January 6, 2023

My son and I recently attended an online meditation class. My son was a little stressed out, so I stopped what I was doing and told him to join me for a meditation class. He rolled his eyes and sat beside me. We both enjoyed the class and felt pretty relaxed afterward. We opened our eyes and sat there smiling at each other for a little while.

Thanks for reading Red Emerald Yoga! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

However, not everyone felt that way. One of the comments left for the instructor was a comment about how confusing it was. The instructor instructed everyone to let go of the breath and focus on the breathing. The student thought letting go of the breath meant that he was supposed to stop breathing. So this student was sitting there trying to relax as he was holding his breath. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand how he could focus on his breathing if he wasn’t breathing. This left at least one student feeling very confused and feeling a little defeated instead of relaxed after class.

The instructor told him that it gets easier with time, which might not have helped this particular student.

I thought back to the session, when I heard those instructions, I knew what the instructor meant, so I had no problem during the meditation. I asked my son if the meditation was confusing to him, and he said no because he knew what the teacher was trying to say and it was easy to follow along.

My son has grown up around yoga and meditation, his brain knew how to auto-translate the instructions. He has a much harder time doing Pilates and Barre.

When we don’t know what an instructor means, that can be confusing and can cause stress. Your brain can’t auto-translate what it doesn’t understand. I know I had those moments all the time in my Kung Fu San Soo class even though my instructor explained things pretty well.

If I still had a question, he would have me demonstrate what I was doing on him, so he could feel it and figure out what I was doing wrong. He would then ask me to explain what I was doing step by step. He would cover his eyes and say, I can’t see you, tell me what you are doing. It made me stop and really think about what I was doing with my body and how I was manipulating his body. When I got to the part where I needed to tweak something, I either realized it on my own, or he would say, right there, you’re doing this, now try it this way. I loved that. It’s the little details that go unnoticed, but often make the biggest difference.

I thought back to when I first started teaching yoga to children about ten years ago. I was a strength and conditioning coach for a team of one dozen hilarious and outspoken tee-ballers. I was trying and failing to explain Warrior 1, when suddenly one of the little kids started laughing and blurted out, that doesn’t make any sense! Soon, they were all laughing, some were on the grass rolling around laughing and I was laughing too. Where do these instructions come from and how do they become so catchy?

He was right, the instructions made no sense at all. I was repeating the same instructions I heard time and time again in the classes I attended. I remember not knowing what the teachers meant and looking at what others were doing with their bodies to understand what I was supposed to do.

I told him to watch what I was doing and asked him to explain it to the rest of the team. He explained it like you would explain it to a small child. He explained the pose better than my yoga teachers did when I was new to yoga. Of course, he didn’t explain what the body was doing energetically, but he explained it in a way that a team of pint-sized yoga newbies understood on the first try. That’s impressive!

Now, was it really necessary to place so much emphasis on, “…not what she said!” Apparently so, as all the kids burst into laughter and tried following my original instructions before falling to the floor… again.

This is one of the reasons why I love teaching children and new yogis, they don’t know what we mean unless we explain ourselves in a way that makes sense. They will either ask for clarification, or it will be completely obvious that the instructions do not make sense. Sometimes we just need things spelled out to us like we are five and that’s ok. We may need to explain things more than once, or in entirely different ways, and that’s ok too.

So, what was the meditation teacher talking about when he said, let go of your breath and focus on your breathing?

I believe he meant to let go of everything that is distracting us from breathing. Let go of wondering if your belly is sticking out of your stretchy pants while you breathe. Let go of wondering if you are breathing right or wrong. Let go of trying to control your breathing. Simply notice what the breath is doing and how you feel as you breathe. What is your body doing as you breathe? Does the breath change as you take notice of it, does the way your body feels change as you are observing your breath and allowing it to be whatever it needs to be at that moment?

You can sign up for my online breathwork and meditation classes here.

Thanks for reading Red Emerald Yoga! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit redemeraldyoga.substack.com