As a yoga teacher, I’ve always prioritized helping students take ownership of their experience in my classes. I want people to feel autonomy in their practice, so I learned to offer a lot of options and encourage them to pause or choose a different expression of a pose.

Somewhere along the way, though, I started relying heavily on one cue: Do what feels good.

I was attempting to create space for students in their practice, to avoid being overly prescriptive with my alignment cues, and to support all bodies in the room. I felt it was a way to keep things accessible. It felt like thoughtful teaching, because it is.

Although I’ve recently realized, as a student on the receiving end of this cue, that what feels good is not always what is best for my body. I’m recovering from a back injury, and I’m noticing that stretching feels good. Specifically, finding depth in familiar shapes feels good. But for me, focusing on what feels good took me away from the more challenging aspects of strengthening core and glute muscles to support my back, and that is what I needed, the work.

So I had to admit to myself that, left to my own instincts, I was not always choosing what supported me. I was choosing what felt most familiar and easiest. And that isn’t always what I need from my practice.

This really made me look at my habits as a teacher. Was I defaulting to this cue in the same way I was defaulting to certain movement patterns in my practice—namely, because it was familiar and easy? And, by extension, was using “do what feels good” actually supporting my students or was it holding them back from strengthening, like me,  or exploring things that help them grow?

How My Understanding of the Cue Has Changed

In the last few years, “do what feels good” has become quite common in the yoga space, and creating spaces that are inclusive and allow people to choose is important. Not everyone will use this cue in the way I was seeing it show up for me and some of my students, it’s liked for a reason, and it can be supportive. However, what I saw about me was I started using this cue as a way to create inclusivity and accessibility, but I had let it become a way of giving students permission to do less than they needed. 

When I confronted myself and thought through things, I realized I’d been leaning on it more and more as a substitute for articulate teaching. I’d been relying on “do what feels good”  as a way to avoid planning or fully thinking through the sequence, and as a familiar and easy fallback when I wasn’t sure what to cue next.  At times I found that my fear of saying too much, of cuing in a way that felt like it didn’t fit for all bodies, or saying things that only fit for certain bodies, was pushing me back to the familiar “do what feels good”.  And that could create too much freedom for students who actually wanted direction.

I still believe the cue has merit. Yet at a certain point, it has the potential to stop being empowering and start being vague.

Students come to yoga class to have move their bodies, and some of them value autonomy and permission in their practice. But they also come for instruction on how to move, where to move, and when to move. That instruction matters.

How I’ve Changed My Teaching

I haven’t stopped saying “do what feels good.” But I did stop leading with it and instead started including more specific options. There are several things that supported me in finding this middle ground.

I started walking around the room more and watching how people were practicing rather than assuming they would find whatever stretch or strengthening they needed simply by my wishing it for them.

I also changed how I prepared to teach. Instead of quickly running through a sequence in my head to memorize it, I started practicing it more than once, moving through each pose with intention—not just testing out the shape but actually feeling it. That helped me become more intentional about different variations I could share with students and the time it takes to come into them.

I’ve been giving more specific instructions again, and I’ve had to rethink how I can be more intentional with my cueing and what I can do to help students find the shape of a pose in a way that supports their bodies while still ensuring they know any movement is ultimately their choice.

In other words, I got back to teaching.

And what I’ve learned is that offering direction doesn’t take away autonomy, it can actually support it. Because when students are given specific options and try them, they learn to tune in and understand what’s available to them beyond what feels good. I still use “do what feels good.” I just don’t rely on it in the same way anymore. Now it comes after the instruction, not in place of it.