Rethinking Beginner, Intermediate, & Advanced Yoga
By Kristine Kaoverii Weber | August 25, 2023
I was visiting another yoga teacher trainer who lived out of state so we could work on a project together. One morning he suggested that we go take a class. He had a friend who kept inviting him to her class, but he hadn’t yet taken her up on it, so my visit was a good excuse to finally check it out.
When we got to the studio, we slipped into the back of the room. He didn’t introduce me because the class was about to start. The teacher was friendly, young and flexible. As the class progressed, I found ways to explore her sequence that worked for my body.
But several times during the class she approach me and said, “This is how to do that if you’re a beginner.” Other times she said, “You can skip this pose if you’re a beginner” or “Advanced students can do the pose this way, but you should use a strap if you’re a beginner.”
But at that point I’d been practicing yoga regularly for more than 15 years and teaching for more than 10 – and not just classes, but workshops and teacher trainings – I’d written manuals and published articles. But she didn’t know me. So she assumed I was a beginner – probably because I’m not very flexible.
After class when my friend introduced me to her as a trainer, she was noticeably taken aback. I thanked her and we chatted for a little while and then said our goodbyes. Frankly, it was a little awkward, and it left me wondering: Why had she been taught (or unconsciously internalized) that people with less flexibility are automatically beginners?
In the 90s and 2000s, it was fairly ubiquitous to label classes “Beginner”, “Intermediate”, and “Advanced”, or “Level 1”, “Level 2”, and “Level 3.” It was equally common for students and teachers to believe that if they started with a beginner or level 1 class, that within a few weeks or months they could progress to intermediate/level 2, and after a year or two, to advanced/level 3.
One time I was in a class and the teacher said, “Just keep doing this and you will eventually look like me.” That’s patently untrue – she was hypermobile. But it was common to hear that kind of statement back then. The yoga trend was new, there were tons of people just getting started, and there was a lot of misinformation.
Things are changing – trauma informed best practices are much more common, and so (if they haven’t already) most studios and gyms need to rethink how they title and describe their classes. With all the discussion over the last 10 years about trauma, hypermobility, injuries, accessibility, etc. you’d think that it would be almost universal – unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Just last week I saw these from an account that has hundreds of thousands of followers:
Labeling yoga poses or classes or people as beginner, intermediate, and advanced is problematic for several reasons.
First, it reduces yoga to asanas, and it reduces progress in yoga to the accomplishment of difficult asanas. But yoga has 8 limbs, asanas are 12.5 percent of the system – there’s another 87.5 percent to explore.
Secondly, since when does being hypermobile automatically make you an advanced yoga practitioner? With that logic, just about everyone in Cirque du Soleil should be enlightened by now. The guy in the photo above is less mobile than the woman next to him, probably genetically, and probably because he played soccer or ran as a child. He may never comfortably do what she’s doing even after he’s been practicing for 20 years – does that mean he’ll still be a beginner?
Third, this kind of labeling engenders poor teaching. Working only with mobile elite athletes means you don’t have to learn how to teach to the more typical-bodied person. You can simply call out pose names and maybe sprinkle in a “lengthen your tailbone”, “don’t lock your knees”, or “engage your core” here and there and call it a day.
But a class exclusively full of mobile and/or elite athletes is rare – typically there are lots of people in the room with a wide range of mobility and strength.
For many years I was labeled a “beginner” teacher because, as someone who was not hypermobile and didn’t teach many hardcore poses, it made sense in terms of the beginner-intermediate-advanced paradigm. The thing is that although I love working with many different kinds of people with different kinds of bodies and I’ve learned a lot, it feels uncomfortable to impose a label on my students – many of whom have been practicing for years. There are plenty of long-time practitioners who want to attend a variety of yoga classes – but if the only class that fits their needs or wants is titled “beginners” is that an appropriate term for those students? Even when they’ve been practicing for longer than the teacher?
While anachronistic class titles are beginning to fall away, we still have work to do in developing better ones – and better descriptions. Perhaps some “Advanced” classes might be better described as:
“Difficult Yoga Posture Class – to safely enjoy this class, you should be able to do postures, including one leg balances, with binds (arms threaded through one leg and then wrapped around your back and hands clasped), deep lunges, and arm balances in the middle of the room without assistance. Be prepared to move quickly and sweat. If you have injuries or limited mobility you will be expected to take care of yourself because the class moves too fast for the instructor to be able to assist everyone.”
I think being clear is helpful. And if there’s concern that people won’t show up because they’re scared off by that description…well…that’s food for thought.
If the class consists primarily of sun salutes and their derivations, then there needs to be some care around using titles like “Yoga for Everybody” or “Flow for Everyone” or “Mindful Flow” etc. – These classes may not be appropriate for folks with more moderate mobility – beginner or not.
We need to craft alternative class labels and descriptions that go beyond beginner, gentle, Yin, and restorative, and get more creative (and accurate) about how we talk about what we teach.
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I am totally in agreement with you. I cringe when I see labels on Asanas. I work with people like me: Seniors, those with arthritis, chronic pain.
I want everyone to feel included.
I use terms like choices rather than beginner…
It empowers my students to make their own choices.
Thank you
thank you cindy!
I totally agree with hour blog Kristine, I am a senior myself, and teach other seniors in the same lineage as you. We all have a range of bodily issues, but it’s the function not the form in Yoga that I believe in.
I have never had flexible hops, so sitting in easy pose was always difficult. For some years now I have used a kneeling stool instead and all of my students have their own.
YES! function over form. absolutely. Glad the kneeling stool solution has been helpful for you!
I love that description for the “Advanced” class! Much less appealing when it’s spelled out realistically.
yeah, I mean, there’s something important about being clear about it isn’t there.
I am also not very flexible and I’ve been practicing yoga almost daily since the 70s. I teach a gentle yoga class and offer variations of poses by saying Option 1, Option 2, and Option 3. My Option 3 would be considered intermediate. I want my students to be safe because I still remember getting hurt, pulling muscles, and feeling crummy when I tried to move my body into shapes it didn’t want to go.
options are always a good call – I might suggest just calling them “this option and this option” so that people don’t feel like they ever have to get to option 3.
Pronto! Can’t agree more with this article.
I’ve been practicing asanas for more the 15 years, and yet I can’t do Hanuman or full forward bend with my lips kissing my shins! And I use props to go into certain poses.
I purposely mention “asanas” because just like you said, it’s just 1/8 of yoga!! Unfortunately many teachers over here overlook that. People are too engrossed with so called “advance” poses, I guess…
I like teachers who offer “option 1, 2 or 3” instead of saying “beginner or advance students”.
Thank you for writing/bringing this up!
Thanks Josephine! Glad you enjoyed the blog.
I totally agree! I’ve been practicing for over 20 years, teaching for 15, but I don’t consider myself an “ advanced” practitioner. Often times I remind myself to keep a beginner’s mind. It’s all good.
thank you!
I appreciate this article. I’m getting to teach a yoga class for the recovery community. I’m calling it K.I.S.S. Yoga Keep it Simple Sweetie and they still panic and tell me how they’ve done Hot Yoga etc. I tell them this is not like that come and see. Just as the class is listed. Really, it’s Just Yoga.
I love it – and yeah, a lot of people have been traumatized not knowing what they were getting into. There’s a lot of un/relearning that needs to be done.
Thank you for your eternally creative thinking!
Aww, thanks Joann!
Love your writing, Kristine! I’m a Somatic Educator and find many yoga principles analogous to Somatics.
“Just keep doing this and you will eventually look like me.” Yikes! That makes me cringe.
When I first started teaching Somatics a student asked “when do we do more advanced moves?” The more one does Somatics (really any bodyfulness modality) the more they can learn and discover things about themselves, and to me that’s how things “advance”. It’s not the pose, it’s the self that is expanding and growing, IMO.
When I teach classes I generally don’t do the movements with my students. I just assist the exploration of their internal sensations and awareness with simple verbal cuing, open ended questions and imagery. Plus students almost always just close their eyes as they do the movements.
Thank you for all you do!
I couldn’t agree with you more. Thank you for doing such great work!
Great article!
thank you!
When I returned to yoga after years of false starts and early finishes, I finally found a studio where they weren’t kidding when they said “work to your level of ability” whatever that is. It was such a relief not to feel like I was the “dumb kid” in the class! My students all have some kind of mobility issues and we don’t go into novice to expert labels b/c we don’t need to. I teach them to explore and show them alternatives (mostly learned, from your trainings, I might add.) My students catch on to how to adjust the poses so they can safely access them in their own bodies & the reward for me is to see them adjusting the poses independently.
beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
I love your blogs. Also, I agree. I am problematically hypermobile–I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It’s very possible for me to injure myself going to my own full range of motion. What teachers sometimes admire in me and elicits a, “Wow, how did you do that?” Is really me spoiling for an injury. I need to back it off and do a “beginner’s” version without anyone inviting me to push deeper etc, etc, or worst of all touching me/applying pressure. If I were to fall into that pose because I wanted to look cool, someone would have to call the ambulance. Ha.
wow! It’s great that you have learned how to take care of yourself Holly. Kudos!
What a wonderful article! And great food for thought for teachers!
thank you!
I have been trying to figure out what to call the clientele that i want to attract, which would be people like me, older, arthritis,….perhaps “mobility challenged”. As a person with “mobility challenges”, or as it is labeled, “disability”, I personally dislike the “story” labels project. I want everybody to feel like a rockstar when they do poses, in which ever way they are able. I don’t want people like me, to feel like they are not able to do something, as it makes you feel like there is something wrong with you.
I once had a teacher asked me if I was going to pass out while I was doing my best Tadasana……. Did she not recognize that I was at ease, steady and was doing everything correctly? My breathing was perfect. I think she could’ve approached me differently, even if she did not think my mountain pose was the best. How about “I notice you are new to the studio, and you are doing fantastic, keep up the great work, ask anytime if you need help or a modification.”
Honestly, I have enough people who have told me throughout my life that “ you can’t do much”, “ you are so frail you are like a feather”, “ you will not be able to do this with your disability”……………, so I don’t enjoy when Yoga Teachers make me feel like crap or watch me carefully, not to offer a modification, but to make sure I don’t break a bone in their studio.
Please don’t make people feel like they are unable to do something through labels, your words or actions. Thank you so much!😢🙏
Thank you for sharing your experience, this is really powerful.
I agree that teachers encouraging students to modify based on their needs is essential. Having had wrist issues for a long time, I’ve had to make modifications in pretty much every yoga class I’ve attended. When the teacher creates a welcoming environment for this, I leave feeling refreshed. If not, I still honor my body to avoid injury, but it feels like it takes more energy to go against the grain.
Yeah, I try to avoid the word “modifcation” in general. There are just variations and adaptations based on what someone needs.
I was once in a workshop with a world-renowned teacher. I had let her know that I was recovering from a herniated disc (hypermobile!). When we were practicing a backbend, I was modifying the pose and she came running over and said “Look at what she’s doing!” I was prepared to be chastised for not following her instructions, but instead she said “THIS is an advanced practice!” I have told this story many times in my classes.
that’s a great one! Thanks for sharing.
You’re speaking my language, thank you for this post! I’d love to get your opinion on naming possibilities because as a new studio owner, I’m struggling to communicate the different levels approach I plan to take. My goal is to offer levels based classes, but the levels are based on a student prior experience with the practice, not their physical ability or the complexity of postures offered. A level 1 and level 2 class might explore the exact same sequence, but the level 1 class would include more physical cues, while the level 2 class might focus more on breath, include more time for silence and also explore energetic experiences. That’s not to say that a level 1 class doesn’t include those things, it’s more that in a level 2 class, a student has an awareness of a posture and can come into with less cues. I hope that makes sense. It’s not about physical ability, it’s about familiarity with the practice. But I’m struggling to come up with names that communicate all of that without just saying Hatha 1, Hatha 2, etc. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
as long as you are making all of that explicit in the descriptions then I think it can work. It’s hard though. I am not saying there are any easy answers here
This is such moving target for me. I own a small studio and teach a lot of accessible yoga in my studio and at the county mental health clinic. I teach folks with developmental disabilities in weekly group classes and I tend to attract the “older” set of folks to my studio classes. Point being, I’m all over meeting people where they are. I have gone back and forth with numbering levels in my studio classes. When I had a period of not putting a number on my classes and relied on names, I inevitably would have folks with significant limitations due to pain or injury come to my more physically demanding classes. The numbers have provided clarity so people know what they are walking into. I would never call them beg/int/advanced though, because that doesn’t apply at all. I would consider most of my experienced chair class folks to be advanced and I’ve watched many of them move from the “harder” classes to the “easier” classes as they aged and congratulated them for doing so. I call my classes Asana Level 1, or 2 or 3. Because even though the weekly scheduled classes always include meditation, what we are primarily up to is asana. So in my mind I not labeling “yoga” as 1,2 and 3, but asana as 1,2 or 3. You can come to Asana 1, and be an “advanced” yoga student, although I would prefer seasoned or experienced over “advanced.” Anyway those are my rambling thoughts, such a good topic. Instagram drives me nuts with the reels of 2 people side by side labeling poses “beginner and advanced” and I want to stab my eyeballs out every time.
I think if it’s a system that you’ve created for a specific population – and they know why they are where they are – then it can work within that context.
Great article thank you. I also think a helpful distinction is to label a class as Yoga asana rather than Yoga which as you say is very different and constitutes over 80% of what the practice of Yoga actually is. Many people I think who go to ‘Yoga class’ have little idea of the depth of wisdom on a complex range of topics.
so true. thanks
I’m curious if you have ideas for what we might start to call Yin yoga as we evolve away from that term. I know you have mentioned alternative Ayurvedic terms that don’t exactly fit either. I’ve started talking in classes once in a while about cultural appropriation and how a Yin practice actually cultivates a Yang sensation. I’m ready to start tossing around a new term altogether if you have a recommendation.
I guess the thing is that Yin yoga is not the same thing as Langhana practice. I think many people will keep calling it Yin because it’s a specific style and that’s the best definition for it – even if it doesn’t necessarily produce a Yin result. some people really like the long holds for their practice.
This is a BRILLLANT article. My colleagues and I were just talking about this and are in the midst of writing new descriptions and titles. I think you should host a round table to hammer it out 😁
Thank you!
Thank you for this. I became certified in yoga in September 2019 and never really had the opportunity to teach beyond my friends and family as The Pandemic hit soon after. I was practicing for about 5 years before I was certified to teach. I was hoping to add to add yoga to my psychotherapy practice , support addiction recovery and help with anxiety and depression. However I was not able to figure out how to inact it. Part of it I think was feeling that I wasn’t advanced enough in asanas and flexibility. I was concerned that students would have an expectation of my ability. I appreciate this article as I think it’s my own expectation not others.
Yes but that expectation came from somewhere – explicitly or implicitly. If you are already a psychotherapists you have so many tools as well as a good framework (trauma informed, self-directed) to help people. It’s really not about flexibility. I hope you will consider teaching!
So many thoughts about this…mainly spot on! I had a similar experience attending a new yoga class. Right before class began, the teacher shouted across the room “Would you like assists?” And I replied “Yes”. But as a yoga teacher, I modified several of the poses she offered to fit my body. She came over AT LEAST 7 times to offer the “right way” to do it. I finally told her I had abdominal surgery and don’t go that far into back ends anymore. Then, she chastised me for not telling her. Im not sure when I was supposed to tell her? Perhaps I should have shouted my private health information back to her when she asked about assists? I have to say I never went back!
It would be so great if classes would be more descriptive like you described. And also teachers are better trained to understand…
Thanks for sharing!
oooh. So sorry that happened to you. Sometimes I think the reason that these incidents occur is because yoga teachers get the message that they are competent to handle all sorts of things after 200 hours of training. You can’t clean someone’s teeth or cut their hair in NC without at least 1500 hours of training. But we expect yoga teachers to have competence about things like abdominal surgery. And then there’s the dose of humility – why not just say, gosh I don’t know anything about that please let me know how I can help you?
I think people need to rethink the definition of difficult yoga, because competitive yoga? Yeah that’s a whole other level and PPL automatically assume downward dog and mountain pose as yoga 🤷
thanks for sharing.
Totally agree, not all of us are flexible and some days better than others, so we have to listen to our bodies and do what is best for us, and we all need to get to know our bodies and not be labelled. Great work keep it up.
Thank you Kristine for another thought provoking blog. Every teacher has a different style of teaching. I think it is important that students are encouraged to discover for themselves the type of class that suits them. How we label the class might be quite different from how they interpret the class. The outcome of having a sense of well being is an individual experience which can’t be generically labeled.
I am so grateful that I stumbled across this article. I recently finally started teaching yoga 5 years after completing my first 200 hour (I’ve completed over 500 hours of training) and 25 years after taking my first yoga class.
Despite a decades long practice I still have limited mobility and flexibility. In every teacher training I tend to feel like I don’t belong as a yoga teacher, and then I remind myself that most of the population looks and moves more like I do than like the other teachers in the room. And this is why I teach.
The person who knows and respects their limits is the more “advanced” yoga practitioner.
Our bodies are not the same every day. Some days we can do a pose well, other days we need to back off.
To me, the more “advanced” yoga classes are practices like Yin yoga, or a classic hatha practice, which require longer holds in poses vs faster paced classes where students mostly “push through.”
Most of yoga is what happens off the mat. I try to impart that to my students in every class and meet them where they are so they can find their strengths in any version of a pose.
That’s beautiful Renee – and I can certainly relate to that feeling! Thank you for sharing.
Your words resonated deeply with me. As a teacher I always struggled being not capable teaching the “advanced” poses because I don’t feel comfortable in my own body tonpractice them. Over the years teaching my way, I am speechless of the positiv feedback, like “oh, that is yoga?”, “now I can practice yoga”, or “thanks for seeing me on the mat and offering me a way to practice for my body”. I’ve learnt to teach that way from you and I am deeply thankful for it
Thank you for commenting Silke, and thank you for the great work that you are doing! It’s so important to empower students, regardless of their “level.”
Thank you for this post. I have always strayed away from yoga because of my “limited flexibility.” It felt like I would always be a beginner. Your post lends a completely different and more reassuring perspective, one that removes shame. Thanks for providing a space for self-acceptance with each practice.
thanks Jeronda! I hope you will reconsider. there are even many teachers who are not flexible!
Thanks for that. Thought provoking and reassuring as ever. I love your blogs.
thank you Suzanne!
I loved the article. I tend to teach what you call “Difficult Yoga Posture Classes”, but when asked if my class is an “advanced” class or a “beginner” class I always say “Yes”. and I do my very best to make the classes accessible to everyone by offering multiple options and alternatives. I tell my students that yoga isn’t about how their posture looks; it’s about how it feels. If it feels good, you’re doing it correctly. Also, every time a teacher asks, “Who is doing their very first yoga class?”, I always raise my hand. And I endeavor to do every class, every posture as though it were the very first time I’ve done them. Thanks so much for a rational discussion and a holistic point of view.
what I really appreciate from your response here Michael is that you did not feel attacked by this blog. I think that’s a sign of an advanced practice as much as anything. Thank you for making your classes accessible!
Thank you Kristine. I needed to see this as it is so true what you say. I have always been perplexed as to how to title my classes. I always thought it was simpler just to call them “Gentle”, “Beginner” or “Energetic morning flow”…definitely not descriptive, especially for people new to my yoga.