Your Hands on Assisting Tutorial

This is a beginner's introduction to hands-on assisting, led by two teachers who have been in the room with students long enough to know what helps and what doesn't.

The video covers three types of assists (directional, deepening, and empowering), three types of touch (skin, bone, and muscle), and a full body walkthrough from feet to shoulders across several common poses. It is built for teachers who want to feel more confident in the room, not more intrusive.

Denver Yoga Summit founder and director, Brittany Hopkins Switlick, filmed this as a teaching tool, the kind of thing you'd get in a training but rarely find on its own.

It runs about 28 minutes. Pause it, practice on someone, and press play again. That's the intention.

A hands-on assist, done well, says something words can't. It tells a student their body makes sense, that you see possibility in them, that they are not doing something wrong.

Done poorly, it does the opposite. It can make someone feel unsafe, misread, or fixed. One bad assist in a first yoga class has kept people out of studios for years. That is not a hypothetical.

This tutorial is not about technique for technique's sake. It is about learning to touch with purpose and permission, in a way that serves the person in front of you.

Have a partner with you. The video is built for two people. You will pause, practice, and come back. You will not get much out of watching it alone.

The companion reference card is below. Print it or keep it open on your phone. It is a one-page quick reference organized by body zone, so you can use it in the room without flipping through a full guide.