Creating A Framework For Enhancing Touch For Pilates Teachers

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Hello fellow teachers,

We have a lot of exciting stuff going on at ST these days and many of them revolve around our new Manual Cueing Video Series that will start launching on Friday, May 24th!

This post is meant to give you a little more insight both into how to begin to look at your current manual cueing skills, start to build a framework for understanding how to effectively or more effectively use touch as well as give you a little peak into what the Manual Cueing Video Series will be addressing.

 

Creating a Framework for Manual Cueing in the Pilates Environment

 

Purpose

  • To offer a framework for understanding our scope of practice using touch, and to better craft how, when and why we use touch in our work so that we can be more effective and our students achieve greater lasting results.
  • Framework/Learning Objectives: So that we can always use touch with a clear intention, objective, and goal in mind.
    • Why – to touch
    • When – to touch
    • How – to touch

 

WHY to Touch

  • Established the “Why” in our Scope of Practice:
    • To Inform
    • To Assist/or Spot
    • To Connect

 

WHEN  to Touch

  • When you have permission
  • When you have a clear intention, goal or objective
    • Have had an experience with this type of touch, practiced it or have a clear idea of the outcome it will produce
  • In order to establish a baseline of what is effective touch for a particular body/student
  • When you can use an established and effective form of touch (established either by you or another trusted teacher)

 

HOW to Touch – The biggest one of all!

  • A closed hand touch (almost always recommended!!)
    • Used in assisting movement, spotting or for informing complex movement sequences
    • Used in encouraging prolonged activation or fullness of movement:
      • Breath work
      • Stretching
      • Elongating
        • Used by the student to help them cue in to an action, perception or correction
  • A firm touch
    • Used in helping to activate stability or stronger muscle activation
      • Used by the student as a form of self-correcting
  • A light or delicate touch/resting touch
    • Used to infuse ease, soften, encourage letting go or proprioceptive awareness
    • Used to insight the teacher as to the level of activation, responsiveness, recruitment
      • Used by the student as a way of feeling externally the level of activation that’s happening internally
  • A direct, single point touch (sometimes the “poke”)
    • Used lightly or barely at all to bring attention to a small action or area
    • Used to articulate or isolate a movement or action
    • Used to zero in or hone in on an area:
      • Can be used jokingly or to add emphasis if done with kindness and intention and with the “right” client.

 

Excerpt From Moving Beyond Technique Companion Newsletter:

Demystifying Touch – Unraveling An Underused Tool

 

Greetings fellow teachers,

 

As you may know Skillful Teaching is getting ready to launch a cool new video series for Pilates teachers on manual cueing. Needless to say touch and hands on cueing have been on my mind lately.

 

I thought I”d share some of my insights on the topic with you and see what you thought. I”d love your feedback and comments on the Moving Beyond Technique Facebook page or in the comments section of the new blog post (see below), so don”t hesitate to Dermed er den maksimale Blackjack Bonus pa 600 kroner. chime in.

 

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So, yesterday I had the absolute pleasure of witnessing a teacher take her final comprehensive test. After a long written exam, she had to get up and teach an hour-long session to a student she”d never met in a relatively busy studio environment. And she did great! (You did great!)

 

I love conducting these final tests! I gain evermore insight into how and why and when we use our words, body language, touch, demonstration, tone of voice, body position etc., in our teaching. I get to see the product of hours and hours of practice and study come together and it is ALWAYS FASCINATING to see how it manifests in each individual.

 

One of the insights I had yesterday about the use of manual cueing was that most of us get by just fine without it, not great, but fine. We make our verbal cueing the highlight of our teaching, it becomes our strongest skill in dispersing information and we rely on it heavily.

 

It reminds me a little bit of when someone might sprain an ankle or loose some function in a hand or an eye becomes impaired. The body miraculously finds a way to maneuver around the weakness or injury or loss and adapts, making other areas strong in order to re-establish it”s baseline ability to walk, see, or restore as much normal function to the entire system as possible. Now, this doesn”t bring the system to optimal function, but it gets the job done.

 

This is how I see verbal cueing. We use it as our primary tool for communication in teaching because obviously it is what we are most adept at and comfortable with. It is what we talk about and focus on in our initial education as a means of articulating the exercises.  However, it often supersedes other important and powerful tools creating a sense of false efficiency. We become so good at using our words and we see our students responding — mostly — so we never think to ask if we could be better at what we are doing.

 

I feel like no matter how well we teach it is our continued obligation to ask ourselves “How could I be a better teacher?” And if we are exposing ourselves to a variety of methods and teachers we will eventually come to see that there are in fact a massive number of tools that we could be using but aren”t.

 

For me this is where manual cueing falls for most of us. We don”t use it much because we seem to get by fine without it. But I would encourage you to ask yourself:

 

“Could I be more effective as a teacher if I enhanced my hands on cueing?”

 

Could you?

 

Watching the session yesterday I saw this very thing at play. A masterful verbal instructor already, the teacher used her hands appropriately but tentatively and infrequently to marginal effect. Come to find out she, like most new teachers — and many experienced teachers — is not totally comfortable using her hands…yet 🙂 She knew instinctively when touch might be helpful, but was not entirely committed to using it. In this way our touch can become haphazard and sometimes disconcerting for the student sending mixed or unclear messages.

 

With a strong, intentional, and deliberate touch, however, we have the potential to really inform our students and take the teaching more deeply inward for both of us. In my experience this is the difference between making a student reliant on our words rather than empowering them to truly “experience” the movement from within so that it is readily accessible when they are not with us.

 

I hope this has begun to pique your curiosity as to how you use touch and how you might use it more effectively. As I said earlier, often we don”t even know we are missing a crucial tool or if we are using it ineffectively until we look a little closer.

 

View the Blog Post on “Creating a Framework for Enhancing Touch” and see some of the guidelines we are going to cover in the Manual Cueing Video Series. If you are not yet signed up for the Skillful Teaching Path Program and are interested in gaining access to the series, sign up now by following either of the links above.