10 years of teaching yoga: 10 things i’ve learned

10 years of teaching yoga: 10 things i’ve learned

The picture above was taken just a few weeks ago—I was asked to teach a free yoga class for a local nonprofit, serving youth from under-resourced communities alongside their dedicated mentors. Despite having already taught hundreds of yoga classes and having racked up close to 1,000 hours of teaching, THIS class stood out as one of my favorites.

But the yoga teaching version of me that was fresh out of her training 10 years ago would have cringed at a class like this. Nineteen-year-old Loretta would have been greatly disappointed at how small the class was, how unexperienced the students were, and how simple the sequencing was. This version of Loretta would have likely turned down the invitation to teach—especially once she learned that there was no monetary compensation. If she could look ahead to the future, she would have been shocked to learn that after 10 years of teaching yoga, this was “all” she was doing. “Where’s the big stage and the hundreds of people?” she would have asked.

So yeah, my definition of “successful yoga teacher” was pretty twisted back in the day. However, I’m holding space for that version of me, and also celebrating all that I’ve learned as someone who has held the title of yoga teacher for a decade now. Whether you’re a new or seasoned teacher, a dedicated practitioner who wants to get in the mind of a teacher, or someone who is intrigued by the wonderful (and sometimes wacky) world of yoga, you may learn something from the 10 things I’ve learned after 10 years of teaching yoga:

1.     Stop Teaching

Yeah, you read that correctly. One of the most important things I’ve done as a yoga teacher was taking time away from teaching. I hit the ground running as a yoga teacher at the age of 19 and proceeded to teach full time (4+ classes a week) for seven years. I only took short breaks for vacation, or the occasional extended break to recover from an injury… sometimes yoga related. The thing that finally forced me to stop teaching was a drastic life change—moving across the country. I became a regular student at a local San Diego studio and intended to inquire about teaching opportunities within a few months. But those few months quickly turned into many months, and before I knew it, I had taken 3 consecutive years off from teaching. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done for my career and for my practice. It put me back in the seat of the student--and the best teachers are students first, and students always. 

2.     One Person is Still a Class

Nineteen-year-old Loretta would be furious if she walked into class to see one measly person patiently waiting on their mat. The negative self-talk would start up: “I’m a terrible yoga teacher. The studio doesn’t market my classes well. Students don’t like me here.” That damn, self-centered ego had me thinking that a normal fluctuating class attendance had anything to do with me! Even worse, I believed that a class with one person wasn’t worth my time. It is absolutely worth your time, because that one person is still a person who showed up for class, themselves, and for guidance. One person is still a class. 

3.     Teach Outside of Studios

Here’s the thing about yoga studios: they’re false simulations of the real world. They have the perfect set up—mood lighting, ambient music, relaxing essential oils, beautiful murals on every wall, and heated rooms with just the right amount of humidity. Yoga studios are Zen AF, and make finding balance, focus, and a sense of peace pretty easy. But real life isn’t always Zen, and real life is when we need to tap into our inner peace the most—when we’re overwhelmed at work or when our kids are screaming or when we’re managing our crippling anxiety in public. As a yoga teacher, I challenge you to go teach in places that aren’t so peaceful, like a noisy park in an urban neighborhood or in a classroom full of 8 year olds.

Also, yoga studios aren’t all that inclusive. They can be hard to access for under-represented populations who face real and perceived barriers to practicing (e.g. people who cannot afford a $25 class, just to be in a room where the majority of the people don’t look like them). Balance your teaching schedule with some community-based classes.

4.     Volunteer Teach (Karma Yoga)

And often times when you commit to teaching community-based yoga, you should expect to do it for free. This is what we call karma yoga. No, not the “what goes around, come around” BS… but the idea that we must all be on paths of unselfish action. One of my yoga teachers said to me that if you have the time and privilege to take multiple yoga classes during the week, then you must dedicate some of that time to teaching a free yoga class for people in need. There are plenty of organizations that offer a platform to do this work for a wide variety of populations. When I first started teaching, the idea of offering yoga inside hospitals or prisons was super taboo. Now its surely becoming the norm, and I urge you to connect with a population that could use your support.

5.     Keep Training

However, if you’re going to dive into the world of adaptive, community-based yoga, then make sure you’re properly trained. Many of the communities that face barriers to yoga studios may also be living with a great deal of trauma—both physical and emotional. Its crucial that you pursue the right training to work with children, people with disabilities, system-involved individuals, or people with severe injuries or disease. Even if you’re not thinking of teaching yoga for specialized populations, its important to keep up with trauma-informed and adaptive yoga training in the event that someone with trauma or disease comes to your ‘general population’ studio class (which is likely). Good yoga teachers know how to pivot and change up their sequencing once they see who is in the room. Good yoga teachers are mindful of the phrases they use, and how they may be offensive to certain populations (e.g., interlace your hands behind your low back, like you’re being put into handcuffs…. 🥴), as well as how they interact with students from all backgrounds and cultures.

6.     Practice Differently to Practice Consistently

It was always hard to justify being a good yoga teacher if you’re not keeping up with your own practice. Practice what you preach, babe. Keeping a consistent practice has always done my teaching so much good. That said—the key for me to practice consistently is to occasionally switch up the way I practice. There were times where I practiced a vigorous style of yoga 4-5 times a week, 90-minutes a day, starting at 6:00am. There were other times where I practiced a gentle style of yoga, 1-2 times a week, 15-minutes a day, right before bed. How do I know when its time to practice differently? Either when my I start to feel burnt out (or injured) from a practice, or if I find myself making every excuse to skip my practice.

7.     Be Inspired, but Never Intimidated

There’s over half a million yoga teachers in America, teaching dozens of different styles of yoga. Some teachers play music. Some teachers wear all white. Some teachers speak strictly in Sanskrit. Some teachers sing and integrate mantra into their classes. I empower you to take yoga classes with all different types of teachers and allow yourself to be deeply inspired by the different offerings that you receive in each class. However, be careful to not allow yourself to become intimated, and/or feel obligated to change the way you teach just because that one teacher did this cool thing in class or played this type of music and she’s sooooo popular, so maybe its time for you to be more like her 🙄🙄🙄. Nah uh. I made this mistake several times in my teaching, and let me tell you, my students smelled that inauthenticity, even under a thick layer of sage. Be you, always. That’s what makes you a good yoga teacher.

8.     Honor Student-Teacher Boundaries

As a yoga teacher, people expect you to be their guide. They trust you to lead them in and out of poses safely—especially since so many yoga poses can be vulnerable (wide open hips anyone?), or even dangerous, if not executed correctly. Yoga can tap deeply into people’s somatic bodies, unlocking tough emotions when they least expect it. As a yoga teacher, you have to be mindful of how to hold that space, and know your own boundaries around not being able to hold that space. If and when a student comes to you with an issue that may need some professional or clinical support, unless you exist in another role that can meet that need, then you have to gracefully guide that student to seek help elsewhere.

Honoring student boundaries also means identifying your own feelings towards certain students. Here’s an example that I’m guilty of: a rather attractive student enters your class and you decide that you’ll give this person some extra, intimate hands on adjustments. Or this: you hook up with one of your students, word gets out, things go south, and now the studio isn’t a safe space for either of you. I know too many students (and teachers) who have fled yoga studio after a yoga-hook up gone wrong. Practice discernment with your student relationships.

9.     Practice Discernment

And honestly, just practice discernment with every yoga teaching decision you make. Here a just a few of many of the mistakes I’ve made, and experienced, in the yoga world:

• Playing inappropriate music: One time I literally sat through a savasana in someone else’s class (the most relaxing part of a yoga class) listening to a song about a woman having a miscarriage.

• Teaching for shitty people/places: Check the values of the places you commit to teach at. Ask them how they’ve committed to enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the yoga space. Compare their teacher salaries to other studios in the region.

• Teaching what you don’t know: You don’t know how to safely and properly teach a pose? Well, then don’t teach it. You have only taken 1 restorative yoga class, but want to say yes to an opportunity to teach a restorative class? I would reconsider.

• Taking on too many gigs: Sure, it makes sense on paper—if I teach 15 classes a week at $40 a class, I’ll make my rent no problem! Yes, you’ll make rent right up until your body falls apart. The yoga teaching burnout is REAL.

10.  Respect the Lineage

Western yoga has strayed so far from its original roots. Yoga nowadays has become synonymous with looking good while doing the poses, and it has lost its connections to yogic philosophy and the many other limbs of yoga including practicing truthfulness, moderation, and non-possessiveness. If you’ve gone through a yoga teacher training that just barely touched on (or didn’t even mention) Patanjali’s Sutras or the Bhagavad Gita, then you’ve got some work to do. Learn about the lineage and then call yourself out when you catch yourself misappropriating the linage for your own benefit (e.g., t-shirts and tattoos sporting Hindu deities when you don’t know a thing about them). A friend called me in recently, gently reminding me that its not cool to casually call people “gurus.” I’m grateful for moments like this to ensure that I’m always being a good steward of this beautiful practice.

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