Assessment, Documentation and Professional Practice
Baseline assessment
Start with screening tools - a readiness questionnaire, medical and medication history, lifestyle and injury history - before any measurement. Record resting vital signs while the student is seated and calm: heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, height, weight and waist circumference. Use simple field measures of flexibility, balance, strength and breath capacity, and validated self-report scales for stress, sleep or quality of life. Keep the tool and the conditions identical at re-test, or the comparison is meaningless.
Documentation
Maintain informed consent, intake forms, session notes, progress records and incident reports. Notes should be factual, dated, legible and free of diagnostic language: record what was observed and taught, not a medical conclusion. Protect confidentiality - secure storage, minimum necessary disclosure, and explicit consent before sharing information with a physician or family member. Write referral letters that state observations, not diagnoses.
Professional practice
Work within scope, keep insurance current, pursue continuing education, maintain records for the retention period required by your setting, and decline work outside competence. Reflect on outcomes honestly.
Traps
Examiners test timing: blood pressure or heart rate measured immediately after practice is not a valid baseline. Watch for options that record a diagnosis in a yoga note, that share client data casually, or that compare results from different instruments at re-test.
Rule of thumb
Same tool, same conditions, same time of day: measure before practice, document immediately, and compare like with like at re-test.