By Asbjørn Bjaanes 14.03.2022

Introduction

This paper discusses how students in the Ashtanga yoga space take inn and process information / instructions, how a teachers and students may use this understanding to facilitate more effective learning.

There is an assumption student with a visual learning strategy as their primary, do have more difficulties than those with auditory and kinaesthetic primary strategy (Richard Bandler and John Grinder), to take in learning and instructions in relation to understand the construction of Asanas.

The question in which I want to address by looking at various theories is whether this assumption is valid, and to suggest strategies which can help effective communication in the Ashtanga.

Theories

All the theories discussed in this section are limited to give a brief understanding, to cover it in fully is beyond the scope of this paper for further reading please study the sources. 

Visual Auditory and Kinaesthetic modalities (VAK) – NLP

Richard Bandler and John Grinder suggest that people use their sensory system as strategies for learning, make decisions and express them self. Namely Visual, auditory and Kinaesthetic, furthermore they suggest we use them all however we have a primary modality and a secondary modality.

Visual
The visual modality means information are perceived visually, recalled visually or constructed from imagination. A person which are dominant on the visual modality, will often use a visual language and even talk in images. Example of phrases they will use “See you later”, “I see what you mean”, “Let’s take a look at it”, when they describe something they will do so with the visual appearance and if you ask then why they decided on buying an item it will often be based on a visual experience

Auditory
Information perceived to sounds, recalled from memory of constructed from imagination. In their communication they will use words related to sounds / hearing, using phrases like “Speak to you later”, “I hear what you are saying”, “It sounds like a good plan”, explaining how they made a decision will often be based on what they were told by others, read about, how the car sounded. One may also find auditory dominant people to be good with learning language, plugging etc.

Kinaesthetic
Perceive information through feelings and physical sensations, in their language you find them using phrases like, “It feels like a good plan”, “Let’s stay in touch”, “Next time we run into each other”. The kinaesthetic person will describe with sensations and may reason for buying the new car with eg. the seats were comfortable and safety of the car.

Emotional and Physical Sexuality

Dr. John Kappas the founder of Kappasinian hypnoses and theory “Physical and Emotional Sexuality” suggest as beings we have a Physical and Emotional suggestibility (learning) and for expressing our self, further Dr. Kappas suggest we are predominant in one or the other in higher or lesser degree. A person will may differently profiles for expression and suggestibility / learning, I will in this section focus on the suggestibility as the paper discuss learning.

As we are dominant in one and secondary in the other, this also represent a capacity. Let’s say you are 30% Physical and 70% emotional, it will require distribution or priority throughout the day. If you have a Physical or Social interacting job, there may not capacity for social activities or sports during the evening. For this reason, you may find that certain occupations and practices are typical for Physicals or Emotional. Discussing the traits Physical and Emotional below will be the extent on each (high physical and high emotional).

Physical
Physical will use their physical body as a portal to their inner, the emotions and you will find them more open and willing to share. They will have good control of their physical energy and distribute it well, meaning they will often appear more resilient in physical activity and with more endurance.

Physicals recover by being social and engage in physical activities,

They will reason for their thoughts, decisions, opinions and often talk long after the message is delivered.

Then perceive information literal or are more suggestable to direct language, less good no inferences in the language

Emotional
The emotional disconnect their physical body from their inner, or you could say the body protect the inner and emotional. The emotional will use their energy all at once or more explosively, meaning less control to distribute and prioritising the energy over time. Typical they may overspend energy in one activity and find themselves drained drained for the next one.

Emotional recover by self-time and relaxing activities

They perceive information in inferences, detailed language do not work well for them. They will typically finish the sentence for you or make the conclusion before you finish, they thing they can read your mind….. This do lead to miss communication.

Visualization

Referencing Dr. John Kappas and other hypnotherapy schools only 50% of people can visualise, my experience from my own work is that people who cannot visualize have a greater need to see things in physical visualization. Eg. as a visual demonstration, picture etc. as they are not able to construct visualization from memory.

People who cannot visualize will still be able to imagine, however, to expect them to construct a visual element will not work for them it will leave them confused. Appealing to their imagination will work as they will use other references and recall and construct from other sensory modalities.

Linguistics

From Milton Ericson’s work on the use of linguistics / language in his hypnotherapy work, Richard Bandler and John Grinder modeled how we respond to language, for the purpose of this paper I will limit the description of this to create an understanding only.

Power words and Thinking words

There are certain words which make our brain go to work, meaning they take us on a journey mapping memories and constructing illusions etc. This has its use, however words like this will also take the listener / reader time to process and might lose other information or attention (being fully present). One may also find reference to such words in a variety of presentation / marketing literature as power words, because they trigger emotions which can be used to influence the listener.

If you for example inspect the word exotic, your brain will take you into processing and defining exotic which is personal for you. Another word could be challenge, first you will spend time processing what is a challenge to you and secondly what did the sender / speaker mean with challenge?

Discussion

In the Ashtanga yoga space from above studies and theories I see several ways the learning and communication are put at challenge. Lets inspect how the above may impact the Ashtanga yoga room…

Visual Auditory and Kinaesthetic

From the studies I do believe vi find all the combinations of primary and secondary modalities in the Ashtanga community, probably we may find teachers and students could share much of the same profiles. Due to matching the sensory language and the assumption that students will seek and stay with the teachers they connect well with. If any modality were to be over-represented, we could question if the Mysore style might be preferred by students with Kinaesthetic as either their primary or secondary modality, this would in case require more research to answer though.

Emotional and Physical sexual

From the theories there are reasons to believe that physical sexual may be highly represented in the Ashtanga community, due to endurance and connection to the physical body. All have people have a physical and an emotional capacity, meaning what kind of life the individuals have outside of the Ashtanga will also have an impact. This could alone raise a whole series of new questions to research, however the time of practices the physical part / capacity will be in use.

It could also be mentioned that other and more meditative forms yoga potentially attract more emotional sexual beings

Whether this all holds true will require more research.

Visualization

It is from my understanding clear that students who cannot visualize will have a harder time to get started with the traditional Ashtanga practices, as they will thrive on demonstrations and very concise instructions. Once established in the practise I believe it is less significant challenge for the student, because they will seek teachers who help them their way. It is probably more of a challenge for teachers to find the good way of helping individuals forwards and teaching a mixed class. For these students, students will benefit if teachers shift their language in a way which appeal to their imagination.

Linguistics

Being aware how the student may perceive our spoken instructions will help us as teacher to be clearer in our instructions and also understand where students may struggle to understand.

Fist it is important to mention all sections discussed in this paper is related to linguistics, this section is titled linguistics cause directly related to construction of sentences or words.

Delete, distort, and generalize

We may look at deleting information as an effective way to save time in a dialog, in ashtanga we have a fixed sequence and with the format of vinyasa counts. Students know exactly what to do on each count, with very few ques needed, it is like a template. This is also why yoga poses are given name, when a teacher calls out the name of a pose students know what to do. Teachers do not need to give step by step instructions of the pose, eg. Warrior 1 – Step left foot forward, bend the knee to 90-degree, knee over the toes, hips aligned facing the right knee …. Meaning when we develop a common vocabulary, we may hide information to be more effective. This works very well, where we might find this a trap is when we give verbal adjustments and leave out essential ques. After starting this assignment, I paid specific attention to how students take instructions, eg. lean forward in Mayūrāsana half the class are bending their upper bodies towards the floor. This is a sample where information like “use your arms to move your body weight forward until you balance” might. I will omit the discussion of distortion and generalization as it is less applicable for the scope of the paper.

Power Words / thinking words

Power words (or thinking words which I like to call them) has its use, however it is important to understand that if we add them before an instruction, the student will probably lose the instruction we are given while occupied with the power word. Eg. in a drop back an instruction may go like this “Ground yourself, create space between hips and ribs, head back arms over head…..” our brain will start working on ground yourself what does it mean, how do I ground, I feel the earth under my feet, I feel safe and calm etc…. This will swirl in the imagination and steal attention from other instructions and the integration of the backbend

Summary and conclusion

This paper started with an assumption student with a visual learning strategy as their primary, do have more difficulties than those with an auditory and kinaesthetic primary strategy (Richard Bandler and John Grinder) in the Ashtanga space. Looking at the theories and observations I made during my practice, paying particular attention over the past few weeks. My conclusion is that students with Visual as primary modality, do not face any significant disadvantage in the Ashtanga space than any other modalities.

My findings point more in the direction that being aware of VAK students VAK modality and use it actively, make learning more effective. Eg. a student using visual modality visualize internally, with means they will visualize the movement, pose and adjustment. Teacher could appeal to this by making instruction in visual language “look at your right knee place it directly over the toes”, “visualize you left thigh bone rotating outwards”. An Auditory would benefit from more procedural language “knee 5 cm more forward”, “twist your thighbone outwards as far as you can” and kinaesthetic “move knee forward till you feel the weight even on the foot”, “rotate thighbone outward to you feel opening in the hip” Luckily, we have more than one VAK modality, we use these modalities for store and recall from memory eg. a Visual – Kineastetic person will store this in memory as a visual and sensory memory and the Auditory – Kineastetic person will store it as a procedure and sensory memory.

Another interesting finding and which I believe to be more important to address, is the inability to visualize. This apply to half the population according to Dr Kappas and other hypnotherapy schools, with my own experience these are the group which need to see pictures and live demonstration in order to understand. It is further said even though they cannot visualize, they are fully capable of imagining meaning they will be able to construct an imagery using other sensory modalities. In hypnosis this principle and as everyone can imagine, it is suggested to use over visualize or visual language if speaking to groups or individuals you do not know the visualization capabilities of.

Taking the VAK modalities into consideration, I believe this is a very simple implementation to use in the Ashtanga yoga space. Eg. “Imagine your right knee directly over your toes”, and “imagine your left thighbone rotate outwards”, this way we allow the student to use whatever sensory modality needed to construct from memory in a generic language.

Regarding delete, distort, and generalize, it is a good thing to be aware of with particularly beginners however as we build / educate them with a yoga terminology I believe this is off less significance during a yoga class and probably more applicable for workshops.

Similar for the use of thinking words, being aware and limit them in general make effective communication and would be more applicable in workshops. During Mysore practice the student will get much repetition and will adjust their thinking process as they experience. Eg. ground your self will become an icon for preparatory actions.

I found the Emotional and Physical beings raise more questions which may lead to other interesting findings outside of the scope of this paper. However, Emotional Sexuals respond to inferences and Physical sexuals to literal language, their representation or part used in the Ashtanga space would require more research to come to an conclusion. As with delete, distort, generalization and thinking words I believe it may have more relevance in workshops then yoga classes.  

In summary the key takeaway is using VAK specific language working with individual if you know their VAK profile will be very effective for the students learning, using generic language appealing to imagination cater for effective learning for all individuals and teaching groups.