my teacher’s hands

My teacher rarely corrected a posture with her hands, and when she did the correction was shorter than I expected. She would place two fingers on the back of my shoulder, hold them there for less than a second, and walk away. My shoulder would be in a different place. She did not explain why.

For years I thought she was being economical. Now I think she was being careful.

Words, when you are in a posture, tend to go to the posture. You hear the teacher say, lift the sternum, and your chest performs the lift even if your sternum does not know what is being asked of it. The body is eager to be a good student. It will do the wrong thing loudly, on command, and be proud of itself. Two fingers on the shoulder cannot be performed. They are just a fact, and the body either accepts the fact or it does not.

I teach almost no one. I do not run a studio. I am a neurologist, and the closest I come to teaching yoga is when a patient asks me something sideways at the end of a visit and I give them, if I am lucky, thirty seconds. But I think about my teacher’s hands when I have those thirty seconds, because what a patient needs at the end of a visit is almost never words. It is a fact they can carry out of the room without rehearsing it.

If you are reading this and you are about to teach anyone anything, consider saying less and, if you can, touching the problem with two fingers instead.