Ten things I've learned from ten years of teaching yoga
Making the decision to become a yoga teacher, is a big one. It's deciding to open up your love for yoga and your heart to others. It's deciding to commit to learning and deepening your practice of yoga, and to many hours of dedication.
It wasn't a difficult decision for me in 2013, I was ready to change work direction after having my children, to be able to do something I could do around their lives, and I'd practiced yoga for about 12 years.
Starting with mum and baby yoga, then adult classes and then pregnancy, my classes and timetable have grown organically and luckily I've succeeded in making yoga teaching my full time job.
But it is hard work, you need skills to run a business, not just teach classes . You find you need to be accountant, marketing manager and a whole host of other things. Being a sole trader can be lonely too, working on your own. But the freedom to teach as and when I wanted to around my family has been worth the hard work, and its been really fun learning how to do the things I need to, building my classes and connecting with so many people and deepening my yoga practice off the mat as well as on it.
Over the years I've learned so much about myself:
About how much I strive to teach good classes, to create a happy community of students and provide good customer service. How focused I am on planning, teaching and adding value to classes. How I respond when things don't go as smoothly as I want them to, when numbers fluctuate in classes, pandemics hit or family life needs me to make changes. How much I love to deepen my yoga skills (and admin skills) with new trainings that improve my offerings across all my classes. How much I love to teach, how much I've learned from my students, and how much I’ve learned from teaching itself that no training can teach you.
I'm excited for the next ten years and where it will take me on my own yoga path as well as my teaching path. But as I reflect on the past ten years. Here are ten key things I've learned:
1. How to hold space
Teaching a class takes more energy than you might think. It's not just about creating a class plan and then teaching it. It's about making space for the individual yoga journey of each student in the room. It's helping each person to practice safely, to enjoy their yoga and as teacher to connect with each person. It's about making space for students to reflect, listen to their body and mind and for them to rest. Teaching yoga is not about fixing anything, it's about creating and holding space for the experience...and then more often than not that space facilitates the re-balancing, release and healing that students need.
2. How to be led by my students
From the tiniest babies in Baby Massage & Yoga classes to my 80-somethings in my senior classes, I've learned to observe, listen and ensure that each person enjoys their yoga. Over time I get to know each student over and above the information on their booking form. I have learned how to adapt my plans to suit the room.
Babies lead our classes with their rhythms and needs. I teach to their group energy at any given time, if they are active or if they are more relaxed or hungry and the lesson plan doesn't suit I mix it around or do something else to ensure all parents and babies are included.
As I get to know my regulars in adult and pregnancy class I plan my classes accordingly, I respond to their needs as we go and through my termly planning. This relationship only comes with time.
3. How less is more
Over time I've found my own way of planning classes. But I never fit everything in. Less is always more.
Space is a gift, space to pause in class, reflection time, breathing time, relaxation time. Space to explore poses and find them in new ways. This helps to integrate what our body and mind is feeling.
4. How to be inspired
Teaching, like anything can become a bit mundane now and again. Something just isn't quite clicking and inspiration is harder to find. I've learned it comes down to my own yoga practice and study. The more I keep this regular, the easier it is to teach.
I love learning and regular training and professional development is one of the main ways I keep inspired. I usually find trainings cross over into content for all my classes, even if they are for specific skill or demographic.
Making time for self care is also really important for me, and I'm only just getting better at this and finding a good balance of work, family and me time. Time in nature always brings me inspiration. Making space in my week for the things I love to do and for my family always bring inspiration.
My teachers, trainings, yoga colleagues and my students all inspire me to get on the mat and to keep on teaching.
5. How not to judge myself
I make judgements about myself and my teaching all the time - about how well I've planned a class, about how well the class has gone, whether I'm doing enough, or too much, why classes aren't fully booked, why there's not more time in the day!!!
I make comparisons all the time too - what is this teacher doing? or that teacher doing? that social media page is so much better than mine etc etc.
But I have learned to trust that I can teach well, and that every now and again I will teach a less successful class for any number of reasons and that's ok. I have learned that the right students always find me - the ones that enjoy my style of teaching and my content, that are the right 'fit' for my classes. I have learned that what other teachers are doing is irrelevant to what I am doing and that no-one is doing anything better, just differently (although I still like to look and see what other teachers are doing!)
For a long time I would judge my own yoga practice as well - I struggle as much as the next person to find time to do yoga on the mat. Especially with a young family, I found myself judging myself a lot in the first few years and struggling to work out when and how in the day yoga could ‘fit’.
Above all I have learned that yoga is not just about what you do on the mat - there is so much more to it, meditation and mindfulness, self reflection and above all how you live your life. Time on the mat everyday is a privilege that some can enjoy more easily than others and that my yoga practice is personal and not always about physical practice on the mat. Judgements get in the way, gratitude for what I can do is always most important.
6. How to find support
Being a solo teacher, working in the community and not connected to a yoga studio can be lonely at times, You see people everyday in class, but its not the same as having a colleague. Over the years I have sought out friends, confidantes, teachers and supporters to ensure that I have people to bounce ideas off, share experience with and get inspiration from. I find support through teachers I meet on trainings, I have sought out other local teachers teaching similar classes to myself and made some lasting friendships. If I need to do something I can't do, or a student needs something I haven't worked with before I have places and people that I trust to turn to or to signpost to.
Most recently I have helped to found Pregnancy, Baby and You, Cheshire which is a growing network of independent pre and postnatal professionals. We hold space for each other, support each other, network and signpost between our group to really support the new parents we are working with but also ourselves. Friendships are really growing and it gives us all really valuable support personally and professionally.
7. How to theme
Yoga is taught in so many ways and usually to the interests of the teacher as much as the style or school of yoga they have trained with. I like to make yoga accessible for the everyday person. I like to make connections to everyday life whether I am using a quote, a poem, a book, yoga philosophy or something I heard on the radio. After all that is what yoga is about.
I have found that a theme for a class or across a half term really gives the practice foundation and direction, especially for my general adult classes. Interestingly, theming my classes really came into its own during covid and the online classes I was teaching in lockdown. I think that because we were all experiencing a universal event, I was able to tap into what I was feeling or things that were helping me and knew that all of my students could relate. It really opened up my ability to theme a class more deeply.
8. How to run a yoga business
Running a yoga business is not an easy task There is no one formula and you are not taught how to run a business in Yoga Teacher Training. Luckily before teaching yoga I ran a Cheshire based theatre company for children so had quite a few business skills to rely on. But I still had to learn how to promote classes, maintain a student base, keep up with how to use social media as a business, and run the financial side of things.
I have invested in Yoga Business trainings and social media trainings over the years as well as my yoga trainings. It has made the world of difference in how I run my business and finally after ten years I seem to have found the right balance in my work/life boundaries and how to plan my weekly to week admin work alongside my teaching work to include some self care time. Over the past couple of years I have also invested in an amazing administrative assistant. It took me a while to feel comfortable with the cost of this, but I wish I had done it sooner!
9. That it's ok to change my mind
My classes have grown organically over the years and the timetable alongside it has expanded and contracted and shifted with various offerings and locations for classes. Sometimes I have had to make timetable changes to work around my home life, sometimes opportunities have come along for a while. Classes don't always have a longevity, sometimes a venue no longer works or becomes unavailable.
For a while I stubbornly held onto classes that were no longer feasible, perhaps due to numbers, perhaps location, hoping for them to turn around. If I have to make a timetable change it always pulls my heart strings for the students who do attend. But I have learned that it's ok to change my mind about classes, or make timetable adjustments. Yes I may lose a few students, but for the most part a new opportunity will present itself. As one door closes, another one opens.
10. That yoga really is for everyone!
If you had asked me ten years ago who and what I would be teaching I would never have guessed at the breadth of yoga trainings I would have taken, the wide demographic of students I teach, or the fact that I would even still be teaching yoga!
I intended at the time to teach Mum and Baby Classes whilst my boys were pre-schoolers and add in teaching adult classes once they were are school. That is what happened, but in addition I also teach pregnancy classes, meditation courses, classes for a local charity and classes for a local Addiction Rehab Clinic for people in recovery.
I could not have told you that my oldest student is 86 years young and that to teach really accessible yoga, suitable for everyone, would become my passion. I have found that the hidden depths of gentle and restorative yoga; the ability to share yoga practices from meditation to yoga nidra; being able to adapt physical poses using props, walls and chairs to make them accessible to people who have never stepped foot on a yoga mat before; and the ability for yoga to bring so many smiles to so many people is what makes my heart sing. This applies to all of my classes from babies and postnatal, to pregnancy, to adult classes and seniors.