil off of your eyes to see things maybe a little differently. And I hope that it further inspires you to really question everything. And specifically around your teaching, I hope it inspires you to have an introspective moment or two, where you have the courage to ask yourself, do I actually know what I'm talking about when I'm sharing anatomy and my cues? Can I actually explain the reason for my cues? And for God's sakes, if you're sharing anything in the negative, like don't do this or don't do that, do I actually know what bad thing might happen? And how do I know that bad thing's going to happen? And is that based on things that I

38:04know or things that I was told? Like it takes courage to have that introspective look. Because for some teachers, it sort of shakes them to the core of many years of teaching in a particular way. And then realizing, oh, wow, this actually wasn't grounded in sound anatomical principles. This was actually just the person who trained me and how they want to present yoga. And I'm not making, in that particular situation, I'm not necessarily making a qualitative judgment. Like you might, might still love that teaching style. But I want you to know that when you're going and doing those classes and you're hearing certain things, I want you to have that discerning view of them. So you're actually seeing them for what they are, which is this is just this person's preference. You know, if I go to this particular studio,

39:06I'm never going to do warrior one, because this particular studio doesn't think, or bad example. If I go to this particular studio, I'm never going to do warrior one to warrior two, because this particular studio thinks that's potentially injurious. And so I know that in all the classes I take there, all the teachers buy into the concept that that movement is unsafe, even though it's not, by the way. So again, I just want you to be more discerning, because when you are discerning, you are the one that is taking ownership for what you know, for what you say, for how you teach, rather than just blindly giving your power away to somebody else. That is it for today. I hope you found this intriguing. I hope you found it helpful. And any thoughts you have, I would love to hear. So let me know you can DM me or send me an email. Thanks so much for listening to the end, and I'll talk to you next week. Namaste.

40:06Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If anything we talked about resonated with you, especially around anatomy, queuing, or feeling more confident when you teach, I want you to know that you are not alone. A lot of teachers tell me these are definitely challenges for them. As a thank you for being a podcast listener, I'm offering you $50 off my four week yoga anatomy accelerator program. It's a short focus program designed to help yoga teachers learn anatomy in an easy step-by-step way and how to apply it directly to their teaching. To get the podcast listener discount, you can head over to my Instagram and just send me a DM with the words podcast offer. Thank you so much for being here. And I'll see you in the next episode.