I was in natarajasana, often called “dancer’s pose” in a late night (almost 9pm) class at a dominant, well-known yoga school, when the male teacher picked me up off the floor and spun me around, like we were two finalists destined to be voted off the next episode of SO You Think You Can Dance.

I kid you not. Really. I write humor and satire blogs and I must report:

THIS IS NOT ONE OF THEM.

I didn’t scream. New to vinyasa at the time, but raised a dancer, so I guess that ballet side of me kicked in and made this Dirty Dancing lift “work.” Years later I question whether it even happened or if I dreamed it.

(I fear this is a common experience for women. I know this is a common experience for women.)

This assist was unnecessary. It wasn’t icky or sexual. It was just…

WTF?

If anything, being lifted off my foundation thwarted my ability to effectively and sustainably work the pose.

The title of this blog– stop touching people for no reason– does not, I must repeat, mean I’m against all touch:

I’m against touch for no goddamn good reason. Unfortunately, even as the world of yoga begins to wake up to the new days of “post-authoritarian practice,” we still have this world of yoga that includes (1) assembly-line assists, where 200 hr TT grads taught by other recent 200 hr TT grads just pull on every down dog , squish on every pidgeon they see; (2) “juicy assists” (insert vomit emoji) and (3) assists for the teacher’s ego that don’t help the student at all (see Exhibit A: Natarajasana Dancing With The Stars lift story, above).

I don’t know about you — but I sure as hell don’t want to be juiced like a fucking orange in my practice.

Here are my thoughts about assisting (based on nine years of teaching, and more than a decade of practice, years as a student, life as a woman, days as a mother and recipient of bodily trauma, and numerous occasions of witnessing the juicing of a variety of fruits and vegetables in high speed blenders).

1. Assisting is teaching. Verbal instructions about where you are trying to help me go would work perhaps better than any physical manipulation.
   
2. Students should know you’re there (for the most part) before you touch them at all, let alone deeply. It would be nice to get a name. Like, “Hey, it’s Susan, right? Maybe move that right foot a little this way, pk, and is it ok if I touch you? (insert very light handed touch). In vinyasa classes HOW ABOUT WE GIVE students a chance to say “don’t touch me” or “I just had a hip replacement two weeks ago” (True Story, someone said that to me a few weeks back) — Before you touch them. Students regularly tell me they don’t modify because they don’t want to hurt the teacher’s feelings. (They also don’t tell me until the last minute or NEVER even say at all that they have degenerative disc disease or they have a papier mache knee or that they injured their neck snowboarding a few years back). Give them the power to talk.
   
3. People respond best when you teach them like they have as much to teach you. Because they do. No matter what you know as a recent TT or even a 9th-year teacher (and that ain’t much, sorry to say) you will never know as much as that person who has lived her entire life In That body you are about to touch. Put another way, in a “resilient culture,”
   
   “everybody is learning from everyone else all the time.”
   ~ Theo Wildcroft
   
4. Once I know you’re there, ask if it’s ok for you touch me. Why not? Contrary to certain male teachers exposed by the New York Times, asking for consent DOES WORK. If there’s assent, continue to ask if things are ok. I think consent chips can be helpful, too. But within a single class there may be some things for which a person cannot be touched and some places where they can. (side note: I regularly visit a mysore room where the teachers know me, know my practice and I generally know when I am going to be assisted, and I know that they are open to feedback and conversation about said assists. In this scenario, I don’t expect to be asked if it’s ok for the teacher to touch me because we’ve already established a line of communication.)
   
5. Most people in vinyasa classes I teach don’t need intense physical assists — or ANY physical assists at all. They more often need personalized attention and verbal instruction. Most people in class don’t need to be put into poses, cranked in poses or have their arms pushed to the floor in a wide legged forward fold. They don’t need to be juiced like a goddamn orange. They need verbal instructions— for example, to know that their feet are way over-crossed or that chatturanga isn’t supposed to look like a breakdancing move known as “The Worm,” that an adjustment in their stance might be worth exploring or that they might play with their hands a little closer together over there. After class students thank me for the attention because I am giving that, but I do so without deep touching. It’s not needed in most cases. 
   
6. Give attention to everyone, instead of touching everyone with your hands. To me, this is the real “hands-on” teaching.
   
7. If you don’t practice yoga regularly, don’t touch me (and why are you even teaching?)
   
8. The assist is supposed to be about the student– not the teacher. When I touch or assist people I am asking myself what does this person need? They don’t need an assist to prove that I (as teacher) have got the sauce.
   
9. Assisting, teaching — It’s a conversation. It’s a mutual dance. I should feel connection between us when you touch me. I should have a chance to say, “my hamstring is wonky today, don’t do that assist on me today please.” (I have little side talks like this with teachers and assistants in the mysore room all the time. Recently I told the wonderful assistant in SLC that I was feeling not quite up to my biggest final backbend. There was a conversation between me, the main teacher and the assistant. And it felt right.)
   
10. Don’t fix me. I’m not broken. Put away your juicy assists and your patronizing fixer ones. Because if this is a mutual dance, if you have as much to learn from me as I do from you, then it’s never about you “fixing me.” It’s us on our way, together.
    
11. You can serve students even as a new teacher, even if your practice isn’t as advanced. Just be honest. It doesn’t take special expertise to look at me in a WTF-is-this-ashtanga-advanced-series- posture and say, “hey I don’t know this pose but it looks like if you brought some more weight forward it would help or it looks like your leaning more to right than the left.” Just observe and be honest with what you know and what you don’t know. Watch and look at people as they practice before you touch them, if you need to touch them at all (and you probably don’t).

I said, “Hey yoga teacher, stop touching people for no reason.” What i mean is– if you touch me, have a good reason.

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Finally, several links herein are from blogs by Angela Jamison at both http://www.insideowl.com/ and http://www.ashtangaannarbor.com/wordpress/

I recommend reading them!