How To Create Powerful Yoga Cues

Having a cues strategy is having an approach that allows you to organize your thoughts and share yoga cues without using a script. Think of it as an outline or framework to organize what you know. When I talk to teachers, they tell me, “I have all this information in my head, and I’m not sure how to say it or what to say.” This cueing strategy will help you organize what you know. 

The other piece of this is that the strategy I’ll share with you puts you in the driver’s seat as to what to say instead of simply repeating cues you were trained to say. While this is where most yoga teachers start, after a while, this approach can degrade your confidence because you might not be sure of cues you can explain.

4 Types of Yoga Cues

1. Action: speaks to action, the “what to do.”
2. Alignment: speaks to the shape, often the relationship of one thing to another
3. Anatomy: speaks to an aspect of the anatomy (bones, joints, muscle, muscular action)
4. Somatic: asks questions to give the students a chance to notice what they feel (This is not saying  “you should feel ‘XYZ’ in this pose.”)

How to Use the 4 Types of Yoga Cues

Now that you know the four types of yoga cues, take a step back and recognize what this does for you. It lets you decide what cues you want to use and when. It organizes your thoughts. It creates an outline, or you can think of it as a tool belt you’d wear in class, with each cue hanging off the belt, and you decide what tool to use in each pose. 

The next step is to use the cues in frameworks. This is a way to mix and match different types so you have a strategy for cueing (not a script) before your class. Let’s say you’re teaching a beginner’s class and want the cues to be easy to understand. They all should be easy to understand, but action cues are the easiest of the four cues.

So, you tell yourself before class, “I’m going to use all action cues in this class today.”Then, when you go in and teach, you keep focusing on that type of cue: anatomy, somatics, or alignment. Or maybe you can add those every once in a while.

That’s just one example. See how it works?

How to Share Anatomy-Based Cues

My favorite framework for sharing an anatomy-based cue is: 

• 3 action cues
• 1 anatomy cue that speaks to a muscle concentrically contracting 

Example: Warrior I Pose (Virabhadrasana I)

1. Step your right foot forward (action cue).
2. Drop your back heel (action cue).
3. Reach up (action cue).
4. Squeeze the muscle of your back thigh to engage your quadriceps, which will help you straighten the knee (anatomy cue).

While this is by far not a detailed explanation of how to use my cues framework, it should get you started experimenting with this technique. 

What Makes a Great Yoga Cue?

The other aspect of cueing is to keep in mind that there are three qualities of great cues:

• Clear: Is the cue clear and easy to understand?
• Conviction: Does the yoga teacher believe in what they’re saying because they understand the why behind the cue, and does that come across in how they sound?
• Connection: Can the teacher see the class to determine if the cue is working,  or are they practicing with the class?

I often use the following thoughts to guide yoga teachers in sharing their cues: “Say, the cue, and watch what they do.”

Yoga Cues Build Connection

Your ability to build a connection with your class will come in part from how much your students understand what you want them to do. I’m sure you know the feeling: you take a yoga class, and the cues just land right on your body. You know exactly what to do—it’s like the teacher is speaking just to you. 

This is an amazing feeling for a student, and as a yoga teacher, you can evaluate how much connection you are building by watching your students to see if your cues are getting the desired effect. This is another reason it’s powerful to do the “walk and talk” approach instead of the “practice with me” approach. You’re in a perfect, upright, focused, and present position to see how well your cues are working!