Mark Stephens - Yoga Adjustments Philosophy, Principles, and Techniques

As someone who is regularly called upon to treat yoga students injured by ill-informed teachers, I can confidently say that Mark Stephens has done our community a wonderful service with his newest work, Yoga Adjustments. Along with Teaching Yoga and Yoga Sequencing, this book forms a trilogy of essential works for every yoga teacher who strives to be more sensitive, safe, and effective in their teaching.

LESLIE KAMINOFF founder of The Breathing Project, NYC, and coauthor of Yoga Anatomy

Whether youre in training to be a teacher, just starting your teaching career, or a veteran with many years of experience, Mark Stephens Yoga Adjustments will prove to be an invaluable resource. As with all his work, this book is written with intelligence, insight, and integrity.

RICHARD ROSEN director of teacher training at Piedmont Yoga and author of Original Yoga

Im very excited about Mark Stephens new book, which offers an invaluable service to the yoga communityteachers, aspiring teachers, and yoga students. As yogas popularity grows, we need our yoga teachers to mature as well, and Mark has given them a superb guidebook for making smart, safe, clear asana adjustments that further our understanding and deepen our experience of yoga. In this way, the benefits of Marks expertise extend beyond the yoga community by demonstrating how healthy environments can be created in which anybody can practice yoga with confidence.

CYNDI LEE founder of NYCs Om Yoga and author of May I Be HappyandYoga Body, Buddha Mind

Another monumental and much-needed work to guide yoga teachers in making safe and effective hands-on adjustments with their students. Once again Mark Stephens raises the bar and accelerates the evolutionary path of modern yoga. This book is an invaluable reference for todays and future teachers.

GANGA WHITE founder and codirector of The White Lotus Foundation and author of Yoga Beyond Belief

This book is an important contribution to the ongoing evolution of yoga teaching and practice. Hands-on adjustments provide a quick and amazing two-way communication stream between teacher and student. Used with or without verbal cues, they can bypass most abstract theory and induce good alignment to reveal how a pose might feel when balanced, open, flowing, and free. Conversely, adjustments can be mechanical and even manipulative, seductive, and harmful. Because of this powerful potential in both ways, we all need to look intelligently at their mechanics, purposes, and ethics. Stephens Yoga Adjustments is a wonderfully detailed resource for our investigation.

RICHARD FREEMAN director of The Yoga Workshop and author of The Mirror of Yoga

Just as a good massage feels great and is healing, and a bad massage can be annoying, even painful and unpleasant, so it goes with hands-on assists in yoga. May this book encourage healing touch! Thank you, Mark, for making this information so accessible and clear!

ERICH SCHIFFMANN founder of Freedom Style Yoga and author of Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness

I love that Mark Stephens has covered not just the biomechanics of hands-on assists and the spectrum from technical support to subtle energetic direction, but also the internal dynamics and ethics that the power of touch brings up in people of all walks of life. Mark offers practical insights, including the many dimensions of respecting a persons process, injuries, and tweaks, and the important boundaries that are necessary for entering this territory that is often like being a midwife of the embodied experience. Mark brings understanding to the somatic power of touch and the role of hands-on assists in the unfolding of yoga. This is a book that will surely be serving teachers for a long time.

SHIVA REA , founder of Prana FlowEnergetic Vinyasa and author of Tending the Heart Fire

We generally think of touch as from one person to another. In this book, Stephens reminds us that we must first be in touch with ourselves and with our own yoga practice before adjusting another persons pose. Overall, the book focuses on practical application of adjustments, based on fundamental elements of an ethical personal practice. On asanas, Stephens states that the teacher should understand their benefits, risks, contraindications, preparatory asanas, alignment principals, energetic actions, common challenges, modifications, use of props. Quite thorough, the step-by-step examples are threaded throughout with groundwork in both Western and yoga philosophy. It is a pleasure to read.

LISA WALFORD curriculum director of Yoga Works Teacher Training and senior certified Iyengar Yoga teacher

Finally, the book I have been waiting fora clear and thorough guide to hands-on assisting in yoga. Mark Stephens takes us from the guiding principles of touch observation of students, and establishing intention for touching, through to specific verbal cues and hands-on instruction to support those cues. For teachers, he offers stances to safely ground ourselves while adjusting a student along with terminology for clarifying the various ways of touching for maximum effectiveness. Additionally, Mark provides clear guidance on how not to touch. All of this culminates in a comprehensive index of poses with verbal cues and clear photographs explaining the various options for hands-on assistance to provide greater alignment in the asanas. Never before have we teachers and students had such a concise guide available to us.

MARION MUGS MCCONNELL founder of South Okanagan Yoga Academy, British Columbia

A must-read for any yoga teacher looking to expand and deepen not only their knowledge of adjustments, but also of teaching asana as well. The level of detail and knowledge presented here is phenomenal.

CHRIS COURTNEY , yoga teacher and editor-at-large of Elephant Journal

Teaching Yoga: Essential Foundations and Techniques

Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes

Copyright 2014 by Mark Stephens. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic Books
P.O. Box 12327
Berkeley, California 94712

Cover photo by Beau Roulette
Cover and book design by Suzanne Albertson

Yoga Adjustments: Philosophy, Principles, and Techniques is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 8007333000.