Choosing a Yoga Instructor

While we already have one Yoga instructor who is delightful and offers perfect practice for our clients, Health & Wellness is presently expanding its Yoga offerings to another site. So, we are in the process of interviewing candidates to fill the new Yoga instructor postion. We've made some observations during this process that we thought we would share with readers who may also be expanding programming for their behavioral health clients.

Most important to the Health & Wellness team is that the new Yoga instructor be skillful at his/her craft. The instructor should be well-versed in providing Yoga practice to all ages and ability levels. Further, the instructor must be sensitive to the individual clients' abilities and needs. For instance, the instructor ought to be able to teach both floor and chair Yoga simultaneously as many of our clients are older and may lack the flexibility and coordination needed for floor Yoga.

Another important feature of our new Yoga instructor, we've decided, is that he/she should not practice only Yin Yoga, or a style that is largely cerebral--or too much in the head. We've found that this style when offered exclusively can exacerbate psychiatric symptoms. Our clients do better when there is nearly constant movement and physical activity rather than only mental processing.

And finally, our clients need music! Some interviewees have stated that they offer a chant in the beginning of class but provide no other music during their practices. We've found that our clients respond well to music, which, again, enables them to focus on being grounded, present and responsive to their surroundings.  Music protects against perseveration of psychiatric symptomology as well.

So for what it's worth, we offer these observations on choosing a Yoga practitioner for an integrated services program.