My Journey into Being a Full Time Yoga Teacher

During my first trip to India to practice yoga and learn about Ayurveda back in 2009, I thought that one day it’d be great to train as a yoga teacher myself. Four years later, I signed up to do two teacher trainings in yoga and meditation.

I had no idea who, what or where I wanted to teach. There was a part of me that would love to teach yoga full time, but I wondered if it was really possible or not — especially living in London. 

During my yoga teacher training I decided to give working for myself a go and to help support me financially, I became a freelance life model. My website also started to make a small income too which was great after several years of producing regular content. 

Life modelling helped to clear my head and was perhaps one of the most therapeutic things I could have done at the time. At the end of each day, rather than feeling mentally exhausted, I was actually full of ideas and energy. In a way, it was the equivalent to spending hours in meditation each day. It gave me real clarity to focus.

Despite earning so much less than what I was previously on initially, I managed to save a lot more money in this period — more than I ever had, which goes to show that saving really is to do with your mindset and attitude towards money. 

My first paid yoga teaching job

During my initial yoga teacher training I used to teach small group lunch time sessions for free where I worked, and also took the odd group cover class for another local yoga teacher.

However, just as my yoga teacher training was coming to end, I ended up finding my first private yoga students who were a couple. I was just asked how much it would be to teach them at their home. 

At the time, I hadn’t really considered setting up as a personal yoga teacher, especially as I was a completely new teacher, and just figured that no one would want to be taught yoga one to one by someone who was so new. And then I had that horrible feeling where I wondered whether I would be good enough or not. 

I had, however, been practising yoga for years prior to training to teach, so I think this helped a lot. It was also nice to know that I’d found some people who were happy to be taught by me — knowing I was just about to qualify, and that I wasn’t someone with years and years worth of yoga teaching experience. 

I think this allowed me to relax a lot when I did start teaching them. Instead of trying to teach them from a place of lack or feeling like I had to pretend to be more of an expert than I was, I could just teach them from where I was at which was as a new teacher who cared and was passionate about sharing yoga.

I taught just this one couple for a while as I wanted to get experience and learn as much as I could about teaching yoga privately. After just a few sessions, I knew that teaching yoga one to one was what I wanted to specialise in. 

Deciding to teach yoga full time

After a while, I started to think, if two people are enjoying my sessions, there must be more people in London’s vast population of over eight million. So, I raised my prices, took on some more people, and travelled to India to do my 500 hour yoga teacher training for three months in Rishikesh. 

There was a big part of me that felt like I needed more training even though I already had two teacher trainings in meditation and yoga. Perhaps this was my false belief that if I did just this one more training I could really put myself out there and do this full time.

However, on my return from Rishikesh, this was when I really put myself out there and within just three months, I’d built my initial private yoga teaching practice. 

Usually when I do things, it’s quite difficult for me to stay focused and ‘on track’, but I think what really helped me in this instance was choosing to specialise in a particular area of yoga that I was passionate about — which was teaching yoga one to one or to small groups. 

When I practise yoga myself it’s usually by myself at home and I tailor my practice to how I’m feeling on the day. I enjoy classes too, but for me, it’s always my personal home yoga practice that feels best. I see teaching yoga one to one as being very similar, only you have a yoga teacher there to guide you and hold the space just for you. 

Creating my first online course for yoga teachers

After I gave birth to my son who’s now 18 months, I started to put together everything I knew about teaching yoga privately which is now the result of my first online course. I mainly cover the business of setting up as a personal yoga teacher and making this a reality. If it wasn’t for teaching yoga privately one to one, I don’t think I would have been able to make teaching yoga my main job alongside my website — at least not in three months!

I know we’re living in strange times right now and I started creating this course before the coronavirus pandemic, but the teachings still apply if you want to teach privately online too. I’m pretty confident I can show anyone who is passionate and qualified to teach yoga, how to set up as a personal yoga teacher too. 

To give you a taster of what to expect, here’s my free 70 page eBook

The Art and Business of Teaching Yoga One-to-One