When I first started my yoga teaching career, I began teaching on the beach in Florida. I was fresh out of my teacher training, and moved to Florida for a short time, so to get practice teaching, I offered free yoga classes every Saturday and Sunday. I would spend the entire week leading up to those classes planning, complete with little stick figure drawings on colored index cards. I learned a lot from those classes.
If you build it, they might not come...at first.
My free yoga classes weren’t a hit right off the bat. I advertised on MeetUp.com, which used to be free but now charges you. No one came. Then one person came. Then three people came. Then two people, and it would go up and down like that until by the end of the summer, I had a good twenty or so people on the beach practicing.
Expect the Unexpected.
Teaching on the beach gave me my first taste with dealing with unruly people. I remember one day we had a drunk guy saunter up to our class and just stand there staring at us. No one really knew what to say or do, so I kept teaching, and finally after a few minutes, when he didn’t leave, I asked if he wanted to join us or if he was going to keep walking. He kept walking.
Towards the end of that summer, I started to get a bit more comfortable, so I started filming myself and teaching yoga on YouTube. I uploaded a video per week. That, too, was a learning curve.
Making Mistakes While Teaching Yoga
If I made a sequencing mistake, I would stop, erase, and start all over again. Sooner or later, my mistakes became fewer (but they’re still there, even today, I’m human!), and I also got more confident in my teaching personality, so that when I made a mistake, I’d just acknowledge it and move on. If I made a cuing mistake, like if I said right when I meant left, I just kept it moving. That has been one of the most valuable lessons for me because it keeps the rhythm of the class going, and I don’t get too tripped up or flustered anymore, regardless of whether I’m teaching in person or filming.
While I continued to teach online, life brought me back to Germany, where I started teaching at a few different fitness clubs. Yoga in Germany, at that time, was very slow, hatha style. There was no vinyasa, and definitely no vinyasa with chill hop music like I was bringing. I grew a following very quickly. While I was becoming more confident in my teaching, the curve ball here was that not everyone spoke English and my German is like that of a three year old’s. The lessons continued.
Learning to Laugh at Yourself While Teaching Yoga
I am a silly person by nature, but I am also a perfectionist, which is a weird mix, but here I am. When it came to yoga, I was pretty serious about it. However, when it came to teaching yoga in Germany, I had two choices: keep it serious and learn German perfectly, or try my best with the German language, but also keep it light and entertaining. I chose the latter. I’ll never forget one time, I wanted to say, “Spread your toes” in German, but instead of, “Spreize ohre Zehen,” I said, “Spritz ohra Zehen” which means, Splash your toes. They were laughing their faces off, to the point that I had to stop class, and it was great. In that moment, I realized this is what it’s all about. See, for a long time I felt like yoga had to be this experience I created with my magical yoga teacher wand, but I realized the magic comes when you’re just yourself, when you don’t take yourself too seriously, when you laugh at yourself, and show your humanity. That’s when the connection happens between you and your students, you and yourself, you and the mat. Yoga means union, and you find it by letting go of trying to be anyone other than who you are.
Realize That You Aren’t Going to be Everyone’s Cup of Tea
I continued to post weekly videos on my YouTube channel, and as I gained more and more of a following, I got more and more comments. Some of them, as you might expect, were not so nice. I have been called everything under the sun, and over the years my skin has thickened, but some things still sting - I’m only human. One of the lessons in being in the online space was understanding that not everyone is going to like you. And that’s ok. It truly is, because they’ll surely find a different yoga teacher who is a better fit for their vibe.
Listen to Your Members
I continued on my path, doing my thing, and eventually settled in Connecticut, where I opened my first brick and mortar space, Namaslay® Studios. Opening your own space is totally different than working in the online world. The biggest lesson I’d learned in the six months we were open before we were mandated to close due to COVID-19 was to listen to your members. I originally thought 9am classes would be popular because the town we’re in has a lot of stay at home moms. I figured they’d drop their kids off in the morning at school and then come to class, but no one was coming. Finally, a mom mentioned to me that the schools start pretty late here, and that the earliest class that would work for moms would be 9:30am. I moved the class time, and more and more people started coming to the studio. My mind was blown even though in hindsight it’s so obvious - listen to your members! Ask them what their schedules are like. Ask them what works best for them - because after all, you’re offering a service for them.
Learning How to Market Your Live Yoga Classes
But then COVID-19 hit. Our doors closed, and I had to figure out what to do next. Live classes seemed to be the next step for us. I’d literally avoided Zoom for years. I don’t even know why - I think I just had too much on my plate at any given time to try to make it work, but all of the sudden, I needed to figure out how to use it, and how to offer my members online classes. The learning curve for the platform itself wasn’t too hard, but the biggest lessons I learned was on the marketing side of things. For me, I find that it works best when I send out a newsletter the day before or the day of, and when I share on Instagram the day before. You also, obviously, want to think about the times that will work best now that most people are working from home. Instead of our regular 6pm classes that we had at the studio, we had requests for those classes to be moved up to 4:30pm because by that time, after a long day of sitting at their kitchen tables, people were ready to move. I learned so many lessons through navigating the online space in light of quarantine guidelines, that I created Namaslay® Business of Yoga 2.0, where I teach people how to design, market, and host live yoga classes.
Welcome a Chapter of Change as a Yoga Teacher
With each chapter of change and challenge in my yoga teaching career, I feel a huge sense of gratitude. Each chapter of change is uncomfortable. That’s just a given. Sometimes it’s exciting, but there are always, without fail, challenges. I always, without fail, make mistakes. I always, without fail, learn something. I always, without fail, question why I’m doing it when it makes me so (momentarily) miserable. I always, without fail, wind up feeling thankful for those challenges because they mold me into a better version of myself, so I can better serve others. And for me, that’s the purpose of my life. Continual growth, development and connection with others. I know this is a really trying time for so many small business owners, but I urge you to get out of your comfort zone, be creative, let the lessons come, and allow yourself to grow. And if you need help, I’m here.