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As a yoga teacher for the last 15 years, I’ve learned a lot on the job. Mostly I’ve had to understand that there will always be unexpected situations I encounter, whether it’s a student shouting questions during class or me accidentally teaching an almost two-hour class before a student stopped me to say, “Um, I have to go to work.”
The constant among these experiences is that they require me to continually refine my approach to teaching. But as much as I welcome the ongoing learning, there are some essential lessons that I would have appreciated being told as a new teacher venturing out of my 200-hour YTT and into the wild world of yoga classes with the masses.
The following is what I share with new yoga teachers to help them keep their focus where it belongs, which is on all the less predictable lessons their students will inevitably teach them.
5 Essential Lessons for Any Yoga Teacher
These awarenesses are helpful for teachers of all experience levels.
1. Practice On Your Own Time
I began yoga teacher training with one overarching thought. Namely, “I can’t wait to get paid to do yoga all day!”
I was so mistaken.
When we enter into a teaching relationship, we commit to setting aside our own needs and desires so we can support others. When a teacher is preoccupied with their own practice throughout class, they’re neglecting their students. If they’re upside down in Downward-Facing Dog, how can they know if students are practicing unsafe alignment or looking around for clarification because they feel lost? We simply cannot cram our practice into classes where our students are priority.
Also, practicing regularly—whether on your own or with other teachers—contributes to your understanding of sequencing, cueing, and the application of yoga philosophy to everyday life. This, in turn, allows you to bring a more expanded perspective to your teaching.
2. Respond to Students’ Needs
If you’ve ever been in what I like to call a “last man standing” yoga class, you’ve experienced a pose that is so difficult that, one by one, everyone begins to sit on their mat or settle into Child’s Pose while a handful of students struggle to keep up with the teacher. If our role as teachers is not only to inspire but to also respond to our student’s needs, how effective are we if less than half the class can participate?
Watching students’ movements and listening to their breathing patterns helps us align the practice with their needs rather than our preplanned sequence. It helps us know when our students have reached their limit in a pose and what cues and variations we can offer to support their experience.
Perhaps you themed a class around a particular pose or category of pose. What is the larger lesson you’re trying to teach through the postures? When you know the goal behind what you’re teaching, you can be prepared with options. There is always a variation or alternate pose that offers the same or similar benefits.
You can also change the orientation to the floor to find another option. For example, what if you’re teaching a Low Lunge to release the psoas muscle and a student is uncomfortable placing their knee on the mat? You can offer another option that achieves the same goal but isn’t on the knee. Perhaps a Supported Bridge Pose while lying on their back on a block or a standing Warrior 1.
Anytime we intend to teach a pose, we need to be aware of effective and helpful options. We never need to be the teacher that says “Just take Child’s Pose.”
3. Be Ready and Willing to Change Your Plan
Planning is one way to offer effective yoga classes. However, if we become too attached to the lesson plan, we can lose the opportunity to follow a thought or moment that could lead to an even more powerful experience. Attachment to a plan takes away our ability to respond to our students’ needs or shift gears when needed.
One day I had planned a prone sequence where the entire lesson was spent face down on the floor to embody grounding. Three minutes before class was scheduled to begin, a student who was seven months pregnant walked into the room. I needed to quickly regroup and figure out how to teach the same theme with an entirely different sequence of postures so the student could take part.
Life is unpredictable. Part of embodying the teachings of yoga is rolling with the changes as they come. Do what you can to set yourself up for success. And let yourself be surprised at what kind of brilliance comes from letting go of control and observing what is needed when you teach. There is something magical about a student coming up after class and thanking you for teaching “just what they needed” that day.
You will never know going into class what students need. But watching and listening helps you respond in a way that’s based more on observation. Trust me when I say these will be your most powerful classes. We can guide our students but ultimately we are here to support their experience. Remember, it’s not about you.
4. Leave Your Personal Life Outside of Class
Yoga teachers are human. We, too, have bad days and sometimes respond to a situation before, during, or after class with a less-than-enlightened vibe.
However, it’s in the best interest of our students and their experience of yoga that we keep our personal issues outside the classroom. This might mean taking a few deep breaths or finding a few minutes to meditate before class if someone has annoyed us. It might also mean subbing out a class for a few weeks when we’re struggling with a life issue.
Practicing what we preach and working toward self-awareness helps us stay true to the larger practice of yoga. It’s our responsibility to do whatever we need to provide the best possible experience those with whom we’re sharing yoga, even if that means removing ourselves from the equation.
5. Leave Space for Silence
With some exceptions, most students who walk into a yoga class are missing one crucial element in their lives—silence.
Everyone is inundated with ads, notifications, and other reminders of our connection to the world and its responsibilities. This constant state of doing and responding contributes to the increasing number of diagnoses of anxiety, depression, and auto-immune disorders. Even without a diagnosis, day-to-day life can feel overwhelming.
Perhaps the greatest gift of yoga—and the ultimate objective of the larger practice of yoga—is finding stillness and silence. But it can be uncomfortable to experience that when it feels so foreign. Being alone with our thoughts and emotions can be difficult.
Allowing for moments of uninterrupted stillness at the end of class can help students settle their nervous systems. Dim the lights, turn down the music, stop talking, and let students be, ideally for 5 to 10 minutes. Offering this form of advanced yoga can introduce them to a new depth of their practice.
As you explore your own practice as a teacher, remember to make note of the moments and lessons that stand out to you. These are what help us grow as teachers and practitioners. They also remind us not just to share yoga with others but to fully embrace the lessons that yoga has to offer us as teachers.
