Full-Time Yoga Teacher Podcast: What Actually Makes a Good Yoga Teacher

Transcript

Welcome back to Fulltime Yoga Teacher Podcast. My name is Reika and I am your host. I'm so excited that you are joining us for the 70th episode of the Fulltime Yoga Teacher podcast. And every 10th episode, I celebrate this podcast by recording a solo episode. So this week you will get a solo episode from me rather than me interviewing other guests which is what I usually do for my podcast. So let's get started on today's topic. So today's topic is all about three pillars to becoming a good yoga teacher. I get asked a lot from my students or yoga teachers in my mentorship group or yoga teachers who are new that how can I become a better teacher what can I do to get better and over the years I have been able to refine my answer because it's hard to categorize I feel like there's so much that goes into becoming a good teacher but I made it into three pillars to become a good yoga to the teacher. So the first pillar is quantity, repetition to build confidence. The second pillar is length plus consistency. Time matters but so does your integrity. And then the third pillar is continuing education. Keep learning and keep evolving. So these are the three pillars that I believe is important to become a good yoga teacher. So let's start with the first pillar which is quantity. So how often are you teaching? How many classes are you teaching? How many hours a week are you spending in yoga? How often are you practicing this skill set to teach yoga? So you probably heard of a saying that says you need to put in 10,000 hours to get good at something, get become skillful at something. So that same concept applies in teaching. You just have to teach many, many, many classes and you just have to teach so many classes to get good at it. And that's just how it is in any skill set. If you want to get good at shooting a basketball and let's say shooting a free throws, you just have to shoot so many free throws that your body just remembers, the muscle remembers how to do it and you can almost shoot it with your eyes closed and you can still make it. So to get to that point, you just have to shoot so many free throws. And same thing applies in teaching yoga. You just have to teach a lot to get good at it. And when I first started teaching yoga as a brand new yoga teacher, I started teaching a lot. I quickly accumulated almost close to 30 classes per week that I was teaching. And I just taught a lot. I taught like crazy. I said yes to so many opportunities and subbing requests, just as much as I could. And you know I was in the phase of my life that I could say yes to so many things and I had time in my life to dedicate to just teach as many classes as possible. So I know not I know that not everyone are in that phase of life. Maybe you have other full-time job or you have family you're taking care of. uh as much as you can you can in your life circumstances teach teach as many classes as you can. Only way to get good at it is to teach as many times as possible. And it's inevitable that you're going to make mistakes. You're going to trip over words. You might say the wrong thing. Maybe you make mistakes. You forget to do the left side. You forget to pose here and there. That's just inevitable. And we just have to go through that mistakes and awkward growing phases as a newbie yoga teachers to come out of it on other side feeling more confident. It's going to feel very scary and you're going to get nervous in the beginning. That's just that's part of the process. You just have to go through that awkward time. You just have to make a lot of mistakes and just teach a lot so that you start to feel confident. It starts to feel easier. it starts to feel like second nature to teach and cue and sequence. And don't wait till you are ready. If you wait till you're ready, you're never you're never going to teach because you're never going to feel 100% ready. You just have to get out there with imperfect self and start practicing. I mean, I'm still not 100% ready or perfect at teaching, but I just have to go out and do it. You know, I'm a human. I'm I'm going to make mistakes and I feel okay if I make mistake. It's not the end of the world. Um and just have to keep practicing and more you teach, more you practice, more hours you put in, more confident that you are going to become. Here are some tips for new teachers to start teaching a lot. I highly recommend looking outside of yoga studios for teaching opportunities, especially in the beginning. I mean, I think it's great if you can get a teaching job at a studio right away, but don't only work at yoga studios. I taught at so many places that's not yoga studio in the beginning of my teaching career, and I still do to this day. And I love it. I love teaching at non yoga studio because first of all I be I became a better teacher because I taught at non- yoga studio places like gyms or senior centers community centers spin studio cafe at the park at the beach stroke center woman's shelter high school corporate yoga private yoga I taught us so many unconventional space and I got to teach to so many people who were new to yoga or maybe who couldn't do down dog, who couldn't reach the arms overhead or maybe who couldn't step forward from down dog. And those are the situations that made me grow so much. And those students taught me so much to become a better teacher for students who are new to yoga or never done yoga before or teaching at spaces that didn't have any yoga props. teaching us spaces that didn't have this beautiful cozy yoga vibe or teaching us spaces that didn't have typical yoga studio amenities that you're used to made me develop a skill to adapt and get creative with what I have in the place that I'm teaching. And I think that's such a useful and important skill set because you're not going to always have the perfect space to teach yoga. And how can you still bring the essence of yoga and teach a good class and give people good experience even if you're teaching an environment maybe that's not really like yoga studio which is real life outside you know. I also taught donation based or free classes on the beach and park in the beginning. I start teaching to friends and family in the beginning. So those are great places to start. And one more thing, when you teach outside of yoga studio, there's this um less pressure and maybe expectations to have to teach a very certain way. Usually in my experience when I taught a non-yoga studio setting, the students are so kind and appreciative and they're so happy that you're there to teach yoga. And there's less sense of I have to teach a specific way to make my students happy. There's less of that at a non-yoga studio setting. The pressure is low and people are so appreciative. And sometime at his yoga studio there's this um set of expectations or slightly demanding students or drama bureaucracy that exists in yoga studio and I really love teaching at non yoga studio space where there's none of that. Okay, let's move on to the second pillar and second pillar is length. How long have you been teaching? First one was like how often how many classes are you teaching? how often are you doing it? And then the second one is how long have you been doing it. So how long you've been teaching it is also another important pillar to become a good yoga teacher because it means you have longer experience. But there's a huge difference between somebody who's been teaching yoga for let's say one year but taught once a month versus another teacher who taught yoga for one year but taught 10 classes a week. So still there's going to be a huge gap depending on the first pillar which was a quantity but the length also matters too. So longer you've been teaching you are going to gain more wisdom. You are going to gain more experience in teaching. You have navigated certain situations. You have experiencing seeing students body. You have overcome some challenges and you kind of know how to act or behave or teach and be able to adapt in different situation because you have because you have gained this wisdom from these experiences of past month or years or decades that you've been teaching. For example, I know a teacher who been who got the certification 10 years ago, but only taught sporadically, but she had certifications for 10 years versus somebody who got certified two years ago, but is teaching full-time. So, maybe teaching 15 classes a week for the last two years. So, you have to kind of consider those quantity as well as the length, how long you've been teaching. They're both important. And one more thing that I want to add about the length, how long you've been teaching, is the piece of consistency. How important it is as a yoga teacher to be consistent. Commit to a once a week class and try to be there every single week, same time, or staying at the same location for more than a year. Having a same time slot that you teach that class for more than a couple months, maybe more than a year, two, three years, and gain the trust from your students, your community, your studio owners, managers that you are the type of teacher who once you commit, you show up every week at the same time. And you start to gain trust from your students, your community, your network, your bosses. And not only in teaching, I think consistency is key in your business as well. Like for example, I I'm a yoga teacher, but I also have my own online yoga studio. I do my mentorship program. I have my own small business. And it's so important for me to be consistent, keep showing up, keep offering my offerings, keep writing my newsletters, or keep showing up to teach my online classes at this time, this day, every single week, so that people can trust that I'm not going anywhere. I'm not flaky. I'm not inconsistent. They can trust that I will be here when I say I will be here. That consistency is huge in yoga world. If you're not consistent in the class that you're teaching and you're constantly getting subs, then your classes will never grow because your students can't really trust that you are going to be there every week. And not only as a yoga teacher or business owner, I just I really value consistency as a character and human being and I want to be a consistent p person. I want people in my life to see me as somebody that they can rely on that if I said I'll be there, I'll be there unless a huge emergency happens. So consistency is huge in teaching. And I think this goes in the same category of how long have you been teaching. I've been in the yoga world long enough to know that there's a lot of flaky yoga teachers in the yoga world. I've been on the side of hiring and managing and organizing people and yoga teachers and I just know there's a lot of flaky or inconsistent people not only in the yoga world. I'm sure they exist in every industry, but they're out there. Now that I'm on the side of hiring or recommending or referring certain teachers to some of the job opportunities or network that I may have, I'm always going to recommend people that I think are committed and consistent and dedicated. So, it's so important to practice that character of consistency because you just have no idea who is watching you and who may recommend you to another job, who may recommend you to amazing teaching opportunities in the future. So, if you are known as somebody who's consistent, who will be there, who's committed, people are going to recommend you to amazing opportunities. But if you are known to be flaky, who doesn't show up or who cancel last minute, people are less likely want to hire you or recommend you, refer you. Networking, not in this weird savvy way, but networking in a way that is natural in the yoga world is important because a lot of amazing job opportunities come from referral and somebody recommended you to someone else. So that kind of stuff happens all the time in the yoga world. So if you are not consistent, if you're not committed, if you're not reliable, most likely you're not going to get those kind of recommendations from somebody else. So I think consistency is the key. Commitment, dedication, just be there when you say you're going to be there. Don't be flaky. Those are such important qualities as a yoga teacher. And the last pillar is continuing education. Never stop learning. Yoga teachers are student first and student always forever. We are a practitioner and student of yoga before we are yoga teacher. So it's so important for us to continue learning. All of the teachers that I look up to and respect, they never stopped learning. They also have their teachers and mentors that they go to. And I think it's so important as yoga teachers to never stop learning. And I can feel when teachers have become stagnant. They have not invested in learning so much anymore. I can tell in their the way they teach, in the way they cue, in the way they sequence, the way they carry themselves. If you continue to learn, you're continuing to evolve. You're continuing to get new ideas and creativity in your teaching because you're continuing to learn new things and there's new information coming out all the time about, you know, psychology and anatomy and biomechanics and it's almost we're doing disservice to ourselves and our students if we're not keeping up to date to this new information that's coming out. how we cue I think is one of the very important things that we need to keep reflecting. Is this a still accurate cue or is this am I saying this because I've been saying this over and over or am I saying this because I believe in what I'm saying and if you want to listen more about the queueing stuff Karen and I did a three-part series on debunking some cues that we used to say. So those kind of things we want to keep oursel up to date and physical therapists and doctors and even therapists out there they have to continue educating themselves. There's like a requirement of how many hours they have to spend each year on continue education to stay up to date on their license and I'm sure yoga alliance has a certain numbers of hours requirement as well but I think it's important for yoga teachers to also continue learning and it doesn't have to be always in a yoga field. Maybe you are learning about functional movement. Maybe you're learning about weightlifting. Or maybe you're learning new dance or martial art. Or maybe you're learning about, you know, Buddhism philosophy. So you could be branching out to another field. And that could also still bring ideas and innovations and inspirations in your yoga teaching. So it doesn't have to be just in yoga continuing education. Although yoga contin education I think is important and I think continuing to educate yourself and spend time financial investment and our attention into continue education courses, classes, trainings also shows that you are serious about teaching yoga that you take it seriously that you are willing to invest your time, money and attention into learning something new or new topic, new subject you're bettering yourself as a yoga teacher or as a you know human being as a as a whole. But it kind of shows that commitment and investment you have into teaching to become a better teacher but also like better practitioner yoga practitioner not only a yoga teacher. Amount of financial investment you can do or time that you do have in your life to invest is going to be different depending on different phases of your life you're in. So I'm not saying everybody needs to dedic you know put in thousands of dollars into education every year. That is going to def defer depending on your situations and different phase of the life you're in. But I think everyone to some level can still continue to invest in continue education in amount and length and uh find that is right for you. And there's so much scholarship out there that you can, you know, always ask for a discount. If you really want to take this training but don't have enough funds to do so, there's usually always opportunity to ask for scholarship. So I always encourage teacher to do that if you don't have the money to do it. And what I think is important about continue education is it it shapes you as a teacher. Start to define your specialty, your passion, your own unique voice, your own unique style of teaching and your own um niche almost because in continuing education you can start learning about um the subject that you feel like you don't have enough about. Like for me it was anatomy. I really wanted to learn more about anatomy. I feel like I didn't know enough. So I started taking a lot of anatomy related continue education. And then you can also start following your passion. You can start taking continuing education in a topic that really interests you that kind of like sparked your interest. And over the years after you accumulate these training that you felt like you needed because you were lacking this knowledge or because this like really sparked your interest then you start accumulating this training that makes you unique teacher as you are today because of the special training you have taken. For example, for me, in the beginning, I took a lot of anatomy because I felt like 200 hour anatomy wasn't enough, which is the case for most 200 hour, which is fine. Like we just don't have enough time to learn about everything we want to learn about in terms of anatomy in 200 hours. So, I kept taking more anatomy stuff. And then I started taking trauma-informed yoga, accessible yoga, because I knew I wanted to bring yoga to non- typical yoga spaces that I believed would benefit so much from yoga. But as you know maybe people who couldn't afford to go to yoga studio or people who didn't feel welcome to go into yoga studio or people who felt like yoga really wasn't for them. I wanted to bring yoga to those spaces. So accessible yoga, trauma informed yoga and also injury prevention and then restorative yoga because I wanted to learn more about nervous system and how to use props and you know those things kind of made me into the teacher that I am today. Um and I was also interested in women's health and fertility. So I started taking training on that that is in relation with yoga. Also I was super interested in physical therapy work. So I did training where they bridge the gap between physical therapy and yoga injury prevention and rehab and myofascial release and those things all kind of shaped me today as a teacher I am today. I also want to mention smart flow. Smartflow has definitely shaped me as a teacher that I am today with Annie Carpenter. But all of this together like this blend of all of these training is what make me the teacher I am today that is unique and have my own strength, my own voice, my own style of teaching that is different than others. So taking this kind of training that like really interests you and inspire you or you're hungry to learn more about these topics full of that drive and calling to take those kind of trainings so that you become your own unique teacher with your own unique voice your own unique um specialty and knowledge. So I think continue education is huge. But flip side of that sometime as a teacher we feel like we're not ready. So we continue to take trainings because we feel like we're not ready to teach and continue continue to take next training next training next training and you accumulated so many hours of trainings but you're barely teaching. Then there's imbalances. If you just want to learn about yoga I think that's fine. keep taking classes as a student and keep learning more about yoga. But if you want to become a good teacher, you have to utilize what you learn out there in the field. So you still have to teach. You the first pillar of teaching a lot still applies here. You can't just do training training training and not teach. Unless you just you know you're doing it for yourself. You just want to learn this knowledge then completely fine. But if you want to become a good teacher then continue education by itself is not going to do the work. like you have to continue educating yourself but also have to keep teaching it to become a good teacher. You can't just do the education. And little tip here is how to choose a continuing education. I kind of touched on it but choose the one that you feel like you need more knowledge on like something that you feel you don't feel comfortable. For example, for me was anatomy. I wanted to learn more. I didn't feel confident in my anatomy skills or knowledge. And then choose the one that really like lights you up or that interests you that like I want to learn more about this. And for some people it's like prenatal yoga. For some people it's kids yoga. For some people maybe it's subtle body like chakras and nadis and values. And for some people it's more like yoga nidra and meditation or yin or restorative or maybe more handstand and arm balancing. So what is it that really like excites you for yourself and when you teach it and then follow that? But also choosing a teacher that is qualified um that you like and rather than signing up blindly to another training with teachers you have no idea about, I would do some research on the teachers. Maybe look up their bio, maybe they have a YouTube videos of themsel teaching somewhere or look up reviews. go to their website and get the feel of who they are because sometime that person could have the knowledge that you want in terms of like what they're teaching let's say anatomy like oh this person have so much qualification anatomy I want to learn from this person but sometime the way they teach may not resonate with you maybe the way they teach is not practical for you or it just doesn't fit your learning style or maybe they're just kind of like going over the head and you need to kind of you need more baseline somebody who can break it down and make it more applicable. So sometimes the teaching style is um is something to think about not only the subject they're teaching the energy the teacher have maybe like you just don't vibe well with that teacher's energy. So that is also important not only the qualification or the topic they're teaching. Do you like this teacher? Do you want to learn more from this teacher? Do you like this teacher's vibe and energy and teaching style? Um I think that's also important as well. So try to do some research also like referral ask friends and other colleagues who have taken training or classes from this teacher and ask like hey what do you think of this teacher? Do you like this teacher or do you like their teaching style? You know you can ask from somebody else who have taken the training or classes from this teacher or online research. See if you can find videos of them teaching. Go check their website out. Read their bio. Go, you know, read their website and you might be able to get more of a feel of who they are as a teacher as well. So these are my three pillars that I think is very important for you to grow and become a good yoga teacher. So number one was quantity, number two was consistency and how long you've been teaching and number three is continuing education. I think these three things are important, equally important to keep growing as a yoga teacher and I hope this information support you in your teaching journey. If you really enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review or stars or or anything you can do on whatever platform you're listening to. That would be super helpful. But most importantly, please share this podcast episode with your friends or your yoga teacher or anyone you think would benefit. And you can always reach out to me and ask me questions through Instagram at Reika Yoga or my website www.raikayoga.com. And I'll put the link on the show notes for that. So, I hope you have a great rest of your day and speak to you next