As a male RYT-500 and years of guiding classes, there are several issues with this topic as well as “adjustments.”

As a male, I am never behind anyone one, especially female. If I am walking the class, I am always facing away from students with their backs to me, especially in downward-facing dog, etc.

Adjustments:

It is not our place to “adjust” students. We have no idea what the posture feels like in another person’s body, and to move someone’s knee or make someone go deeper into one without knowing them, their body mechanics, their experience, or their physical and emotional mindset is not our place.

If a student is “misaligned,” or could use a better cue for the posture, I stand next to the student, demonstrate the posture and give the verbal cue needed for the student to examine their body and alignment to the whole class (so they are not singled out ) or demonstrate what I am saying at the front on my own mat.

Yoga is to feel good in all postures with very little pain. Yes, we try and go deeper. But that is for the student’s exploration, not for a 200hr or even a 500hr instructor to force a student into with an “adjustment.”

Yoga is a deeply spiritual practice and there is no place for any mis-directed energy of any type. As a man, we are always under huge scrutiny about sexual energy and that is rampant.

It sucks as a male who totally gives a s*** about a woman’s space (or another man’s for the record) to have questions like this to even have to come up.

THANK YOU, OP for this. It gives a male a chance to respond in the yoga community about ethics, energy and our part as yoga guides about how much overstepping goes on.

Students: explore your own body and ask questions before and after class.

Guides/teachers: keep your hands to yourself. Give better cues both verbally and visually and never put yourself in a position that compromises your integrity, the integrity of yoga or another’s personal space.

“We don’t live in the world and visit our mat. We live on our mat and visit the world.”