By Bernie Clark
March 1, 2025
What is your favourite alignment cue? I used to like the cue in Down Dog to “hide your heels behind your ankles” which ensures your feet are pointing straight ahead. It fit with the instructions I would give for placing the feet in Tadasana or Mountain Pose. Feet parallel. I cannot count how many times I had to correct students who just would not listen to this simple instruction. Then, I met Paul Grilley and all my alignment cues were tossed into the dustbin of irrelevance.
Why are some yoga teachers so focused on alignment? When pressed, and if honest, most teachers will say, “because that was the way I was taught.” Fair enough. We do have to listen to our teachers, but when we ask those teachers the same question, they may give the same answer: “That is how I was taught.” So, where did it all begin?
The History of Teaching Alignment
Paul Grilley explained part of the answer in his foreword1 to the book Your Body, Your Yoga: “Rules of alignment became both rigid and pervasive with the rise of yoga teacher training (TT) programs…how to produce a teacher in 200 hours? The education had to be systematized to be time efficient, and students needed to be assessed unambiguously. Both needs were met by creating manuals with strict and memorizable ‘rules of alignment’ on how postures should be taught.”
Certainly, there are teachers who will insist there are rational reasons to ensure that students adopt a specific alignment, with the main reason being safety. I too used this reasoning often, usually by saying something along the lines of “You need to place (body part) correctly in relation to (other body part) to ensure you do not hurt yourself!”2 Do these cues sound familiar?
- In Warrior poses, ensure your knee is right above your ankle and it is pointing straight ahead. Do not let the knee fall inward
- Align the front heel with the middle of the back foot’s arch in Warrior poses and Triangle Pose
- In Triangle pose, ensure your knee is in line with your hips and feet so that it is not hyperextending. Ensure your hips are open and parallel to the side edge of the mat
- Microbend your elbows in Plank Pose/Down Dog/Side Plank if you are hyperextending
- Have your hands shoulder width apart in Down Dog/Handstand/Wheel
- Never place your foot against the standing leg’s knee in Tree Pose. It must go higher or lower, but never on the knee
This is not an exhaustive list. I gave these cues because I was told that the student would hurt themselves if they continued the incorrect alignment. The cues ensured that the student was biomechanically aligned in the least stressful position minimizing the possibility of injury. I attended many teacher trainings specifically to collect new alignment cues and principles. I knew that I was leading the class properly when every student was aesthetically perfect, which means they looked properly aligned. I was an alignment nerd up to the day I met Paul.
Paul Grilley Re-writes the Rules
Paul goes on to write, “Yet it must be said that the impulse to embrace rigid rules of alignment is not motivated only by TT necessities. It is one part of human nature to codify and rigidify, just as it is another part of human nature to break with tradition and create something new. We cannot teach effectively without some generalizations, but we haven’t reached maturity until we have outgrown generalizations and can competently focus on the unique needs of every student in every pose.”
Paul’s great gift is the “break from tradition.” Let’s look at the principles of alignment through his eyes for a moment. There is nothing wrong with the idea that there is an alignment for your limbs relative to your core that minimizes stress on the joints and other tissues. If you have an injury or a condition, or if you are about to place a load upon your tissues which will exceed their tolerances, damage may occur. Finding an optimal alignment may be important. Note the “may”!
All forms of exercise require some level of load or stress on the tissues. Tissues need to be loaded in order to grow stronger and more resilient. Thus, alignment should not eliminate all load. Alignment should be offered to ensure that any load does not exceed the tolerance of the tissues. A static yoga posture is rarely enough to overload a joint. Most joint injuries are sustained through a dynamic movement with the joints misaligned. That is when the peak force on the joint exceeds its tolerance level and damage occurs. This rarely happens in a yoga class, but it can if a person is already injured or weakened through some prior activities.3
The most important point Paul makes is the reality of human variation. While alignment may be important, what is a safe alignment cue for one person will not be safe for another person! Our anatomical structures are not the same. How can I insist that the “proper alignment” for the feet is hip width apart and parallel when almost everybody has tibial torsion, femoral torsion and varying acetabular version? Torsion refers to the twist of the bottom of the bone relative to the top, which means almost everybody’s shin and thigh bones twist, resulting in the feet pointing outward when the head of the femur is in the center of the hip socket. Acetabular version refers to the orientation of a person’s hip socket. For many people, their acetabulas are pointing to the sides. All this adds up to the undeniable fact that, for most people, the safest alignment for their feet is to allow them to point outward in Mountain Pose, Down Dog and many other standing postures.
In my effort to ensure my students were adopting a safe alignment, I was inadvertently causing them to stand in a compromised alignment. Fortunately, the loads on the hips in simply standing is small. As far as I know, no one was hurt by my inappropriate alignment cues.
Proper Alignment Recognizes Human Variation
Properly aligning the limbs relative to the core of the body can be important, especially when we are subjecting the body to large, transient loads. For this reason, a lot of time is taken to ensure proper technique is adopted in sports. Weightlifters train proper technique to ensure the loads on their spine, shoulders and hips are minimized. The challenge is: how do we determine what the proper technique is for each individual? A body builder with long arms may lift more weight in a deadlift competition compared to a short-armed competitor; the short-armed person will have an easier time doing a bench press but will find the Ashtanga jump-throughs much harder. Each body is unique, and the ideal techniques will also be unique.
The practice of teaching universal alignment that should be applied to every student for every pose is flawed because it ignores the reality of human variation. Certainly, it is easier to teach an aesthetic approach rather than a functional approach. It was easy for me to get the whole class to look exactly the same in Mountain Pose, but this did not mean this was the safest alignment for every student. It is more challenging to teach a functional approach to alignment; one that finds the optimal position for each student. But this is a challenge that teachers must face.
How can we teach safe, individual alignment if everyone is different? It is possible! It requires the teacher to train the student to determine her own optimal alignment for every pose. I call this “giving flying lessons.” Every student’s body is different, like different models of airplanes. I may not be trained to fly every plane, but I can still teach the students to understand their own controls and watch their instruments. Instead of telling the student where to place their feet or hands in Down Dog, I can suggest several options, teach the student what sensations we are seeking which are acceptable and which are not (anything painful is not acceptable!), and have the student report on the consequences of varying alignments. When the student discovers an alignment that feels safe, secure, solid, supported but not rigid, stuck, painful or even uncomfortable, she can adopt this position as a provisional alignment that works for her. It may change over time, in which case, she is free to investigate the alternatives again.
There are no universal alignment cues that work for every body. If you were taught standardized alignment in your teacher training, it is time for you to take your teaching to the next level.4 Start to teach your students to find their unique alignment cues and give them the freedom to fly on their own.
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1 The History of Teaching Alignment in America by Paul Grilley, September 2015. https://yinyoga.com/the-history-of-teaching-alignment-in-america
2 It took me many years to realize that my warnings could turn into nocebos. A nocebo is the opposite of a placebo, but instead of helping someone heal, which some placebos do, a nocebo may induce harm. See the article Yoga, Placebos and Nocebos.
3 Injuries can also occur due to factors such as overuse, degenerative changes, or trauma without misalignment being the cause. Unfortunately, an injury can happen in a yoga class. This is more likely in a power yoga or fast-paced flow class where dynamic misalignment could contribute to cumulative wear over time, leading to discomfort or injury.
4 The trilogy, Your Body, Your Yoga which has Paul Grilley’s foreword, is a good place to start. It contains over 1,000 pages describing the myriad ways that our bodies vary and the implications these variations have on our yoga practice. Another place to learn is by attending the 3rd and final, in-person, Functional Anatomy for Yoga Teachers training being held July 7 – 11, 2025.