Share & Share & Like

One of the most common questions I hear from new yoga teachers has to do with maintaining their own yoga practice. Initially, the challenge is to find regular classes to teach, but once those flood-gates open, many find that teaching ten or more classes a week really puts a damper on their personal practice.

Who wants to even look at their own yoga mat at that point!?

How to instruct a yoga class ?

Pretty soon the guilt starts to pile up for the yoga teacher who doesn’t practice what they preach..

Can you relate after your yoga teacher training?

Here are two suggestions: yoga teacher tips ahead!

1) The first is something you’re going to get used to hearing from me lot. Start teaching more privates and less public classes.

You can work smart to maximize your earnings per hour by building a private yoga business. This is the single most empowering move I know of for new (and even established) yoga teachers.

Establishing a healthy mix of private students and public classes and maybe including some corporate yoga classes will not only improve your overall earnings and allow you to work less hours, it creates variety in what you do every day —a key to keeping yourself fresh psychologically, and actually wanting to roll out your own mat when you have down-time!

2) Now to the title of this article: Get over demonstrating every pose.

In the beginning, most of us feel that we have to actually do the yoga sequences in order to be able to give verbal instruction. So, essentially, we physically do most yoga classes with our students, but without good breathing and the type of mindfulness that really makes it beneficial —because our attention is split and we are talking the whole time!

Initially, you might even convince yourself that this is great, because you are “doing so much yoga,”

I know I did.

But there is no substitute for taking class yourself, or doing your home practice, and the fact is that if you demonstrate every yoga pose in every class your body will be tired and your yoga mat will look pretty unappealing when you are not working.

The solution: Practice giving instruction without demonstrating (a little at first) in each class you teach. Get more confident and comfortable talking about poses and watching your student’s bodies, walking around the room and giving necessary corrections —and even just standing still while they move.

This will free you up to teach in a more engaged way, take the focus off you, and allow you to clearly differentiate teaching yoga from practicing yoga in your own mind and body.

My experience is that this also makes my teaching more vital and inspired, because my own time on the mat actually gives me experiences, insights and energy to draw from when I go to teach my class.

I hope these suggestions have been useful in supporting you living your dreams!

Yoga sequence is a major factor too!

Tips for teaching yoga online are in another blog post…

Share & Share & Like