Ep 130: Why Plow Pose Shouldn’t Be Taught in Group Classes

Plow Pose is a standard part of many yoga classes, and many teachers were trained to include it without much question. But in a group class setting, the demands on the cervical spine in this pose, combined with the reality of teaching multiple students at once, create a level of risk that is worth taking seriously. In this episode,  I'll make a direct case for why plow pose does not belong in a group yoga class, what the anatomy actually tells us about what this pose asks of the neck, and what it means to teach responsibly when you cannot give every student your individual attention.

• The Reality of Group Classes
• Understanding the Cervical Spine
• Why Plow Pose Is Specifically Problematic
• Additional Problematic Poses
• What Thoughtful Teaching Actually Looks Like

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Teaching Students with Injuries Mentorship

The anatomy behind the poses you teach, how to make confident decisions about what belongs in your classes, and how to work with students who have complex histories are all part of the Teaching Students with Injuries Mentorship.

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Transcript

Monica 0:00

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Monica, and I'm so glad you're here. Here is where we talk about the anatomy, the injuries, the real conversations about what is actually happening in the bodies of the students that come to your classes, the things your teacher training probably skipped over, and the things that matter most when you're teaching at the front of your class full of real students with real bodies. that. Today we're talking about plow pose and why I do not think it belongs in a group yoga class. I'll briefly mention a few other poses that fall into a similar category, but plow pose is where we're spending most of this episode on. And by the end of this episode, I want you to have a clear understanding of why I believe this and what I want you to consider when you're teaching. Before we talk about the pose itself, think about this. when you are teaching a group of students, you could be managing anywhere from 5 to 30 students at the same time, maybe even more. I've taught classes where there were regularly 70 plus students in attendance, and the thing is, you honestly cannot watch every student simultaneously. You have students who maybe they arrived late and they haven't shared their pain and injury histories with you. You might have students who did not fill out an intake form or filled it out without mentioning the information that actually matters the most here. You have students who hear your cues and decide to maybe go a little bit further before you can see what is happening with them. And you have students who are carrying health histories you know nothing about because they didn't think to mention it or because they're not used to sharing it with teachers. This is not a criticism of your students. This is just the reality of a group class, and when you accept that reality, A harder question becomes, are there poses where that lack of individual attention creates a level of risk That we as teachers should not be comfortable with? My answer is yes, and plow pose is at the top of that list. To understand why plow pose is so concerning in a group setting, you need to understand a little bit about the cervical spine because it's the skeletal structure that carries the most risk in this pose. Your cervical spine is the top section of your spine, the seven vertebrae that make up your neck, and it's designed to be very mobile. You can flex, extend, rotate, side bend, and lengthen it with a wide range of motion, and that mobility is actually a feature of your anatomy. But that mobility, that movement comes with a trade-off. The cervical spine is relatively vulnerable compared to other parts of the spine. It does not have the protection of the ribcage the way your thoracic spine does. It is not built with the same mass and structural support as your lumbar spine, and it sits right at the junction between your brain and the rest of your nervous system with the spinal cord and the blood vessels that supply your brain all running through this region. The discs between the cervical vertebrae, like all spinal discs, can herniate and degenerate The spinal canal can narrow, which is a condition called stenosis. Osteoporosis can affect the vertebrae themselves. Arthritis is incredibly common in the cervical spine, especially in older students. and old injuries such as whiplash in particular can leave lasting changes in the structures of the neck that a student may not even think of as relevant when they come to your yoga class. A meaningful number of your students are walking into your class with one or more of these conditions. They look fine, they are not presenting as injured, and they signed up for yoga because they wanna move and feel better, and they trust that you will keep them safe. so they're putting a lot of their trust in your hands. In plow pose, you lie on your back, lift your legs up and over your head, and bring your feet to the floor behind you. The pelvis is stacked above the shoulders, and in that position, the cervical spine is in deep flexion with the weight of the lower body loading it from above. In that position, the back of the cervical vertebrae are being compressed while the front structures, including the discs and the ligaments, are under significant tension. For a student with a cervical disc herniation, this position directly loads the already compromised disc. For a student with stenosis, this flexion can reduce the space available for the spinal cord. For a student with osteoporosis in the cervical vertebrae, the compressive forces in this position are a very real risk for fracture. Here's what makes a group class specifically dangerous for this pose, it's that you cannot fully control what your students do once they are in it. A student who feels the urge to go further will probably go further. A student who shifts their weight, or turns their head, or loses the position of their hands propping up their lower back, even for a moment, increases the load through the cervical spine in ways that you cannot spot from across the room, and you might be distracted by looking at another student. and because the structures at risk are neurological, the consequences of loading them incorrectly are not the same as straining a hamstring, for example Cueing modifications will help, but it does not solve this problem. You can cue a supported version. You can invite students to keep their legs up in the air, maybe in shoulder stand rather than going all the way over with their legs. And yes, these are options, but when you cue plow pose in a group class, the students who most need to avoid it are the least likely to recognize that it is not appropriate for their body. they may not know that they have a cervical condition that makes this pose risky, or they do know and they do not connect it to what you're asking them to do right in that moment. Or they simply wanna keep up with the rest of the class and do what every other student is doing, and this is the reality of group yoga classes. Let me briefly mention a few other poses that fall into a similar category because plow pose is not the only pose that requires extreme caution. The first is shoulder stand because it includes most of the same cervical spine concerns. The weight of the entire body is stacked above the neck in a position of flexion and the same conditions that make plow problematic make shoulder stand problematic for the same reasons. Headstands ask students to bear weight through the head and neck directly. The margin for error is really small here, and when alignment shifts in headstand, the load moves into the cervical spine very quickly and in a group class where you cannot spot every student at once, this is a lot to ask of you as the teacher to handle. For different reasons, lotus pose is worth mentioning as well. while the concern in lotus pose is the knee joint rather than the cervical spine, full lotus requires significant external rotation of the hip combined with deep knee flexion and some rotation in the knee joint. When a student does not have adequate hip mobility for the pose, that rotational demand gets transferred down to the knee, which is not designed to manage as much rotation the way the hip is. In a group class, You cannot assess an individual student's hip range of motion before teaching this to an entire room of students. All of these poses share the same fundamental issue. They have a small margin for error, and group class teaching does not give you the ability to manage that margin for every student individually. I realize that this can bring up some resistance when it comes to teaching yoga asana. Maybe you were taught these poses as part of your training. Maybe they are part of a long tradition you care about, or maybe your students even ask for them. But here's how I want you to consider these poses. Teaching yoga responsibly does not mean teaching every pose to every student in every class. It means understanding what a pose demands, understanding who is in your class, and making choices that reflect both of those things honestly. These poses are not off limits for every student forever. They are poses that deserve individual assessment, appropriate preparation, and your full attention on one student at a time. That is what a private session is for. And when a student wants to work towards handstand or explore plow pose, private sessions are the right setting for that type of teaching. Now, that's not a limitation on your teaching. That's actually what thoughtful, informed teaching looks like. If this episode piqued your interest and you want to understand the anatomy behind the poses you're teaching at a much deeper level, including how to have direct, confident conversations with students about why you're teaching what you're teaching, the Teaching Students with Injuries mentorship is where we do that work together. We cover anatomy, injuries, the nervous system, and the real situations that come up when you're teaching a class full of students with complex histories. You can learn more about it at the link below, and if you wanna talk through whether it's the right fit for you before you decide, book a strategy call with me. That link is in the show notes. All right. I hope this episode helped you think about the effects of teaching certain poses in your group classes. Remember, the Teaching Students with Injuries mentorship is where you learn how to apply what you learn about pain and injuries to your actual students in your classes. More information is linked in the show notes, and thank you so much for being here. I'll see you next week. All right. Bye.