Deaf-friendly yoga

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

Happy New Year, all.

A good friend of mine is a yoga instructor and a classmate of mine in the local American Sign Language Interpreter Education program. She and I have discussed briefly forming a class specifically for the city’s deaf and hard of hearing residents. I’ve found deafyoga.org, and I’ve read bits and pieces of articles that point out that most terminology in yoga (asanas) have no sign, so there’s a need to create signs that capture the concept…

… so here are my two questions:

1.) How would we go about creating a Hatha yoga class for the deaf and hard of hearing? I mean, does anyone have any experience in this particular area as to give some advice?..

2.) What are some of the signs that have been created for use in teaching yoga to the deaf community? I know these signs are created in the hopes that they’d remain the same regardless of location.

Thanks!

#2

hands on adjustments and demonstrations would be the best. allot can be said without words

#3

I have no experience of using sign language but I have had clients in class who needed to lip read…so I just made sure that they could place their mats so they could clearly see my face to lip read and when doing asanas where they could not see me I would use touch to let them know it is time to come out of the asana. I also spent time after class to answer their questions and go over any explanations that they missed…pen and paper on hand to make it easier as I do not know any signs and writing was helpful.

If there are no signs for the words you need then you need to spell them out…the asanas do have English names as well as sanskrit…there must be signs for triangle, pigeon, down, dog, stretch…
It could also be fun to invent some signs along with your students…

Good luck and have fun with it.

#4

Contact JoAnna Ball here in Seattle at Home Yoga