Congratulations on taking the first step in becoming a yoga teacher! You put in the time, money and energy, and you are now certified to teach yoga. That is a beautiful thing. Reverse Warrior, Julian Garduno As a certified yoga teacher, there are a lot of incredible career paths that you could take. You could pursue further training. You could get a job at a yoga studio, or perhaps multiple yoga studios. You could decide to own a yoga studio, develop a teacher training, or run yoga retreats around the world. There are many different directions that you could take your career. Your head is full of possibilities. Your mind is buzzing with ideas. You feel excited and overwhelmed all at the same time. You are eager to launch your career, but you don't know where to start.
So, where do you start? This book is a great place. It is designed to give you the steps you need to take to begin your career as a successful yoga teacher. Before you begin, take a moment to sit down and answer these questions: CC What style of yoga do you want to teach? CC How often do you want to teach? CC What makes your yoga classes awesome? (And don t say nothing just because you are a new yoga teacher! New teacher or not, there is something that makes you unique and great). Now that you have a basic idea of who you are as a yoga teacher, let s start learning!
1Fear 101: Stop Worrying and Start Acting We are all held back by fear, myself included. After completing my Yoga Teacher Training (YTT), I was terrified to come home and start teaching. I knew I wanted to teach, but I was scared to put myself out there. What I ve learned is that if you plan to wait for your fears to go away, you will wait until you are dead. Fear never goes away, but the more you face it, the easier it becomes to act in spite of fear. The first step to facing your fears is to begin to understand why you are scared. There is a big difference between being afraid because a bear is chasing you through the forest, and being scared because you are about to stand up in front of 15 strangers and guide them through a yoga practice. What are you afraid will happen? For me, I was afraid of being judged or what people might think of me. There is no real risk of being judged, though. If there is no real risk, is there really anything to be scared of? No. There isn t. Take a moment and consider that the worst thing that will happen is that you stumble on your words, cue the wrong foot, develop a business that isn t as successful as you hoped, or realize that you don t love what you re doing and start over. So stop worrying about what might go wrong, take a leap of faith and find out what it feels like to pursue your dreams and to create something awesome for yourself. Road Meditation, Nickolai Kashirin
2Practicing 101: Practice, Practice, Practice As a yoga teacher, you spend a lot of your time in a yoga studio, or between multiple studios, so it can be difficult to motivate yourself to spend any more time than you need to there. As you drive home after a long day of teaching, you promise yourself that you will pull out your mat and do a self-practice; but, once you get home, you are overwhelmed by tiredness, or perhaps that neverending to-do list. You have spent your day teaching yoga, and practicing is the last thing that you want to do. You are yoga-ed out. When you transition between yoga practitioner to yoga teacher, the thought of practicing can seem a lot more like work. It can be confusing and frustrating to go from practicing all the time to not wanting to practice at all. How can you encourage your students to come into their breath and feel into their body if you are not doing it yourself? How can you empathize with the frustrations of a bad balance day if you aren t experiencing that yourself? To connect with what your students are dealing with on the mat, you have to know what it s like to deal with your own stuff on the mat. You have to practice what you preach. As you practice more and more, you hone in on your skills, and you learn to speak about how the poses feel in your body. And, the more you practice, the better your skills as a yoga teacher will be. Being good at something that you don't practice is difficult. In Malcolm Gladwell s book, Outliers, he popularized the 10,000-hour rule and how it takes 10,000 hours to master something. How many hours have you practiced yoga? You probably think that it is more than it actually is. I challenge you to estimate how many hours you ve practiced and see if you re anywhere near 10,000 yet. Regardless of how many hours you have practiced yoga for, it is important to continue to practice as a teacher, because when you stop practicing, you become disconnected from both your body and your mind. You become disconnected from the importance of the breath. You forget about the challenges that arise when you are practicing. And, you lose sight of why you started teaching yoga in the first place. How can you be a good yoga teacher if you don t even remember why you are teaching in the first place?
Yoga, John Giebler There are many different opinions on whether or not it is better to do a self-practice, or to attend classes. If a self-practice works for you, and you can focus and get all the benefits of yoga through a self-practice, then go for it. However, if you find yourself distracted and only practicing cool poses to post on Instagram (I admit that I often get distracted and just practice handstands) then perhaps a guided class is better for you. Guided classes are also great places to gather inspiration from other teachers to keep your sequences interesting. I try to find a balance between a self-practice at home and to be led by other people. Self-practicing the sequences that I will teach helps me to polish my classes, but it is still very beneficial for me to attend classes so that I can continue to learn and grow from other yoga teachers. Play with both, and choose what works for you. Perhaps it is one or the other, or maybe it s a mixture of both. Just get on your mat. Look at your schedule for the next week, and plan in advance when you are going to practice. If you add your personal yoga practice to your schedule, you are more likely to follow through and do it.
Networking 101: Put Yourself Out There 3Networking. Some people love it, but most people dislike it. If you are part of the latter group, this may be a great time to go back and dig deep into what is holding you back from enjoying networking, because, in the business of yoga, it is essential. Put yourself out there. I can t say this enough. Put yourself out there. Put yourself out there. Put yourself out there. If you don t, no one will know who you are or that you are even a yoga teacher that is interested in teaching. And if you don t put yourself out there, someone else will. I promise you that. Some studio is not out there waiting for you to come along to teach for them. They will find someone else. Begin by putting together a list of all of the yoga studios in your area that you would like to teach at. Make sure that these studios offer classes in the style that you teach. If you teach yin, and that s what you specialize in, you probably don t want to teach at a Bikram or power yoga studio, and vice versa. A yoga studio owner is looking for teachers that can fit the brand of their yoga studio, so do your research. Once you have your list of studios that you would like to teach at, network with the teachers there, meet studio owners and create rapport. Perhaps take a few classes at the studio, and get a feel for the style. Stay after class, show an interest in the studio, and introduce yourself. This is key. You are not networking by simply going to studios. You are networking when a teacher or studio owner knows who you are. You are networking when the decision makers know that you are a teacher interested in their studio. People don t read minds, so they won t know that you are interested in teaching unless you tell them.
Don t hold back because you are new. Tell people that you want to teach and that you are interested in their studio and why. Don t be shy to tell people who you are, what style of yoga you teach, and what makes your classes awesome. This was my biggest mistake when I started teaching. I got back from my YTT and had it in my head that I was going to play it cool and just take teaching opportunities as they came up. The reality is that teaching opportunities rarely simply arise. You need to go in search of these things. I didn t teach very much in the first few months after my teacher training because I was waiting for opportunities. I was sitting on the sidelines, instead of getting in the game. I should have been putting myself out there, networking with yoga studio owners, and telling everyone I knew that I had completed my YTT and wanted to teach. When you begin telling people that you have completed your YTT, you have put a bug in their ear, and they may think of you when they hear of a teaching opportunity or someone who is interested in taking private yoga lessons. That is the beauty of networking - it happens when you least expect it. If I had been assertive when I returned from Bali, I would have gone to every studio in my area and told all of the studio owners that I wanted to teach and that I would be willing to sub any classes that were available. Any studio, gym, or fitness facility that offers a yoga style that is similar to what you teach is somewhere to reach out to. There is obviously a lot of fear involved in putting yourself out there, but in reality, the worst they will say is no, or some form of we re not looking right now, or come and see us when you have a bit more experience. And that s okay. It s better to get turned down than to wonder what could have been. Now that I have begun putting myself out there more and asking for what I want, I regret not doing that when I first returned from YTT. Great things come when you ask for them, so get out of your own way and stop holding yourself back. Get out there, and begin networking. Make a list of 5-10 studios, gyms, and fitness facilities to contact. Check their schedules, and find a time to pay them a visit. If worse comes to worse, pick up the phone and introduce yourself over the phone, BUT if you can help it, visit in person. You will only regret the things you didn t do, not the things you did.
4 The Art of Being Humble 101: Don t Pretend You Know Everything You will teach people who are better at yoga than you are, and you will teach poses that you don t know how to do well. Be confident in your ability to cue them, even if they are hard for you to do. We all have different bodies, and something that is hard for you may be easy for someone else, and vice versa. Yoga is a very broad subject, so don t pretend like you know every pose in the book, or every Sanskrit word. I ve fumbled my Sanskrit words more than once. Yes, it s embarrassing, but it s going to happen, so instead of pretending to be better than you are, just be you. Be humble. Make mistakes. You are only human. One of the coolest things I ve ever witnessed in a yoga class is a yoga teacher who I have incredible admiration for asking her students if they had any requests and when the student said a pose, she said I m not familiar with that one, and the student showed her the pose. She wasn t any lesser of a teacher because of that. In fact, I regard her more highly because she was humble about not knowing everything there is to know about yoga. Yoga is a lifetime practice; we never stop learning about yoga. Be confident in what you do know, and practice compassion for the fact that you will never know everything because you are simply human. Zen Garden, Partrick
5 Asking 101: Asking for Help There will always be people who know more than you do, so don t be afraid to ask these people for help. There is no shame or weakness in admitting that you need advice or help. It doesn t matter how experienced you are, you can and should always ask for help if you need it. Asking for help demonstrates that you are growing and want to learn more. 6 I m going to reiterate it because it s extremely important - don t pretend like you know everything. When you try to look perfect, you close yourself off from learning from your students and other yoga teachers, and you don t become the yoga teacher that you want to be. Be your true self 100% of the time, and always teach from your heart. So, if you are uncertain about something, whether it be teaching a certain pose or the best practices for emailing a client, ask someone who is an expert in that field. Get advice from people who have been there before and who can give you advice based off of their experiences. Make a list of 5 people that you know who you could help you when you need it. These people could be your most trusted friends or family members, experienced yoga teachers or mentors that you genuinely admire, or perhaps a business or life coach. Put the list you've created in a place where you can quickly access it when you are having a rough time, a crisis, a meltdown, or you simply have a question. Zen, Yogendra Joshi
Don t be afraid to open up to people and let them help you. Be open to their thoughts, comments, and suggestions. You may learn a thing or two. Most importantly, if you want something bad enough, don t ever give up. By stepping out of your comfort zone, you are cultivating something amazing, so please, please, please don t give it up. There you have it - the 10 steps to create your successful life as yoga teacher. Now, stop reading and start acting. Best of luck to you, fellow yogi. Namaste. For more information and resources, visit www.mbomyoga.com.
An extremely practical, super condensed, fun guide designed for people who have completed a Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) and have no idea what to do next. This 10- step guide will teach you how to take your YTT certificate and turn it into a successful career. by Amanda Kingsmith Yoga Teacher, Business School Graduate & Host of the M.B.Om Podcast Photo - Judd Weiss.. www.mbomyoga.com