Why Understanding Purpose Changes Everything

Long before I ever decided to become a yoga teacher—before the trainings, before writing curriculum, before any of this became my work—I had a habit that, looking back, probably said everything about the kind of teacher I would become.

I used to bring these blue journals I stole from my corporate job to every single yoga class. And after class—sometimes still sitting on my mat, sometimes in my car before driving home—I would write. Not casually, either. Pages of notes. Sequences I wanted to remember, cues that caught my attention, moments that didn’t quite make sense to me but felt important enough to come back to.

It became a ritual. Day after day, notebook after notebook, I documented the practice in a way that felt less like studying and more like trying to understand something I couldn’t quite name yet. Over time, I started to memorize entire class sequences without really trying. I could track the arc of a class from beginning to end, feel where things were building, where they plateaued, where they didn’t quite land.

So by the time I signed up for my first teacher training, I was already subbing for some of my teachers. Not because I thought I was ready, but because I had spent years paying attention in a very specific way.

What I didn’t realize then was that I wasn’t just learning movement—I was learning to look for purpose.

The practice itself always gave me something. It grounded me, challenged me, kept me curious. But it wasn’t until I stepped into teacher training that something shifted more clearly into focus. I stopped just experiencing classes and started seeing them. Seeing the decisions behind them. Seeing the structure, or sometimes the lack of it.

I started asking questions I couldn’t unsee. Why is this posture here? What is it actually preparing us for? Why does this cue feel vague when it should be specific? Why are we being led into something complex without anything truly supporting it?

And in that, I started to notice gaps. Not in a critical way, but in a way that made me more curious. There were moments where postures were placed into sequences without a clear reason beyond tradition or habit. There were cues that sounded right but didn’t actually help someone understand what to do in their body. There were peak shapes—arm balances, inversions—that people were being guided into without the physical or conceptual groundwork to support them.

It didn’t feel wrong so much as it felt incomplete.

And that was the moment something clicked for me. If we’re asking people to move their bodies in complex, sometimes demanding ways, there should be a reason behind it. Not just aesthetically, not just energetically, but structurally, neurologically, mechanically. There should be a through-line that connects one moment to the next.

That’s when I started sequencing differently. Not based on what flowed well or what felt creative, but based on what actually built something. What prepared the body. What made the next step make sense.

Almost immediately, my teaching changed. It became quieter in a way—less filled with unnecessary movement, less about doing more for the sake of it. I became more selective. More interested in what mattered than in what impressed.

But more than that, I became aware of how disconnected most people were from their own bodies—not in an abstract sense, but in a very real, tangible way. We ask people to stabilize, to articulate, to control, to access strength or mobility in specific places, and yet we rarely give them the context to understand what any of that actually means.

Without that context, people will always do what they’re told. They’ll put their foot where you say, lift their arm when you cue it, go deeper when encouraged. But they’re not participating in the process. They’re following it.

And that’s where the shift into teaching with purpose became non-negotiable for me.

Because without purpose, clients are left executing instructions instead of experiencing their own bodies. There’s no internal reference point, no way to assess whether something is working or not beyond whether it looks “right.” And when that’s the case, progress becomes inconsistent at best, and risky at worst.

What I’ve seen over time is that the moment someone understands the intention behind a movement, their entire relationship to it changes. They stop relying so heavily on external correction and begin to develop an internal sense of direction. They start asking better questions—where should I feel this, does this align with what I’m trying to do, what needs to shift if it doesn’t. There’s a subtle but powerful move from dependency into ownership.

That shift is what creates autonomy.

It’s also what creates safety, in a way that has very little to do with simplifying or regressing movements. Most issues I’ve seen don’t come from things being too advanced, but from things being misunderstood. When someone doesn’t know what they’re trying to achieve, they’ll often default to more—more range, more effort, more intensity—without the control to support it. But when the intention is clear, the body organizes differently. There’s less force, more awareness, and a much greater ability to self-regulate within the movement.

And then there’s clarity, which I think is the piece that quietly holds everything together. Without purpose, even well-designed classes can feel scattered. Like a series of disconnected efforts rather than a cohesive experience. But when there’s a clear through-line—when concepts are introduced, revisited, and built upon—people start to connect the dots. The work begins to make sense, not just in the moment, but over time.

That sense of clarity builds confidence, and confidence changes how someone shows up in their practice.

This way of teaching inevitably changed my role. I became less interested in being impressive and more interested in being understood. Less focused on delivering a “good class” and more focused on whether what I was teaching actually landed. Because no matter how well something is choreographed, it doesn’t create lasting change if people don’t understand what they’re doing or why they’re doing it.

And that shift—toward teaching for understanding rather than performance—is what shaped everything that came after. It’s what built consistency in my classes, what led me into teacher trainings, and what allowed me to offer something deeper than just movement.

At this point, teaching with purpose doesn’t feel like an added layer. It feels like the foundation. Sometimes it’s as simple as naming what we’re working on and letting that guide everything that follows. Giving people just enough context to orient themselves, and then reinforcing it in a way that allows them to actually feel it.

Because ultimately, people aren’t just coming to move. They’re coming to feel more connected, more capable, more confident in their own bodies. And that doesn’t come from perfectly executed sequences or beautifully curated classes.

It comes from understanding.

And when that understanding is there, people don’t just leave with the memory of a good class. They leave with something they can return to, something they can build on, something that actually stays with them.