Teachers Blog

Recently, I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with a group of newer teachers and teacher trainees in a workshop based on some of the key points of my book The A-Z of Being a Successful Yoga Teacher. These workshops are based around the "business" of becoming a teacher. But as any entrepreneur knows building a career from a passion will extend beyond the bounds of a normal 9-5 job.

Because this is true, I always encourage workshop participants to write down a few questions they have so that if I don't get to their topic of concern in this one short workshop, I can do my best to answer the question here on the blog or in our private Facebook group Being a Successful Yoga Teacher (if you haven't joined, you should here). Over the coming weeks I will be answering some of the questions I received.

Q: I would like to make teaching yoga my full time career, but I am worried about getting negative responses from my family. How can I deal with the lack of support?

It has been a while since I have written an article for you, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about you.

If you aren't subscribed to my general yoga blog, you may not know, but six months ago I gave birth to a baby girl. Since then our little family has spent time traveling in and living between Boston and Canada and even spent a month in Hawaii. My husband Steve got a new job, I rekindled my teaching business and we moved into our new home. 

During this time, I noticed that something solidified that I have been consciously working on within myself and my business for years.  

I will admit I usually roll my eyes when I hear someone give a platitude like "children are our best teachers", but while Audrey can't literally teach me how to be a better yoga professional she has, effectively nearly eliminated a problem many of us yoga teachers have.

In the chaos of life with a baby I finally learned the just how important this powerful sentence is for my business and my sanity.

And I want you to repeat it with me.

I don't often openly dispute the advice other yoga teachers give. On the whole, I believe this industy needs to be about 1000x  more supportive of one another.

We work in a world where everyone has a different "more correct" way of doing things from teaching to the way they interact with students, so I try, for the most part, to offer my perspective and be open to the fact that other instructors may disagree with me because they have found something that works for them and their students.

However, when it comes to yoga teachers perpetuating myths and bad business practices to others, I am much more vocal.

When I hear a part-time yoga teacher shame a full-timer for wanting to make a better living through their teaching income or suggesting that they aren't "spiritual" because of it, I speak up against that bull$hit.

When I hear about a studio asking their teachers to work for months on end for free as a "trial period" while they still charge full price for classes, I stop taking yoga classes there (in fact I turned down a class at a studio awhile back because of it).

One of the biggest challenges career yoga teachers face is how to take yoga (which most of us consider a part of our spiritual practice) and turn it into a sustainable business without feeling the guilt that others (most of whom don't rely on a teachers income) impose upon them.

I have discussed this topic at length in my book and on this blog, but what is a teacher to do on a practical level if they are ready to create something special using their skills as a teacher and their commitment to help themselves and their community thrive?

The answer is to turn your passion into a product and become a spiritual entrepreneur.

Today it is my honour to share with you a delightful piece written by fellow teacher Kyle Thompson. As an instructor, it is key to find points of inspiration in every corner of our lives and this thoughtful article will help you do just that. Enjoy! 

Inspiration, Move Me Brightly

How The Grateful Dead Made Me A Better Yoga Teacher

by Kyle Thompson

Earlier this year, the Grateful Dead celebrated their fiftieth anniversary as one of America's most influential rock and roll bands.  Around the time of this anniversary and the band's "final"  Fare Thee Well shows in Chicago, I began to think a lot about the many ways this band has influenced my life, my yoga, and how I teach.  From the Grateful Dead, I have learned several lessons that I feel have made me a better yoga teacher.

Lesson #1: Be Yourself

"You do not want to be considered merely as the best at what you do, you want to be considered the only one who does what you do." - Jerry Garcia

"We (The Grateful Dead) are like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice" - Jerry Garcia

The first lesson I have learned from the Grateful Dead is to be myself and to do my own thing.  The Grateful Dead have never fit in. Instead of letting this stop them, the Dead embraced their "freak" image. Not only did they find their audience, they largely changed how bands relate to their audience and, as a result, significantly changed the music industry. 

After completing my 200 hour teacher training, I, like probably a lot of new yoga teachers, felt quite a bit of pressure to teach a certain way or in a certain style. I somehow thought that if I taught the "perfect" class, I'd make everybody happy and people would love me and flock to my classes. 

Needless to say, that didn't happen. It wasn't until after I recognized my own unique gifts as a teacher and embraced my own personal style that my teaching began to take off and grow. I didn't need to teach in any particular way or to fit into any label. Just as it was OK that the Dead was not "really" a rock band, a blues band, or a country band but infused parts of all of these styles into their music, it is absolutely OK that I'm not an Iyengar teacher, an Ashtanga teacher, a Sivananda teacher, or a Kripalu teacher, but I include aspects from each of these traditions into my classes. 

I have found that there is a certain type of student who resonates with my style and my yoga.  Fortunately, many of these students seem to really like what I do. The main lesson here is to be yourself, do what you do and you will find an audience who loves you for it.

Earlier this year I sent out a survey to all the yoga teachers I know. I asked them about their relationship to studios and clients they work with and whether they feel valued and fairly compensated. I also asked what their main challenge or stress point is.

The answer to this last question was nearly the same across the board.

The hardest part of being a yoga teacher was juggling all the other "stuff" outside of the classroom. The schedules, the policies between different studios, keeping track of student's needs and the other details of running a business.

Perhaps you can relate.

You signed up to become a yoga instructor because you love to teach, not because you enjoy juggling an ever-changing schedule, the drastically different needs and demands of all your clients or the occasional periods of low energy.

If you are like me, in moments of exasperation from any combo of those things, I find myself wishing I had a personal yoga assistant both in the classroom and in the office to keep everything in order.

The Next, Best (& Free) Thing is Here

Instead of wasting more energy on wishful thinking, my Aquin Yoga co-founder Steve Haase and I put our heads together and created a tool just for yoga teachers to improve productivity and preserve sanity.

Q: I just started teaching at a studio and the manager is getting complaints about my classes. What are ways I can uphold the way I learned to teach without compromising, or is it not possible?

 This is a tricky question. On one hand, without knowing exactly what the negative feedback is or being in your classes I can’t comment on the experience your students are having.

 On the other hand, the question of staying true to your form of yoga or style of teaching vs. pleasing your students is one that teachers grapple with constantly.

Yesterday I shared my personal thoughts on why branding isn’t the best way for new and freelance teachers to set themselves apart from the crowd.

If you didn’t catch the post read it here.

At the end of the day, if you are teaching a full schedule you likely don’t have the bandwidth it takes to constantly nurture a brand. So what are some smart and simple things that will help you as a freelance teacher build a name for yourself?

How do teachers make a name for themselves in this very saturated yoga industry?

When I first began teaching I learned the “if you build it they will come” myth proved false fairly quickly. Luckily most teachers these days are working hard to figure out how to stand out from the crowd. 

This is a big topic that I cover more extensively in my book The A-Z of Being a Successful Yoga Teacher but a teacher trainee from my last intensive asked a specific question about the process of “branding” their business for the purpose of standing out and had no idea where to start.

Before we dive into how to build a smart yoga brand, the first question to consider, is whether “branding” is important or a huge waste of time. In simple terms, branding is the special name or image that allows the public to know at a glance who is generating a product or service. A swoosh on someone’s shoes or a partially consumed apple lets the world know where those products come from without any further explanation. 

Branding in more sophisticated terms can be the umbrella under which a person or company organizes its philosophy, ideals, culture and community. Needless to say, branding when done well, is a powerful tool but is it necessary for freelance yoga teachers?

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of working with a group of teacher trainees on the business and art of teaching yoga. The group was inquisitive and thoughtful and there were so many great questions I couldn't possibly answer them all in one day. 

By the end of our session I had a stack of unanswered questions that I brought home and over the next few weeks, as I work through answering these great Q’s, I will share my thoughts here on the blog. I hope that this will spark conversation in the teaching community and invite you to share your insights here in the comment section of the blog.

Q: Is it easy and realistic to find a yoga studio willing to hire new graduate, part-time teachers for evening and weekend classes?

For a new teacher with a full time career elsewhere, the biggest hurdle to working at a studio is that evening and weekend classes are considered “prime time”. Since most yoga students work 9-5 jobs, studios typically reserve prime time classes for their most popular and experienced instructors.