Teaching Yoga for Endometriosis: How to Stay Within Your Role
It is a legitimate and important question.
At some point, it often arises for yoga teachers who begin to work with students living with endometriosis:
Can I teach this student with endometriosis?
Is this really my place?
Do I have the right to go there?
I believe this question matters. Because it reveals the desire to teach with integrity, and the wish to be genuinely helpful.
If you are a yoga teacher supporting, or wishing to support, students living with endometriosis, you may have asked yourself the same thing.
My answer is yes.
Yes, you do have a place.
Not because you are there to replace medical care.
Not because you are there to diagnose, interpret results, or advise on treatment.
But because yoga can hold a real and meaningful place within the wider ecosystem of support around a woman living with endometriosis.
In France, the HAS/CNGOF endometriosis recommendations include yoga among the complementary approaches discussed in care, within a broader multidisciplinary framework. The recommendations note that yoga, alongside acupuncture and osteopathy, showed improvement in quality of life in patients with endometriosis-related pain, while also placing this within a coordinated medical approach.
Yoga has a place in endometriosis support
I am also glad to see that more and more health professionals, gynecologists, midwives, physiotherapists, and others, actively encourage women to explore yoga as part of their support journey.
When I began teaching yoga for women living with endometriosis more than ten years ago, some of these professionals were already attending my workshops. Beautiful collaborations emerged naturally from there. Over time, so did trainings for professionals.
Today, many EndoYoga-trained teachers collaborate directly with healthcare professionals, receive referrals, or are contacted by women who were specifically looking for someone trained in this field.
At the same time, more and more women affected by endometriosis are turning to yoga on their own. Not because yoga is a cure, and not because it replaces medical care, but because they are looking for ways to better navigate daily life, reduce overwhelm, feel more resourced in their bodies, and become more active participants in their own care.
This it reminds us that yoga is not outside the conversation.
It is already part of the landscape. And Yoga Teachers too.
Our place as Yoga Teachers and Yoga Therapists in the ecosystem
Yoga is one part of a larger support system.
It sits within a complementary, often multidisciplinary approach, around the woman living with endometriosis.
That ecosystem may include a gynecologist, a surgeon, a pelvic health physiotherapist, a pain specialist, a psychologist, a nutrition professional, a midwife, or other supportive practitioners.
And, it includes a yoga teacher.
A woman may come to yoga because she wants less pain, less stress, more steadiness, more trust in her body, more energy, better sleep, or simply a place where her experience is met with care.
What our role is not
This is where clarity is essential.
As yoga teachers, we do not replace medical advice.
We do not diagnose.
We do not give opinions on treatment.
We do not prescribe.
We do not position ourselves as medical experts.
We do not substitute for medical or allied health care.
This boundary is of the integrity of our work.
It protects the student.
It protects the teacher.
And it keeps the relationship clear.
When we are clear about what is not our role, we can stand more fully in what is.
What our role is
Our role is to meet the student where she is.
To receive her not only as “someone with endometriosis,” but as a whole person living a particular experience, in a particular body, on a particular day.
Our role is to observe.
To listen.
To ask relevant questions.
To notice fatigue, pain patterns, tension, breath, emotional state, stress load, fear, depletion, or resilience.
Our role is to choose and personnalize the practice.
To create a space that is safe enough, clear enough, and responsive enough for the student in front of us.
To offer practices that support regulation, steadiness, relief, and a more skillful relationship with the body.
To observe how she responds.
Does she feel more grounded?
Less braced?
Less overwhelmed?
More spacious?
More exhausted?
More comfortable?
Less afraid of movement?
More connected to what helps?
Our role is also to support autonomy. Not dependency.
A student living with endometriosis does not only need a class once a week. Very often, she needs to begin understanding what helps her, when, and why, so that she can draw on practice in daily life.
That is one of the most powerful things yoga can offer.
Not just a good session.
But resources she can begin to recognize and use for herself.
And finally, our role is to know when collaboration or referral is needed.
Sometimes the wisest thing we can do is say:
this is outside my role, and I would like you to bring this to your doctor, pelvic health physio, or another qualified professional.
What makes a yoga teacher helpful.
It is knowing what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how to do it well.
It allows us to teach from solid ground. And this matters especially in endometriosis, where symptoms can be complex, fluctuating, and deeply individual.
No two students present in exactly the same way.
One student may come with severe period pain.
Another with fatigue, digestive symptoms, widespread tension, sleep disruption, or fear of movement.
Another may have very little pain, but feel disconnected, and depleted after years of living with an unpredictable condition.
If we rely only on protocols or one-size-fit-all sequence, we will miss the person in front of us.
What this requires in practice
Teaching well in this space requires first understanding.
Not medical specialization in the sense of diagnosing or treating disease, but enough understanding to make thoughtful, responsible choices.
It requires some understanding of endometriosis and of its possible effects on the body and different systems involved, as well as the lived experience of our student.
It requires us to appreciate that the student’s experience may involve pain, guarding, fatigue, sensitization, emotional load, frustration, uncertainty, and fluctuating capacity.
It requires us to move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach, or sequence.
Beyond the idea that there is one sequence for period pain.
Beyond the assumption that all students with endometriosis need the same thing.
Beyond a purely pelvic view of what is happening.
It also requires pedagogical skill.
How do you assess without overwhelming the student?
How do you adapt without creating fear?
How do you offer relief without reinforcing the idea that her body is fragile?
How do you build trust, consistency, and autonomy over time?
These are for instance some teaching questions.
Because what the student receives is not only the posture or the breath practice.
Beyond protocols
This is one of the reasons I care so deeply about moving beyond ready-made protocols.
Protocols can reassure the teacher.
But they do not necessarily serve the student.
In endometriosis, what matters most is not memorizing a list of poses “for endo.”
What matters most is understanding principles:
Why this practice?
For whom?
When?
At what intensity?
With what adaptation?
Toward what effect?
And how will I know whether it is helping?
That is a different level of teaching.
More demanding, yes.
But also more honest, more sustainable, and more therapeutic in the deepest sense.
What this creates
When yoga teachers learn to work in this way:
Their teaching becomes clearer.
Their decisions become more grounded.
Their students feel more met.
Their work gains depth and relevance.
That is also recognized by others in the care ecosystem.
Many EndoYoga-trained teachers now collaborate with gynecologists, midwives, and physiotherapists who refer women directly to them.
And this support also unfolds in yoga studios, centres, and private practice settings, where women are seeking teachers who can meet them with clarity, skill, and care.
Because they have become skilled, trustworthy yoga teachers within their own field.
It is to teach from a place that is clear, grounded, responsible, and deeply relevant.
It is to know where yoga can genuinely help.
It is to understand what is beyond our scope.
It is to build the kind of discernment that allows us to serve well.
For the woman living with endometriosis, this can make a real difference.
And for the yoga teacher, it creates something equally important:
a way of teaching that is both ethical and confident, informed and humane.
That, to me, is our place.
About the author
Aurélie Maire is a biochemist and nutrition scientist, certified yoga therapist, teacher trainer, author, and founder of the EndoYoga approach.
She has been living with endometriosis for almost fifteen years. EndoYoga was born from that path — both personal and professional
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To go further
Free Resources
- 5 Lessons and Insights from 10 Years of Teaching Yoga for Endometriosis.
- 5 Practical Ways to Support a Student with Endometriosis in Your Yoga Class — Starting Now, Even if You’re Not Yet Specialized
Yoga Teacher Training : 50-Hour Yoga Teacher Training – Yoga Therapy for Endometriosis
If you wish to deepen your knowledge and develop real confidence in supporting women with endometriosis, this training offers you:
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A holistic approach that weaves together science, yoga tradition, and women’s physiology
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Practical tools to design and guide classes, workshops, and 1:1 sessions
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An expertise that is science-informed, rooted in yoga tradition, and deeply human, always at the service of your (future) students.
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