How to ask a yoga teacher a question with Svayam Yoga
Write a question, send it to a teacher of your choice, and find their answer when it arrives.
When this is useful
When the same thing keeps going wrong and no amount of re-reading the pose page explains why - or when a posture check keeps flagging a correction you cannot make.
Before you start
- The specifics. Which pose, what you feel, where you feel it, and what you have already tried.
- A look at the answered questions already on the page. Yours may be there.
Steps
Step 1
Open Community Q&A
Ask a Teacher in the sidebar opens a screen headed Community Q&A. The label and the heading differ because the page is both - you ask a teacher, and everyone's answers are readable.
Step 2
Read what has already been answered
Browse the answered questions first. Alignment problems are unglamorously common, and a teacher has often already written the answer you were about to ask for.
Step 3
Write your question
Be specific. 'How do I improve my downward dog alignment' gets a better answer than 'help with downward dog', and 'my left shoulder aches in downward dog after about thirty seconds' gets a better one still.
Step 4
Choose which teacher it goes to
Search for a teacher by name and send it to them. Every teacher on the platform has been reviewed and approved before they could publish anything, and their profile shows the background they gave.
Step 5
Find the answer
Answers appear on the same page under your question, attributed to the teacher who wrote it. You can mark an answer helpful, which is how the useful ones surface for the next person with your problem.
Step 6
Escalate when writing is not enough
Some things cannot be answered in text. If the answer needs someone to watch you move, book a live class or use Office Hours, where teachers set aside times to be available by day.
What happens next
Your question and its answer stay on the page for you to return to, and become part of what other students can read. A teacher may also point you at a specific drill or course rather than answering in prose.
An example
Your posture check keeps flagging your front knee in Warrior II and the cue has not helped. You ask a teacher, describing what you feel in the hip. They reply that the correction is upstream of the knee entirely and suggest two hip drills. The knee reading changes a fortnight later.
Tips
- One question per post. Three questions bundled together usually get one answered.
- Say what you have already tried. It saves the teacher a round trip and gets you a better answer.
- If it is urgent or physical, Office Hours beats a written question.
Safety and limitations
- Teachers give yoga guidance, not medical advice. Nothing here diagnoses or treats a condition.
- For pain that persists, or anything that started with an injury, see a clinician first and bring their advice back to your teacher.
- Where a question is really about whether you should be doing something at all, a live class with a teacher watching is worth more than any written answer.
Svayam supports a general wellbeing practice. It does not diagnose, treat or cure anything, and it is not a substitute for medical advice, physiotherapy, or an in-person assessment by a qualified yoga teacher.
Related how-to guides
How to follow the Community Q&A feed with Svayam Yoga
Read the community feed, mark the answers that helped, and follow your own questions from asked to answered.
How to check your posture with a camera with Svayam Yoga
Run one posture check on a pose of your choice and read the alignment feedback it produces.
How to join teacher office hours with Svayam Yoga
Find an open office-hours slot with a teacher and take a place in it.
How to book a live yoga class with Svayam Yoga
Find a live class, check when it runs in your own timezone, and book a place in it.