How to Teach Yoga Online (Even If You’re Not Techy)

Transcript

If you want to start teaching yoga online, but you're not sure how to get started, then in this video, I'll talk you through the systems and tech side of things from seven years of experience teaching online. So, to begin with, I found it easiest to start teaching on Zoom because it didn't feel a million miles away from in-person classes because there's still that interaction. You can still see people live and you can let them know if they need to make any alignment changes. You can have a conversation. It's a good place just to dip your toes into teaching online where you're teaching to a laptop instead of a room full of people. I find Zoom really beginner friendly as well because you don't need too much of a technical setup. But first, let's just look at the systems side of it to actually set up the Zoom classes. So, Zoom has a free payment plan, but this comes with restrictions and it's not ideal for classes because you are limited to teaching 40inut sessions. Whereas the paid plan, at least the first tier of the paid plan, is £12.99, I think. And with that, you're no longer limited by time. So, you can run 60-minute classes, etc., maybe even workshops or events. And you can also have up to 100 people to attend that session. So, big bonuses there. It's definitely worth the subscription price. Then once you've got that sorted, you're free to start creating your classes and you can decide the time. You can decide any details that you need to add. And then once you've created that, it will generate a link for you. And this is the link that you can provide to students so that they can access that class. Now, in order for students to book and pay for these sessions, you need to send them somewhere. So, back when I used to teach on Zoom, I had a Squarespace site and I just had a simple page and I used Acuity Scheduling. That was one of the programs inside Squarespace to organize all of these bookings. So, students could pay at the point of booking. They would get a email to confirm that they were on the class and that would send them the links and any other relevant information. And this is a key tip here, follow-up emails to give people a little nudge ahead of time to let them know that the class was coming up because you would not believe how many people book onto a session, they've paid for it, but then they just forget about it and then you get an email a few days later saying, "Oh no, I missed it." So, make sure you send those reminder emails, too. So, when it comes to the tech side of Zoom, you can start off really simply just with a laptop, provided your laptop has a webcam. If not, you'll have to get a webcam to add on. I used to prop my laptop up on a chair and have it at the other side of the room so that I was in frame. And then the only thing you need to consider is projecting your voice across the room. This is why when you want to improve your setup, maybe start adding things in, I would start off with a microphone. I think there's a lot of pressure to get really great video quality, but actually the thing that counts the most in my experience is the audio quality. Because if your cues are clear enough, people won't even need to look at the video. they'll just focus on what they can hear. A brand of microphone that I recommend is the Road Wireless Go. I'm on now, I think, my fourth generation of this microphone as every time they bring out an update, I buy it because I love it. It is quite pricey, but to me, it's worth it and it's the only one I've ever used that I can recommend. So, I can't make any other recommendations because I've not got firsthand experience. If you do get one of these microphones, they can be a little tricky to get your head around in the beginning. So, here's a simple look at how they work. The microphone has three parts. It has two transmitters. These are the microphones that you wear. There's normally two because they're designed to be given to another person, say if you were having a conversation. So, each person could wear a microphone. And then there is a receiver. This receives the audio signal. The receiver would then in this case be plugged into your laptop. And then what you would need to do once the microphone is turned on is ensure that within your laptop settings you have the microphone selected so that it doesn't default to your laptop microphone because that has happened to me many times and then I've gone oh no I went to the effort of buying this microphone and it wasn't even selected. So make sure you do that every time you start a class. Get into the habit of checking where the audio signal is coming from. And just another tip when it comes to wearable mics if you're not used to them. If you have long hair, make sure your hair is out of the way because your hair can brush up against the microphone. Also, with clothing, make sure clothing is out of the way. You want the fabric that you are attaching the microphone to to be fairly thick. Otherwise, if it's flimsy and thin, the microphone might flip around. Especially in yoga, we do so much upside down stuff that this happens quite often. Another thing is placement. I find just here, just underneath my collarbone is about right because it's not too far for my voice to project. You can just talk in your normal voice. And I find I don't end up knocking it or interfering with it in any way. So hopefully that helps. Now, one of the downsides, and I do think it's important to cover this when it comes to Zoom and live classes in general, is that you are limited to that time of day and also that time zone. So it might be that you have an audience in another country. So for me, for example, when I first started on Zoom, I had a big audience in America, but when I wanted to do a class at say 8:00 in the morning in England, people weren't awake. So it was it was always a problem for me and it might be for you too. And this is why I recommend doing pre-recorded classes instead because the beauty of pre-recorded classes is you can film on your own time, edit, etc. in your own time and then upload so that it works for other people to practice on their time. However, with pre-recorded classes, there is a little bit more setup. There's more systems that need to be put in place and the whole production of it is just a little bit more involved. So, let's break this down. For starters, I think let's look at the tech side of it. So, with pre-recorded classes, you can either just start off with something as simple as your phone. Back in the day, I used to use a camera, but now if I compare my phone camera to that Canon that I used to have, this is so much better. So, if you have, you know, a fairly recent or within the the last few years phone, it's probably going to do. Now, when it comes to audio, it's exactly the same. However, if you're working with your phone, you would just plug it into your phone or you could plug it into your camera. One thing to note, if you are working with a camera and a microphone, you'll need to go into your camera's settings to adjust so that you're getting the most out of your microphone. For many years, I used to have everything set on auto because it was easiest. And that is also a great place to start. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if you want to get the most out of your gear, it's worth checking out a couple of tutorials on YouTube, maybe just to understand how these pieces of kit work. But as a general rule of thumb that I found really helps, I work with a Canon. So I go into the audio settings and I switch from auto to manual so I have more control. So what I do is I adjust this meter right down towards this section. I'm not the most technical person. I will say you might think that I am because I'm talking about cameras and things like this, but I don't know the theory behind why this is. But my way of understanding is that when you set the camera to auto, it's picking up all of the audio. It doesn't know what you want to pick out. Whereas, if you set it to manual and you bring this little notch down, it's going to record really quiet. So, your voice will sound quiet coming out of the camera. But what that also means is the background noise, any other noise that you want to cut out won't get recorded as loudly as your voices. So that's just a simplified way that I hope makes sense. When it comes to filming, if you are working with a camera, I would not rely on autofocus because autofocus will probably track your eyes and it will track your face. But as we know in yoga, our faces turn. So the camera loses that tracking point and as soon as that happens, you'll be blurry and it's so frustrating and disheartening when you go look at a piece of footage and realize half of it is blurry. So get used to working with manual focus. If you work with a phone, the autofocus might be better. That's just my experience from working with cameras. But if you're wanting to get used to manual focus, a key tip here is I set the camera up on a tripod beforehand and then I take something normally my microphone box, put it on my mat, and then I can focus on the writing on the box and I find as soon as I get that really sharp, my focus is set and I'm good to go. So, if you can find anything like that just to help you set focus, that is a really great tip. For more tips on my YouTube production, I have also made a video for this. So, you can check that out. It will either be up here or down in the description somewhere. As for filming that, that's basically it really. One other tip I would say is when you are filming classes, I film with the camera on my right side so that as I'm moving through sequences and I'm leading with the right side, that is the side that people see first so that they get all of the information they need. they see the full demonstration of that posture. Whereas, if the camera is say on your right side, but you're leading with your left leg, people only really see half of the pose. And from feedback that I've got online, people really need that for a sequence to be able to understand what's coming up. So, it's helpful if they get a full picture. So, just consider camera placement. Now, when it comes to editing, this can get super technical, but I think in the beginning, the easiest way to break it down is to focus on enhancing your audio, removing any unnecessary noise or background noise, and then increasing the volume. So, amplifying it a little bit. If you don't do anything else, that is normally a great place to start. And then with the video itself, normally I just adjust the colors, keeping it natural, just enhancing what's already there. and I leave it to that. When I am filming, I do normally take filming notes in case I've made any mistakes, just as I will do when I film these classes. Sometimes there's bits that I might need to uh trim out. That's a great habit to get into just to save yourself trying to remember when you're editing if you've already got it written down. And then besides that, let's just look at a couple of programs that you can use. And I've used all of these at one point. So I started out actually with Premiier Pro that's part of like the Adobe suite that is quite technical but I know Photoshop and Illustrator. So I I kind of understood how to work with Adobe programs. However, at more of a beginner level, I would start with something like Cap Cut. You can guess a free version of it, but I would advise getting the paid version just so that you've got more features, more control. And in that it comes with simple buttons. I think there is a button even just for removing noise. So, you won't even need to go into figuring out how to do that like you would do in Premiere Pro. You can just hit a button and it does it for you. You can tweak the light, the color, etc. really simply and export. And if you start off there, this will get you comfortable with the process of editing and exporting. And then we get into uploading. So, where where is this content going to live? I have focused on YouTube and also I have my program platform and um I've also done filmed workshops before that I have had on Vimeo before on WIA. So these are just a couple of platforms that you can have in your mind that you can use. But the key thing here is to think about where's this content going to live and then start posting it there. That's it. But the most important thing in all of this is that you have some kind of marketing structure in place because it's great to have these pre-recorded classes, but if nobody knows about them, nobody's going to practice them. So, if you are unsure of what your marketing structure should look like as a yoga teacher, then go and watch this video