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After a decade of teaching yoga and taking so many trainings that I lost count, I know some things about anatomy, physiology, alignment, theming, sequencing, and philosophy. I no longer shake with anxiety before class. I can recall my sequence with enough mental capacity left over to adjust it on the fly as needed. And, for better or worse, I no longer feel the need to pretend that I’m a “real” yoga teacher.
Yet I still make plenty of mistakes, whether simple technical blunders or fundamental errors in judgment. I could let that awareness get me down—which I have certainly done at times. Or I could let it inspire me to continue to learn and evolve as a teacher. I choose the latter.
Here’s what I’ve been learning lately.
9 Mistakes I Still Make as an Experienced Yoga Teacher
Teaching yoga is essentially a practice of remaining a student. My mistakes continue to remind me that there is always more that I can learn.
1. Forget to Introduce Myself at the Start of Class
It’s easy to become so focused on passing out props before class and easing into the early phases of mindful movement that simple manners like telling students your name can slip your mind. Next thing you know you’re halfway through your standing flow and no one knows who you are.
I find that what’s more essential at the outset of class is cultivating a friendly and inviting environment where everyone feels comfortable asking questions and making individual choices. If you forget to share your name before class, you can always drop a formal introduction at the end of class.
2. Confuse Body Parts
One of the hardest things to learn is how to concisely guide your students’ bodies as they move through space: front foot here, back foot there, shoulders here. Unfortunately, even when that skill becomes automatic, funny things can happen between your brain and your mouth. Next thing you know, you’re asking students to “press into your ears” instead of pressing into their fingers or to “take a moment to connect with your breasts” instead of their breath.
There’s not much you can do about your teaching bloopers other than laugh and move on. If anything, they might even offer a rare opportunity to break through the clutter and connect with students in an authentic way. You might not see it at the time, but it’s an essential lesson in allowing yourself—and, by extension, your students—to be human.
3. Confuse Left and Right Sides
Maybe you’ve “mirrored” students for so long that you’re fuzzy on knowing your actual left and right. And if you’re tired or distracted for any reason during class, good luck not letting that confuse matters as you’re cueing a body part. I certainly don’t get it right all the time.
These days, I mostly save myself the confusion of giving left and right cues and instead reference more absolute physical landmarks in the studio, such as the front wall, back wall, prop wall, doorway, mirrors, windows, and so on. It keeps things simpler and more intuitive for all of us in the class.
4. Hold a Pose for Unequal Amounts of Time on Each Side
Ever convince yourself that a teacher should instinctively know when it’s time to move on to the next pose as if you had an internal clock ticking away? I have yet to develop this magical internal sense.
But I do know that my tendency is to cue more—and therefore hold longer—on the first side I teach. So I try to balance this out by consciously allowing students to stay longer in quiet breathing on the second side. If all else fails, I don’t mind consulting the actual watch on my wrist.
5. Fail to Think Before Opening My Mouth
The downside of talking for a living is that you can get a little too used to it. What starts as rattling off cues you know so well that you don’t even have to think about them can quickly spiral into a tendency to fill the quiet with anything. Anything at all.
Maybe you wind up in conversations with students you know outside of class, cracking jokes as if you’re a stand-up comedian on stage, use a few too many pop-culture references, or overshare on the regular (just ask my students how I feel about my partner shaking his wet hands dry in front of the bathroom mirror).
The capacity for quiet confidence is a big step in teaching maturity. It requires you to speak with purpose and clarity, then close your mouth and trust the yoga to do the rest. I don’t have that capacity as often as I’d like, but I can feel the power of the practice when I do.
6. Try to Squeeze Too Much Into Class
I’m guessing that I’m not the only yoga teacher who has looked at the clock with mild panic and been forced to choose between rushing the cool down, shortchanging Savasana, or running over time.
My trick to avoid losing track of time is to split the class into thirds. I aim to do the bulk of the warm-up in the first third, and leave most of the final third for the cool down. If I’m late finishing my warm-up or running long on standing poses, I know that I need to adjust my sequence on the fly by taking out a planned pose (or mini sequence) during the middle section long before class is due to end. That ensures my students aren’t feeling rushed at the end of class.
I’m far from perfecting the art of a perfectly timed class. But that approach helps me stay somewhat on track.
7. Teach Too Much
The more knowledge and experience you have, the more you want to share. And that can be a problem.
Each pose offers multiple avenues to explore—alignment to refine, philosophical avenues to explore, benefits to share. Sometimes I catch myself desperate for my next breath and realize I’ve been monologuing like a villain in a Bond film.
When there’s so much information you’re clamoring to get out, there’s no space for students to have their own experience of the practice. The role of an effective teacher isn’t to share everything they know. It’s to selectively dispense information.
What helps me refrain from overwhelming students with every nuanced detail pertaining to a pose is choosing a single teaching point or theme to explore throughout class that applies to multiple poses. The rest I save for another class.
8. Assume Telling and Teaching Are the Same Thing
Wanting to share knowledge can sometimes make you forget that understanding yoga concepts doesn’t always come from reading a textbook or listening to a lecture. Rather, it comes from experiencing it in your own body. That personal and experiential nature of yoga is exactly why it is called a practice. And as teachers, we need to allow space for that.
In addition to limiting my nonstop narration, I try to ensure that what I’m explaining is supported by different opportunities throughout class for students to feel, explore, understand, and retain that lesson.
The theory or theme might not land for every student. But since we tend to remember what we feel much more readily than what we hear, I suspect students will be able to incorporate that knowledge in a more personal and longlasting way.
9. Assume All Students Want to Learn
A natural assumption of the student-teacher relationship is that students come to class in order to learn. And many do attend classes to deepen their understanding of anatomy and philosophy. But many students also practice to feel better in their body—to breathe, move, and be.
I try to share some actionable education in each class, but I’ve also made peace with the fact that not everything I teach has to add to a student’s body of knowledge in order to have a helpful effect. In fact, sending students out into the world a little calmer and more compassionate just might be enough.
