If I ever had any doubt about whether I’d really want to teach yoga, it must have been brought on by a momentary lapse of insanity. This week, I got my first hands-on experience with real yoga students, and it was much more amazing than I ever thought it would be.

I’ve been observing a class for a little more than a month now and taking notes on the sequences, how my teacher, Charu Rachlis, handles certain situations in class, and how she approaches students to give adjustments. This has been an invaluable experience because there are so many things that happen in a yoga class that you miss while you’re in Downward-Facing Dog (or any other pose for that matter).

As much as I’ve learned from observing, I was excited to assist. Even though I’ve never been a touchy-feely sort of person (especially when those I’m touching are sweaty), I wanted to have the experience of working with actual students.

Now that I’ve had my first experience, I can tell you that adjusting people with years of yoga training (my fellow teacher trainees) is no substitute for working with people who only come to a yoga class once a week. It’s like night and day.

For example, if I give one of my peers a clear-as-mud cue like, “Bring your leg parallel to the floor,” when I mean “perpendicular,” my peers would ignore my faulty instruction and do the pose as they know it. On the other hand, someone less experienced might actually listen to me, which is as scary as it is frustrating.

So it was good training to work with actual students under the watchful eye of an experienced teacher—especially since my teacher took the time to teach me how to do certain adjustments while she taught her class.

I learned even more from the students themselves—even though they were a little sweaty.

As many of you may know, I’ve been studying the body though a variety of measures for the entirety of my training. I’ve studied anatomy books, felt my classmates’ muscles, and even endured a trip to a cadaver lab. For some reason, though, putting my hands on students, feeling their muscles relax, and watching their breathing patterns made all of it click.

Being in such close proximity made it really easy for me to know how much pressure to apply giving manual adjustments, but it also became very easy for me to see the differences in people’s bodies. For the first time, I was able to actually look at someone in a pose and see where he or she was tighter or more open.

Perhaps the most “touching” part of the experience (pardon the pun), was how warmly the students welcomed me. It was certainly a different energy than I’m used to in a yoga class. People seemed to be genuinely grateful for my help, and were completely understanding when I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. All this, and I didn’t even have to touch a foot!