Tips to TEACH ONLINE YOGA from home - right now!

Transcript

are you a yoga teacher who is struggling to start teaching online because you're not even sure where to start you don't have a production agency you don't have a yoga studio you don't even have the space in your home but you have the skills and the knowledge and the desire and passion to teach yoga you just don't quite have the setup in this video i'm giving you a seven part framework to getting you set up as a team of one to start teaching online yoga from the comfort of your own home by the end of this video you will have the information needed to just simply get started and a little bit more confidence in starting your at-home yoga business for virtual yoga for more advice and tips and tricks for yoga teachers to becoming more confident both online and offline make sure you hit the button and also that little bell notification so that you can be the first notified to when i upload new videos if this is your first time watching one of my videos welcome my name is ashley i'm a yoga teacher yoga teacher trainer yoga studio owner all things yoga and i love instilling confidence in little golden nuggets to new yoga teachers to help spread the message of yoga health and wellness throughout the world in today's video we are focusing on teaching yoga from home from the comfort of our own home how can we exactly set that up if you don't own a yoga studio take these tips i'm giving you and implement them so that you can get started and stop procrastinating when starting your virtual yoga business okay now let's get into the seven parts of getting started teaching yoga from home as a virtual yoga teacher number one i want you to think about your equipment what do you currently have that you could use to just get started three main things you need something to capture video if you've got a cell phone then you're good to go you need something to capture your audio again your cell phone is usually fine and you need lighting if you want to upgrade you've got a lot of options there so your video equipment could be your laptop it could be an ipad it could be a fancy dslr camera the best thing you can do is start with what you have and upgrade slowly one piece at a time the first thing that you would want to upgrade is probably your microphone so the audio needs to come out crisp and clear for your viewers and for your students i really like wireless microphones just because you can clip it onto your shirt and just go with it and you don't have to do a voice over and you don't have to attach the video and the audio separately so you could do it all at once by having a wireless microphone i have what's called the rode wireless go i love it i've made a lot of videos on it it was about 200 plus a few dollars for a couple of the cords you can look into that i also have a budget version that i've been recommending called the pixel voikel air which is similar the quality of the voice is the same i don't know about the like the materials themselves they both work just fine and they pick up audio really well so i love a good wireless microphone for cameras i actually use my laptop and i use a camera called the logitech c920 it's an hd webcam i love it even though it does autofocus it gets a little blurry here and there i really like it i don't necessarily recommend it to get started because you don't need it if i actually had a working camera on my phone or if i had an iphone 11 or soon to be iphone 12 i would probably just use that but right now my camera on my phone actually doesn't work so i've been using my computer and it's great if you're looking to upgrade your lighting something like this i've got a couple lights on me right now it is dark out you want to make sure that the light is in front of you so if you have a window step back from it and your camera might be at the window that could be really helpful if you don't want to buy lights you can also grab a bunch of lamps from inside your house and put them in front of you on sides of you and brighten you up or just again work with what you have and do what you can just make sure to avoid being backlit by a window or bright lights behind you have the lights coming from in front of you now let's talk about setting up your actual space you've got a few pieces of equipment you know what you've got to use but where do you set all of these things okay so your camera has to be about eight feet in front of you in order to get the full length of your body and it's going to be at waist height so waist height and about eight feet in front of you if you don't have a full eight feet maybe you'd get started by just doing some seated pose yoga practices so you only need a few more feet and you can bring the camera down a little lower eight feet is going to ensure that you get about a few inches at the top of the head all the way down to your yoga mat or your feet so you want to see all of that if you are not able to see your arms when you reach up that's okay you can talk through that no problem you know hands connect reach up typically when you're in a lunge though you can still see your hands because you're lower to the surface if you try to set your camera up so that you can see yourself when you're on your tippy toes and reaching your hands way up you might actually become very small on the screen and very difficult for someone to see i also recommend lengthwise so a long mat along the horizontal frame of the video especially if you are filming horizontally most people are going to be watching on a computer or even hooking it up to the tv so these videos are still really relevant to the horizontal way the right and left long way some people do like to turn their phones and film in the up and down way so that you don't have to have the camera so far but when you put that to a tv or computer you don't get as much you know as much to fill the screen so i still film in the the wider way with a long mat on the side and then you're seeing a side view of me or of the teacher and i will consistently and constantly look over to the camera and make eye contact because i want to make sure it looks like and feels like i'm talking to my students on the other end of the camera so i'll be looking at that little dot not at the screen at the dot of the camera the webcam or the phone so you're not looking at the screen of the phone but you're looking directly into where that camera is placed and that's eye contact very important we talked about lighting already if you are interested in more of like a light kit or a light setup in my apartment i've got two lights on the sides of me and then i've got some other lights that are actually at my face already so i don't need another one but a three-point light system would be the best because it fills the space so two on the sides looking at you and one in front of you a ring light could also work i think anything that just gives you more light is going to work just fine a ring light is a little bit more harsh and more direct so that would be again one that you'd be straight in front of you in my apartment i went with a very cheap light kit i have two lights actually that were seventy dollars i believe two softbox like lights that i just stick on the side of my apartment and i have these same ones in my yoga studio i have three of them and the set of three costs a hundred dollars so i just wanted to get something to bring in more light it can be any brand i wasn't picky i really just chose the cheapest one with the most stars the only thing about these is that they tend to tip over so you want to put sandbags around them on the base or something because the light bulbs can and will break i've already broken a few and they're not cheap to replace so the light bulbs themselves are about twenty dollars to replace that's something just to consider make sure that you're not tripping over the cords or knocking them over let's get back to your space setting up your space so you've got your mat along the middle typically centered on the frame of your video what you also want to do is make sure your background behind you is a clear space so a blank wall or a almost blank wall like this would work because it's still the same color scheme i could probably have this little screen behind me that's okay but you don't want something like a bookshelf or something really cluttered and messy directly behind you in my videos i have a bookshelf on the side and then a chair on the side and the middle is where i place my mat and it's white on the background with my shades drawn you can see all of that here and i make sure that there's a few feet of space between me and the wall i don't want to be bumped up right to the wall for a couple reasons number one it casts really harsh shadows the closer you are to the wall if you don't have the the fancy light setup and also i don't really like bumping my hands against the wall when i'm reaching or lengthening so it just it makes it a little claustrophobic so you'll want to have a little bit of space for some depth from you to the wall if you have the space that allows for that if not it's okay get up to the wall so you can make sure that you're in the full shot if you have a corner of a room and you can set yourself up long ways on the corner that's also a really great idea so you have that little corner nook space as somewhere where you can reach up and it looks it looks a little bit more um pleasing to the eye now let's talk about the clothes that you're going to wear when you're filming yoga videos keep it simple so for yoga videos and demonstration and just generally when you're teaching fitness classes you will want tighter fitting clothing so that you're not you're able to see and see the demonstrations that you're doing so if you have baggy clothes you're not able to see the full range of motion or the bend in the knee or where your arms are or if your elbows are bent so baggy clothes are a little bit challenging if you're teaching asana and poses and also avoiding black for videos if you wear black at least on the legs at the bottom it's really hard to differentiate which leg is forward and you don't get the shadows because it's completely black so i'd recommend if you're doing neutral do more of a gray tone or a little lighter than a black color just not pitch black it might be slimming but it also hides you and we don't want to be hidden show up as a real person with however you look how your body is and people will appreciate your authenticity and your confidence to show up exactly as you are in a little bit tighter fitting clothing and not black don't try to hide yourself when you're teaching fitness online the third thing you have to consider when you are teaching yoga classes virtually is having a script ready not just a script for your yoga poses and what you're teaching but knowing there is more scripting for your introduction for telling people where to find you to work with you further this is promotion in itself so if someone is watching your video pre-recorded or live make sure you come with that introduction hey everyone my name is ashley today we are doing a dynamic vinyasa power flow this is going to be about 60 minutes you'll need a yoga mat and a set of blocks if you don't have blocks you can grab some random books or just go without it's fine you can learn more about my classes or find me on youtube social media blah blah blah okay let's get started something just like that it should be one minute or less people want to start fast but you still want to tell people who you are what to expect and where they can find more all right so make sure you have an introduction script as for the script for your actual classes for lesson planning i recommend checking out my free guide that i have for yoga class sequencing it applies to both online and offline classes so my free four-part guide or it's actually a 10-step system but a four-part guide to yoga class planning you can find that at ashesyoga.com forward slash guide it just makes it easy for new teachers to build their own sequences in a very simple way i try to break it down so it's not like textbook overwhelming now i want to hear from you make sure that you comment below and let me know do you plan your classes ahead of time do you write them out in a notebook or do you just teach on the fly i would love to hear from you i'm always curious what other yoga teachers do to plan their yoga classes all right step number four in this process to teaching virtual yoga what do you do with that video file what do you do from there you might do video editing or you might just post it out for the world to see so simple video editing let's talk about a couple video editing techniques one thing i almost always do is to trim the edges just give it a little trim so that means bringing in the beginning of class to the point that i'm doing my introduction and bringing in the end of class to the point that i've come up from the final bow reason i do that is just kind of awkward to have like myself shuffling up here and getting ready for class and like hitting the record button and going okay set things up water goes here so i just want to trim it it's like 15 seconds maybe on the ends you can do that in a couple ways i typically just do it on my mac computer you click on the file and there's actually a little button or a option at the bottom in the file folder to trim the video so i click trim and i drag it in i make sure to hold down the yellow bar to drag it in slowly to find the spot where i started you could even have a gesture or something that you do or a clap or something before you get started so you know where to trim it and then i do the same thing at the back end of it i bring it in you can also do this in imovie or window media player any kind of video editing app and if you don't want to work with an app and you're uploading directly to youtube you can also do it in youtube after you upload youtube is not a video editing software but you can do very basic things like trim the edges very simply so you would go to the back end of youtube go to edit the video i don't use that a whole lot and i don't recommend editing in youtube but again if you don't do it right away you can do it after you upload it if you want to make thumbnails or title pages or insert little photos and things like that or graphics or even graphics for advertising your new video or your new class you can do that in a software a web-based software called canva canva.com and inside of that you can very easily become a graphic designer even if you've never done graphic design so they make it really simple you can upload your files or download your files upload them save them now that you have the recording here's step five what do you do with that recorded file maybe you've edited it maybe we've trimmed it maybe you've just left it as it is but what do you do with it here's what you do first back it up on an external hard drive so drag it over to an external hard drive so you have it off of your computer you'll also want to save it on a cloud storage software or a cloud storage system like dropbox or icloud or google drive or amazon's s3 storage so you want to back it up a few places and at least on an external hard drive because videos files can get rather large and they can take up a lot of space on your desktop if you are doing video editing and saving them on your computer i also upload all of my videos to youtube the reason i do this even if i'm never going to publish it is it's another way to back it up so later on if i do lose my files i can go into youtube and download the file that i had uploaded and youtube you have the option to keep it private which means no one but you can see it you can keep it unlisted so anyone with the link or if you embed it someplace can see it only those people or you can make it public which means it's searchable and the world can find it if you want them to and if you promote it each has its own reason for having it public private or unlisted maybe you're not ready to promote it to the world yet or maybe you never want to maybe it's just backup but i always upload to youtube and the sixth step to becoming a virtual yoga teacher is to promote and get paid so if you're doing live stream make sure that you have it set up where people can book the classes ahead of time and do everything automatically and with a system so you don't have to do that back and forth because that can get old real fast so make sure you have a scheduling or booking software i like the software acuity scheduling that's one of my favorites just because it automatically gives a zoom link out people have to pay before they book you can do private lessons group lessons all sorts of things and then you just want to promote on all the social media channels everything put your links to sign up to your business to your website to your youtube channel whatever is most important to you in your descriptions in your about section in your bios in your instagram everywhere so it's really just about shouting to the world hey i'm open for business i'm doing this thing i teach yoga join me and one of the best things you can do is stay consistent upload a video once a week when you're getting started one video a week is enough just getting used to it and then we've got all these other things we have to do right and finally step number seven or the last thing that you want to consider when you are starting a virtual yoga business from home is the legal considerations disclaimer i am not a lawyer i can't offer legal advice but i want you to be in the know of what it takes to be legal to start a business from home teaching virtual yoga first thing is liability insurance make sure that it covers online teaching make sure you have a waiver in your scheduling and booking software make sure that you have disclaimers on all of your videos and on your website and anywhere that you post your videos and even in the video itself you could have a disclaimer on the screen along with the legal considerations also know the music legalities when it comes to group fitness classes it is considered a public performance so you need to be using royalty-free music or music that you're able to share on the internet and public performance without having to pay these hefty hefty fees to these licensing agencies now that i've told you all about getting started teaching yoga online from home now it's your turn so if you are a yoga teacher and you are teaching from home and you've done it already i would love for you to take the link to that video on youtube preferably and link it down below in a comment so i can check it out i want to see your setup what you do how it looks and also just give you a little bit of support on your journey and of course like this video and if you want more tips on teaching yoga from home and the equipment that you need to use check out these other videos