One day, I noticed my student Nicole jotting handwritten notes during class. She hadn’t previously done so. I steered her back to the pose, without directly addressing her note-taking. Later, she revealed that she has trouble with attention. She thought that taking notes might enhance her learning and retention.
Interestingly, I’d rarely, almost never, faced this question. Students either follow existing protocol (no note-taking in class) or prefer not to take notes. Despite a few qualms, I agreed to let her continue.
Second Thoughts
Shortly thereafter, another student approached me after class. “I hate to complain,” she said, “but I was really distracted by the person next to me, taking notes. Maybe if I’d been across the room, I wouldn’t have noticed. But it stood out since it’s not the norm.”
Hmm, I could choose to cope with Nicole’s note-taking, but I couldn’t let it disturb other students. I discussed the situation with my training teacher, gathered my thoughts, and ultimately asked her to stop.
Unspoken Protocol
As a student, I’ve never taken notes in class. Neither in Berkeley, California, where I first studied yoga, nor in Vancouver, British Columbia, where I trained to teach.
No one ever said, “Don’t take notes.” It was an unspoken protocol. None of my classmates took notes. As a beginner, I followed their lead. In those formative years, I was keen, focused, fully occupied just executing the poses. I had no time, no opportunity, to scribble notes.
Later, as a junior teacher, I wanted to remember everything that I learned in class. I wanted to recall sequences, concepts, prop set-ups, clever cues, witty remarks, minutiae important only to me. But I still took it for granted: no note-taking. So I’d memorize the sequence, pose by pose. After class, I’d sit at a café and write it down, beginning to end, adding figure sketches and secret comments.
Do I often reread those notes? No. Rarely, if ever, do I touch my collection of notebooks. Maybe I simply loved the process, the ritual, of sitting at a café, writing, thinking, daydreaming. Note-taking was the coda to a class.
(Although note-taking is not done in regular, weekly classes, it’s often acceptable during large-scale workshops. Maybe the circumstances—senior teacher, special event, unfamiliar crowd—change the rules. But, at such workshops, students might take notes and even photos. Once, during a workshop by HS Arun, a dramatic Indian teacher who uses props in novel ways, students with iPhones were like paparazzi half the time!)
Book Learning Versus Experiential Learning
I could empathize with Nicole. I, too, focus my mind by writing stuff down. With “book learning,” taking notes seems helpful—to understand concepts, to organize my thinking.
But isn’t that type of learning different from experiential learning? Remember my notebooks of class sequences? The act of writing occurred after class, but the note-taking really occurred during class. I prided myself on my “brain training” and accurate memory, but I was probably diminishing my experience in the moment. By taking notes, I ended up with excellent reference material—and I probably boosted my retention. But I’d lost the pureness of experiencing asana via body, not via mind.
Yoga is an experiential field of study. You can’t learn it only from words. It’s learning by doing. If you stop to take notes, you’ve stopped the experience.
Note-Taking Via Camera
Nowadays, cameras are more ubiquitous than pen and paper for taking notes, remembering things, and otherwise recording life. I find myself frequently whipping out my iPhone to memorialize a moment.
But, during those photo-ops, am I really “in the moment”? During our walks, my dog seems to sigh whenever I hold up my iPhone. She knows that, rather than playing with her, I’ll be staring in her direction, but focused on the boring device in my hands. In that moment, I’m not truly with her.
I don’t regret taking pics and videos. They’re invaluable to me. They vividly refresh my memory; they let me relive moments otherwise lost. But there must be a balance between recording life and just living.
Trusting the Body
Several weeks later, I asked Nicole how she was doing—without note-taking. Fine, she said, still struggling to do any yoga at home, when she can barely recall what we did in class.
“If you don’t have good bodily awareness and coordination,” she said, “you must function in an optimal way to learn through the body. If you’re not in that optimal place, you can feel left behind, lucky if you can remember even one thing from class.”
She has a point. But, unless your main goal is precise recall of particulars, note-taking isn’t necessary. There’s no need to replicate an entire class sequence. You and your body will remember what’s important for yourself.
Images: My niece, Tali, has always enjoyed art and loved the pets in her household and in mine. She did the dog and cat sketches around 2011 as a child; the calico cat watercolor as a teen in 2022.
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