My #1 Ick: "Good Vibes Only" & The Yoga Teacher Voice

Sheela Cheong
3 days ago
7 min read

Updated: 17 hours ago

There's a popular sign I've seen at many yoga studios:

"You are one yoga class away from a good mood."

At a Pilates studio I teach at: "Your happy place."

Really? Is this why you practise?*

In contemporary yoga—and increasingly in Pilates—classes are designed to make you feel relaxed, soft, and encouraged. Stretch, breathe, smile, repeat. The “feel-good” culture shapes what is taught—and how.

This has consequences. Language, tone, and intention get softened. Words become soothing or cheerleader-like. Precision is replaced by affirmation. Rigour—the specificity, discipline, and challenge that develop true skill—takes a backseat.

Yoga’s feminised affect—warmth, gentleness, encouragement—makes it especially vulnerable. When Pilates borrows yoga’s language and aesthetic, the effect spreads. Even technical, rehabilitative practices risk becoming “nice-feeling” experiences.

The question is simple: What is your practice for?

And what do we, as teachers, communicate through tone, language, and intention?

*I’m not saying your practice shouldn’t improve your mood—but there’s more here than feel-good vibes.

The inspiration for this article came from this blog post 'The Problem With Mushy Yoga' written by Kristine Weber. A summary:

Modern “mushy yoga” mixes stretches, breathing, mindfulness, and relaxation without coherent methodology.
The author traces this vagueness to historical influences, particularly privileged white women in the West who shaped early yoga teaching.
These women—like Madame Blavatsky and American body-mind reformers—treated Indian yoga traditions as raw material for Western improvement, often framing themselves as moral or spiritual saviours.
The legacy of this white, feminised approach persists today, unconsciously shaping teaching, tone, and expectations in yoga.
Without rigorous methodology, yoga can lose depth and transmission, even as it remains appealing and “feel-good.”

The author defines “mushy yoga” as a lack of clarity and structure within yoga itself. What I find myself wondering, though, is whether this mushiness has now extended beyond yoga altogether.

It is common to hear Pilates teachers cueing "child's pose" (translation: mini break time) or "downward dog", or ending the session with a bow and hands pressed together (reminiscent of yoga teachers ending theirs with a namaste.).

Personally, this makes me uncomfortable. It feels weird and misplaced. I don’t teach that way, and I’m still trying to articulate why. It also made me ask myself: Who cares? Who cares if everything is bleeding and blending into one another?

A pose is a pose, the shape is the same - it's all the human body. Isn't it?

1. Does everything inevitably blur into one?

On a purely mechanical level, yes:

Hip extension is hip extension.
Spinal flexion is spinal flexion.
A stretch loads tissue regardless of what you call it.

But methods are not just collections of movements. They are:

systems of attention
systems of cueing
systems of prioritisation
systems of meaning-making

Two people can perform the same shape and have very different outcomes depending on:

what they are paying attention to,
what they think the purpose is,
what is being reinforced neurologically and psychologically.

So no—everything does not fully collapse into one, unless you reduce movement to mechanics alone.

And yes, this is what some practitioners of yoga do - see "DDP Yoga" - a workout developed by former pro-wrestler Diamond Dallas Page which combines yoga, rehabilitation techniques and calisthenics, while omitting yoga's meditative aspects.

2. Does teaching language actually matter?

Yes, but not for mystical or moral reasons.

Teaching language matters because it:

directs attention (internal vs external, sensation vs action)
frames effort (discipline, exploration, self-soothing)
shapes expectation (training vs therapy vs experience)
subtly tells students what kind of practitioner they are meant to be

For example:

PILATES language traditionally emphasises anatomic precision, effort and sequencing.
YOGA language (depending on lineage) often emphasises internal perception, breath, and relational awareness.

When these languages are blended indiscriminately, students may:

feel good,
but lose a clear sense of what they are learning.

Have we underestimated what students can handle - replacing clear structure and difference with practices that prioritise feeling safe, familiar, and comfortable? This then becomes a question of lowered expectations. Lowered expectations don't always announce themselves as a lack of rigour. More often, they arrive as a culture of feeling good.

The assumptions seems to be that students primarily want comfort, reassurance and positive affect - and anything sharper, more technical or demanding might turn them off.

That assumption has a sound to it.

Brea Johnson on the yoga teacher voice

The Yoga Teacher Voice: We all know it when we hear it 1. Two voices, same outcome

a) The breathy / soothing / therapeutic voice

This voice:

slows everything down emotionally,
cushions uncertainty,
softens edges before they arise.

It communicates:

“Stay comfortable.”
“We are regulating, not training.”
“Effort is optional.”

b) The perky / upbeat / cheerleader voice

This one does the opposite on the surface but lands in the same place.

It:

fills silence with enthusiasm,
rewards participation over precision,
substitutes energy for clarity.

It communicates:

“You’re doing great just by being here.”
“Try your best!” (without defining best)
“Movement as vibe.”

Different affect. Same message: Nothing specific is being asked of you.

2. Why both voices are deeply gendered

Neither voice is accidental.

They sit squarely within two culturally approved ways women are allowed to lead:

The nurturer
- calming, empathetic, emotionally available
The motivator
- upbeat, encouraging, non-threatening

What is notably missing in both:

neutrality,
sparseness,
direct instruction,
unadorned authority.

Years ago, after teaching an Iyengar yoga class at a studio, a male student came up to me and said he liked the class but that I "sounded bossy". I replied: "Would you have said the same to a male teacher?" His face changed and he admitted: "No."

A flat, precise, matter-of-fact teaching voice—especially from a woman—still reads as:

cold,
intimidating,
unfriendly,
“too much.”

So tone becomes a protective strategy, not merely a stylistic choice.

3. The pedagogical cost

When tone is doing the emotional work, it quietly displaces:

structure,
method,
feedback,
correction.

Students learn to:

seek affirmation instead of information,
associate learning with emotional tone rather than outcome,
feel “held” rather than developed.

This is why both voices—despite sounding opposite—produce the same classroom ecology.

4. Why this extends beyond yoga

When:

yoga borrows from therapy language,
Pilates borrows from yoga ritual,
fitness borrows from mindfulness,

tone becomes the unifying glue.

And tone is easier to borrow than:

lineage,
methodology,
epistemology.

So everything begins to sound the same, even when it shouldn’t.

5. The uncomfortable insight

When teaching voice becomes performative, it replaces authority rather than expressing it.

That is not about women being inadequate. It is about what kinds of authority women are culturally permitted to embody without backlash.

1. The “feel-good voice” is not neutral

Most people do recognise it instantly:

breathy/soothing or perky/upbeat
affirming,
non-directive,
emotionally reassuring,
resistant to silence, firmness, or correction.

It is not inherently bad. But it does something to the room.

It subtly signals:

“Nothing will be demanded of you.”
“You cannot do this wrong.”
“Discomfort will be avoided.”
“I am here to soothe, not to train.”

That tone preconditions expectations before any movement happens.

2. Lowered expectations are often delivered through tone, not content

This is an important distinction.

You can:

teach complex material
but neutralise its impact through tone.

When everything is:

gently praised,
softly suggested,
endlessly normalised,

students may never feel:

the need to refine,
the responsibility to attend,
the challenge of precision.

So the issue is not kindness—it is the disappearance of pedagogical edge.

3. Why this becomes especially charged with female teachers

Female teachers are often:

socially rewarded for warmth,
punished for firmness,
labelled “harsh” or “intimidating” for clarity.

As a result, many unconsciously adopt:

a soft, encouraging register,
a nurturing persona,
a “safe” emotional tone.

Not because they lack skill—but because authority expressed cleanly by women is still culturally uncomfortable.

This makes the conversation fraught, because:

critique sounds personal,
tone gets confused with temperament,
pedagogy gets mistaken for personality.

4. The quiet contradiction

We say yoga is powerful, transformative, and sophisticated—but we often teach it as though students cannot tolerate seriousness.

The “gushy” voice acts as a buffer against:

silence,
uncertainty,
effort,
not being immediately affirmed.

That is not trauma-informed.That is expectation-management.

5. What I'm not saying

I am not saying:

warmth is bad,
encouragement is wrong,
women should teach like men.

I'm questioning:

whether emotional soothing has replaced transmission,
whether authority has been feminised into palatability,
whether feeling good has become the primary outcome.

When movement classes focus mainly on how they make us FEEL (calm, relaxed, “grounded”), what happens to skill, structure, and learning?

Parting Questions

FOR STUDENTS:

Do I leave class knowing more—or just feeling better?
Can I name what I’m practising, or only how it felt?
Am I being asked to refine, repeat, and attend—or simply to participate?
Does my teacher’s tone help me focus, or does it smooth over uncertainty?
Over time, has my practice increased my capacity for effort and patience?
Do I notice progression in skill, or mainly variation in experience?
Am I encouraged to tolerate difficulty—or steered away from it quickly?
Would I still value this class if it weren’t soothing or uplifting?
Does my practice challenge how I relate to discomfort, boredom, or silence?
Am I learning something transferable—or only something mood-regulating?
Do I feel more capable in my body, or simply more comforted by it?
If I stopped today, what would I actually take with me?

FOR TEACHERS:

Does my tone make students more focused—or more passive?
Am I using my voice to support learning—or to keep the mood pleasant?
Do my students leave knowing what they worked on—or just that it felt “nice”?
What do students learn about effort from the way I speak to them?
Do I allow silence, effort, and confusion—or do I rush to soften them?
Would my teaching still stand if warmth were removed from the delivery?
Am I comfortable asking something specific of students—without cushioning it?
Do I measure success by engagement and mood, or by development over time?
What kind of practitioner does my language quietly train people to become?
Am I teaching in a way that assumes students can tolerate seriousness?
Is my authority expressed cleanly—or disguised as encouragement?
If I listened to myself teach from the back of the room, what would I hear being prioritised?