Teaching my first private yoga clients.
Four years ago almost to this date I took the final exam for my first yoga teacher training and several weeks later I was excitedly teaching my first private yoga students. Fast forward four years to now, I thought I’d take the time to reflect on some of the most important things I’ve learnt post training that might be useful if you’re currently doing or have just finished your yoga teacher training, and you’re wondering what to do next or how to go about teaching.
1. Tune into why you love yoga
I have a confession that during my teacher trainings, the phrase ‘just be yourself’ when you’re teaching wasn’t particularly helpful. If I’d never taught before, who was I as a yoga teacher? I remember being so inwardly nervous at the beginning when I used to cover for another teacher during my first training, I felt anything but myself, despite wanting to be the light and carefree teacher effortlessly instructing and oozing calm.
Instead, what I found helped was to tune into why I practise and love yoga. Why did I start originally? How has yoga helped me over the years? How does it make me feel during, after practising, and also the rest of my life? The things I love most about yoga are the things I want to share with others and the moment I stay connected to this, everything felt a bit easier and more natural to who I was.
2. Yoga is for everyone but I wasn’t the best teacher for everyone
It can be easy to assume as a new yoga teacher that the only places to get work are at yoga studios and gyms, but in reality, yoga can take place anywhere and everywhere from the rooftop of someone’s apartment building to knee high in mud at a festival.
It’s also for everyone from new parents and their babies to athletes recovering from sports injuries — the key is to discover who you can best serve by asking yourself what you love most about yoga and want to share and then matching that with the right people.
I accidentally found my niche which turned out to be exactly how I love teaching the most — and that’s teaching people privately one to one or as couples, and tailoring sessions to suit how they’re feeling on the day. This is how I like to practice yoga myself — which is at home by myself, mixing it up every time I practise based on what I need most that day.
It also takes the pressure off by thinking you have to be all things to all people which is exhausting, and you end up pleasing no one.
3. Learning is continuous and it’s OK to not know something
When I first started teaching I would sometimes give myself a hard time for not knowing certain things, despite practising daily, devouring yoga books and trying to learn as much as I could.
I remember one of my first ever clients asking me the Sanskrit name for crow pose and I’d accidentally got crow and crane pose confused and found myself genuinely worrying about it all evening, which in hindsight is absolutely ridiculous. When I confessed, this person didn’t mind at all.
Go easy on yourself — yoga is a vast subject that’s hard enough to pigeonhole and describe in its entirety.
It’s a philosophy, psychology, movement practice, meditation…You can’t be expected to know even a fraction of what yoga is all about let alone everything, and the people you teach won’t expect this from you either.
4. It is possible to teach yoga full time
Before I started my first yoga teacher training, I hoped I could make yoga teaching at least my part time job, but initially I found this hard to admit in case it didn’t happen. What if I wasn’t very good? What if no one employed me? After all, London is filled with great yoga teachers.
After my second yoga teacher training in India, I returned feeling really inspired after meeting quite a few successful yoga teachers from around the world who were teaching full time, and it really made me think that I could do it too.
I’d been teaching privately before this and I just remember thinking, all I need to do is find 10 more people who love what I do. That’s it. It suddenly felt very possible.
5. Show that you genuinely care about people
I used to Google this a lot when I first started teaching — desperate to tick all the boxes of what made someone a great yoga teacher. Was it someone’s ability to sequence well, someone who encouraged you to listen to your body and find your way into a pose naturally? Was it a person’s ability to cue inhales and exhales in perfect timing or their ability to let you breathe at your own pace? Their ability to crack jokes mid class or be serious and disciplined? Or what about their ability to break poses down or give instructions well? And then, I’d go to a really great yoga class that would contradict my list, and I’d just wonder, what is at the heart of being a great yoga teacher?
During my second yoga teacher in India, I got an answer I liked a lot and that was to genuinely care about and hold the space well for the people you teach. When I reflect on yoga sessions that I’ve been to and really loved myself over the years, the teachers may all have differed a lot in their approaches, but they had the quality of genuinely caring, and doing an amazing job at creating and holding the space.
I’ve mentioned just five things in this post, but would love to hear your thoughts too. I’m also currently in the process of creating an online course which will be launched early next year, for new yoga teachers who would like to learn all about the business of teaching yoga one to one privately. You can join my mailing list below.
Recent Comments