The Professional Yoga Teacher’s Handbook: The Ultimate Guide for Current and Aspiring Instructors

7 Developing Your Class: Planning and Reflection

Whether You’Re A New Teacher getting your feet under you or an experienced one looking to get to the next level, focusing on the fundamentals—what happens in the standard daily yoga class—will make you the best teacher you can be. Just as regular revisiting of your reasons for teaching yoga and your vision for your career will keep you on track, so will regular attention to the tone you are setting in every class and diligent reflection and self-evaluation to ensure you are being the teacher you want to be.

Our project here is to explore how you can make the best use out of the time you have outside the classroom, to perfect and refine your time spent in the classroom. I’ll take you through how best to plan for your class, and give you tips on how best to reflect on your teaching, so that each class is better than the last. We will also cover how to set up for recording live and staged classes.

We’ll start with how you can be a gracious host for your guests—your students—and consider how to set the scene to create the right mood to guide your class into satisfying inner awareness. Along the way, it’s helpful to think of teaching a yoga class as hosting a dinner party.

choose the guests

It’s not a party without guests! If you’re subbing or taking over an existing class, learn who the typical students are. What is their yoga experience? How old are they? Why do they come to yoga? Knowing who the regulars are and where their tastes lie will dictate how you plan your class. When you can, take the class in the weeks before you begin teaching it. Carefully read the class description and begin to think about how you will meet your students’ expectations.

Whether you are creating a new class, adding a new class to the schedule, or creating your own teaching opportunities, put special thought into who your ideal students are. What is their age, level of experience, desire for yoga? Will they want a playful teacher or a serious one? What do they have in common? What is a problem they might have, like high stress, tight hamstrings, or back pain, that yoga can solve? Answering these questions will not only help you prepare the class; it will help you with scheduling and marketing, as we have seen. It may be useful to jot down some notes. Take these notes to your hiring manager and ask if you are on the right track. The better your class can serve your students from day one, the happier and more loyal they will be.

Describe Your Students

Whether you’re taking over an existing class or starting a new one, take some time to think about the students you may meet on the mat. Ask yourself, your hiring manager, or the teacher you’re taking over from:

▸ How old is the typical student?

▸ How much experience does the typical student have?

▸ Why does this student come to yoga?

▸ How can yoga help this student? (This will help you plan your sequence.)

One of our teachers also teaches business classes at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School. There, she told me, she tells her students that customer satisfaction follows this formula: Satisfaction = Perception − Expectations. Satisfaction is a result of what the consumer perceived they received minus what they expected to receive. Satisfaction is positive when your students’ experience is equal to or better than what they thought they would get, and negative when their expectations exceed their reality.

One way to manage expectations is by writing a very clear class description that lets students know what they will experience in the class. At Carolina Yoga Company, each class description also includes ratings of challenge and chill on a scale from 0 to 5. Restorative Yoga then gets a challenge level of 0 and a chill level of 5, while Flow Yoga has a challenge of 3 or 4 and a chill of 2. Flow and Unwind has a challenge of 3 or 4 but a chill of 4, because it ends in a restorative pose. Adding such a scale might help you manage students’ expectations.

plan the menu

The first step in class planning is to unroll your mat with a notebook or laptop handy. Take a moment to get centered, and remember your intention as a yoga teacher. Take another moment to visualize your students and recognize what they need from the practice. These needs and your intention will guide you as you create your class.

Decide where the home base for your warm-up will be: reclining, prone, seated, hands and knees, or standing. Slot in moves to take the spine in every direction: forward and back, left and right, round and round. Find ways to expand and contract this sequence to make it longer and shorter, and note modifications for different bodies and injuries. Write it all down.

For example, here is a classic warm-up sequence that starts from hands and knees:

▸ Cat/cow

▸ Child’s pose with side stretch

▸ Thread-the-needle twist

Your notes might eventually look like:

▸ Cat/cow

▪ Wrist issues: forearms to blocks

▪ Knee pressure: blanket under knees

▪ Full alternative: standing cat/cow

▸ Child’s pose with side stretch

▪ Knee issues: blanket between calves and thighs

▪ Knees closer or wider to suit each body

▪ Option to support forehead on a block

▸ Thread-the-needle twist

▪ Sweeter: palm or elbow to floor, kick L leg to side when twisting to L

▪ Spicier: drop to shoulder, raise arm, half-bind arm, raise leg

▸ Variations

▪ Return to cat/cow between subsequent poses, add a plank or down dog, repeat each move two to five times (can grow from a three-minute sequence to a ten-minute sequence this way)

▪ Try the side stretch and twist from child’s pose, hands and knees, and belly-down positions; let students choose

▪ Interesting to return to these moves later in class, too

Then move on and do the same for standing poses, mat poses, and finishing poses. If you’re not sure what to put in here, you might find inspiration in my book Everyday Yoga.

Next find transitions between each of the sequences you’ve planned. How will students come off the floor for your standing segment of class? How will they get back down to the floor? What are some options to work around common injuries? Write all these down.

At this point, you’ll have a lot of notes. Taking something this long into class would lead you to refer to your notes too often while you teach. Now find a way to condense this—perhaps titles for the sequences will work better, or stick-figure drawings, or whatever shorthand makes sense to you.

If you’ve never eaten a restrictive diet because of allergies, sensitivities, or ethical choice, you’ve never had to think about ways to plan a meal to avoid all the potential hazards and pitfalls—lucky you! Similarly, your greatest strengths as a student can translate into your biggest weaknesses as a teacher. The things that come naturally to you can prove very hard to teach, as you haven’t had to go through the steps of learning them. If you’re flexible, you can have problems understanding how frustrating it is for those who aren’t. If you’re strong, you won’t remember the modifications that help students develop their own strength.

If you find that ease in asana comes quite naturally to you, try doing something else that does challenge you: Take a CrossFit class, sign up for cooking lessons, learn a new sport. This will remind you that some learning curves are steep, and it will keep you compassionate.

This blind spot applies to all your physical gifts from birth—not just flexibility, or strength, but having a thin body, or smaller breasts, or female rather than male genitalia. An ample belly, bigger boobs, or a penis and testicles can make some poses tough to find comfort in. (Many men don’t love eagle pose or cow-face pose!) Cast a caring, sympathetic eye around the room, both when you teach and when you are a student in class, and imagine ways you can modify poses for every body type. Then talk to your students—if not your walk-in students, your friends, your partner, or your private clients—about their comfort in a variety of poses. Better yet, read a book or take a training on how to adapt yoga to different bodies. Jessamyn Stanley’s Every Body Yoga and Kimberly Carson and Carol Krucoff’s Relax into Yoga for Seniors are two great resources.

Beyond the physical privilege you have, recognize the other privileges you bear: These could be privileges of socioeconomic status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or race. You are very lucky to be someone with the free time and the resources to pursue yoga practice and yoga teacher training; many are not. Be open to ways you can make yoga a more inclusive practice for people from every background. Many yoga studios draw a rich, white, thin clientele, and you may land in one of these. Great: You can use the income you earn there to free you up to offer classes in community centers, schools, churches, rape or youth crisis shelters, or wherever your heart draws you. This is the yogic principle of seva, selfless service. To maximize your impact, focus on bringing yoga to the underserved communities—meeting people where they are, at the point of their need—rather than offering free classes at a studio, which will likely never come to the attention of the students you’re targeting.

Develop Plan B

No matter how much careful thought you give to who your students are, one or more will often challenge your ability to adapt on the fly. Think of this as having a dinner guest with a food allergy or an aversion: It’s good to have something in the pantry in case your planned menu doesn’t work.

Once I invited a successful restaurateur and her husband for dinner. Only when they arrived did she mention he was vegetarian! Happily, it was an easy fix not to garnish the gnocchi with prosciutto. While you can’t please all of the people all of the time, especially when you are a new teacher, be sure to keep some back-pocket poses and sequences that will work for virtually anybody. Say you have people in class with wrist, shoulder, knee, and toe injuries. Instead of lots of hands and knees on the floor, for example, you could lead a class that has standing poses but little time coming up from and down to the floor.

Theme It—or Not

Consider whether you would like to add a theme to your class. If so, write it out and consider collecting some quotes, chants, or songs to support your theme. You’ll find a full explanation of weaving a theme into class in my book Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses, cowritten with Alexandra DeSiato. If you naturally and spontaneously find theming easy, please forge ahead! If you don’t, choose one simple lesson for all your classes as you get started teaching. This could be mindful awareness in the present moment or finding the right balance between effort and ease. Each of these is a lovely theme. Bring the theme into all your classes, and your students will benefit. Over time, you’ll grow more comfortable weaving a wide range of inspiration into your classes. Talking about points from yoga philosophy is one approach. One of my favorites is unpacking the concept of samskara as either a groove or a rut. Another easy one is keying to the seasons—you can structure a class for autumn around surrender, with ample tree poses and a lesson about letting go of what you don’t need now. Theming is a lovely way to take students deeper. If you’re a new teacher, you may want to wait to experiment with theming until you have more experience. (The same thing goes for assists; we teach them as part of our advanced studies yoga teacher training, instead of our 200-hour YTT.)

Time It

Now practice your sequence to be sure it’s appropriate for the amount of time allotted for your class. This is a good time to reread the class description and be sure the menu you’ve planned jibes with it. Just as you wouldn’t try out a new dish on guests you’re trying to impress—your partner’s boss, say—you shouldn’t arrive at class unsure about how to cue your sequence or take the poses in it. Practice, practice, practice. Depending on what works best for your nerves and your delivery style, you might practice the entire class in real time, speaking everything aloud, from your intro to your cues, as you move through the sequence or guide a friend or colleague through the practice. Or you might try your sequence as your home practice, without describing what you’re doing out loud. As you go, think of ways you can expand or contract the sequence if the timing proves to be different once you’re teaching it to live students.

Think of this practice as doing your mise en place, a French kitchen term that refers to putting things into place. In a commercial kitchen, each cook sets up their station with the tools, food, and condiments they will need for the shift. This varies from station to station and from kitchen to kitchen, but the process is common to every successful enterprise.

Collate Your Class Plans

Design several classes using whatever format best suits your planning style. Consider:

▸ Who are your students?

▸ What do they need to learn?

▸ Is there a theme to weave in to the class?

▸ Where will the class start: seated, reclining, standing?

▸ What are your planned sequences?

▸ How will you modify these for injury?

Look at the big picture: Is the planned sequence a balanced diet? Do students move forward and back, left and right, round and round? Does the plan skew too much toward standing, or sitting, or reclining? Tweak your plans until they feel organically balanced.

While it may make sense for the first draft of these plans to be written on paper, I suggest finding a software program that works for you—ideally one that’s stored in the cloud. You may be more of a spreadsheet thinker or more of a free-form notes or sketches thinker: Whatever makes sense is great. But having your class plans available in the cloud means you’ll never be without them, and you’ll be able to mix and match easily over time. If you write in a notebook, snap a photo of your plans or scan them, and save those images in the cloud. If you lose your notebook, you won’t lose all your work.

Exactly what your plans look like will depend on what works best for you. You might write the name of each pose, including a few key cues. You might draw your sequence using stick figures. You might simply jot down a few phrases that, in your mind, unspool into full segments of class. Only you know the best way to do this. Be creative and intuitive, and you’ll be fine.

Would you serve your guests something you hadn’t tasted? Probably not, if you want them to have the best experience possible. Before important dinner parties, you might even do a test run or two, so you can smooth out any bumps and feel really confident in your execution of the recipe. Similarly, you shouldn’t lead your students into poses, especially deep stretching or balancing poses, that you haven’t gained your own confidence with yet.

There are exceptions here. I have an aversion to olives, but I don’t hesitate to set out olives as an appetizer. When I do, they go alongside other snack options, like nuts. People can choose them or not. If you are teaching a group of experienced practitioners, it’s OK to give them free rein to express the poses as they like within the context of the group experience. By that I mean they might add an arm bind or some other flourish, while still generally following the outline of the sequence as you are cuing it.

Perhaps a pose was once a regular part of your repertoire but because of an injury you aren’t practicing it these days. (For example, after a total knee replacement, you may never sit in a kneeling position or hero pose again.) It would be fine to lead that pose, with a word or two about why you will not be demonstrating it.

set the table

Once you have your menu planned and your ingredients prepared, it’s time to think about the space where your meal will be served. The choices you make before students arrive to class are some of the most important in setting the tone for their experience. It’s analogous to a hostess choosing decorations and music, creating the ambience with lighting and scents, and preparing the physical space for the dinner party.

If you are teaching online, you may have total control over your set. Depending on where you’re teaching in person, you may or may not be able to control some or all of the contingencies of the classroom. But thinking through the mood you’d like to set beforehand will help you reduce your nerves and create the most welcoming atmosphere for your class.

If You Are Using a Camera

If you are video-recording a class with students in it, think through exactly what this will involve, as far in advance as you can. Consider adding “(Camera)” to the class title and a line to the class description that explains how much of the room is on camera and whether the class is streamed live or available for viewing on demand. This will help manage students’ expectations of the experience.

Most importantly, test and double-test your equipment, which will depend on your camera setup. You’ll want to set your camera on a tripod. Determine where that tripod can go to capture you and, if appropriate, a few students for demonstrations without having a detrimental effect on the experience of the students in the room who do not want to be on camera.

You’ll almost always want to record in landscape mode (horizontal) rather than portrait (vertical)—Instagram video is one possible exception. Shooting in landscape mode allows you to frame your shots best, if you are demonstrating asana.

For live streaming online. You will need a camera and a streaming service. A phone camera, especially for a newer, high-end phone, will offer better quality than the built-in camera on a laptop or tablet. You can stream via many different platforms, from Facebook Live to Vimeo Premium. If the decision is yours, choose one that will let you use the rear-facing camera on your phone (not the front-facing selfie camera, which has generally lower quality). If you want to use your computer to see the students who are watching live, there are various third-party apps that will let you use your phone’s HD camera as a webcam. You can also stream from your phone while joining the meeting from your computer; that way, you can both generate high-quality video and pull the online students into the classroom, if only virtually. When you are live streaming, turning off all other devices on the Wi-Fi network helps ensure your signal is strong. See my service and app recommendations at yogateacherhandbook.com.

For recordings to be played on demand. Record using either your phone’s rear-facing camera (with settings turned to 4K or as high as they will go) or an SLR camera with a large storage capacity. Check the amount of storage available on your phone before you begin. You may use a third-party app, such as MovieBox Pro (on Android) and ProMovie Recorder (on iOS devices), to tweak exposure and focus settings and to see how much recording space is free. Upload your files from the phone or SD card to the cloud as soon as you can.

Once you have tested and finalized where the camera will go, you can make informed decisions about all of the factors described in what follows.

I’ve done lots of different video shoots over the last dozen years—generating hundreds of hours of DVD and streaming video content—including dedicated video shoots with and without students demonstrating, recorded classes for play-on-demand, and live-streaming classes. They are all stressful to teach, especially the last two. Recording an open class with paying students creates a suboptimal experience for everyone, because the teacher is working to serve two groups at once: the students who are there in the room and the ones who are watching live or will be watching later. While such classes can be a stopgap solution to help a studio’s bottom line in periods of social distancing, they are very difficult on the teacher. When the teacher is overly challenged, the quality of the teaching suffers, and the students have a less-than-ideal experience.

Whenever possible, I prefer a scheduled shoot that is not a regular class—and with dedicated camera and sound techs, if you can afford that, or a friend to help with these logistics. If you need students to demonstrate, ask some teacher colleagues or your regulars and have them model in exchange for the class. You’ll produce a better result, and your content will be more helpful for viewers.

Arrival

Arrive early! You can’t be a centered, calm leader for your class if you are squealing in late and frazzled. Aim to arrive at least twenty minutes ahead, or more if you are in an area with frequent traffic slowdowns. Plan for problems: If you did hit unusual traffic, whom would you contact to let them know you are running late? Is their contact info readily available in your phone? What is the protocol for contacting students or, if worse comes to worst, canceling the class if you get trapped in a jam?

If parking is difficult at the studio or gym, where will you look for backup parking options? Having thought through these contingencies will allow you to be calmer should they arise.

When you arrive, take a moment to use the bathroom, wash your hands well, and take at least a few deep breaths to feel grounded. If you have the time and inclination, run through the sequence you plan, either by visualizing it or by physically moving through relevant segments. It’s useful to be warmed up, especially if you are going to demonstrate for your students.

Depending on the studio policy, you may have access to a roster of students who have already signed in to the class. Review it so you can address each of them by name. Similarly, you may be able to scroll back through previous weeks to see who has been coming lately and refresh your memory of their names.

If you are teaching both in real time and on live stream, set up and check your equipment or have an assistant help with this. If you are teaching live stream from a set with no students, log in early. Check that you have fresh or well-charged batteries in your microphone!

As your students arrive, greet them warmly. Angle your body so that you can make eye contact with and smile at each student as they arrive, even if you are involved in a conversation with someone else and can’t speak to them. If you are hosting a live-stream class from set, greet students as they log in. (Generally, you’ll see their names, unless they are using a family member’s account.) Offer a warm welcome, as you would in person. Brief students about the protocols around muting their microphones and whether to have their video displayed—these factors depend on your vision for the class as well as student comfort.

Temperature

When you have the chance to control the temperature, it’s better to err on the side of being too warm than too cool. Students can generally shed a layer if they are hot. But temperatures below 70 degrees can register as too chilly for students. When their bodies perceive that it’s cold, they are less likely to release into stretches. Conversely, a room that is hot can sometimes create a false sense of flexibility—be aware, and use language to keep students from pushing too hard in a warm room.

If your room is warm and your students are sweating, be attuned to the temperature as you settle in to the mat portion of class. As the teacher, you won’t be generating as much heat as your students, nor will you be as still toward the end of class. If you’ve turned on the air-conditioning or fans during the peak of class, turn them off as you coast toward the end. In winter, consider turning the heat up so students will be warm enough in savasana.

If you can control the temperature, let it support what is happening in class. For still practices, and at the start and end of class, it’s useful to have the room be warmer. But be especially aware at the end of class, because if students have sweated and their clothes are damp, they can cool off too quickly. In the active portions of class, cooler air or a fan can help keep students comfortable.

Lighting

Just as it does in a dinner party or a restaurant, lighting plays an important role in setting a mood and making your guests comfortable. While we all have personal preferences, here are some general guidelines for creating the best lighting for class.

If your studio space has natural light, such as sun shining through a window, do not set up directly in front of it or you will be backlit, which means your students will have the sun shining in their eyes. Instead, orient the room so you are well lit and the students won’t have to squint to watch you demonstrate.

It’s nice to teach in a space where the lights are on dimmers. You can adjust as needed to suit the time of day and mood of the section you’re teaching. Turn the lights up gently at the end of class—don’t slam them on all at once. If your lights are not dimmable, be aware of when the students need light to see and when the light is an annoyance pulling them out of inner experience. I’ve handled this issue when traveling to teach by keeping the overhead lights on for the first half of the mat sequence, then turning them off—and sometimes propping open a door for light—for the second half. If you need to do the same, when students turn to one side on the way out of savasana, ask them to cover their eyes with a forearm, then turn the lights on. That way, they’ll still have their eyes closed for several moments, allowing for adjustment.

Sometimes, rooms are lit in regions—front, middle, and back—and it makes sense to keep light on your mat while darkening the students’ mats. You’ll have to see what works best, and don’t be shy about asking your students whether they can see or would like the lights adjusted.

With some foresight, you can work around problems with lighting by bringing your own lights. This could be a string of LED fairy lights—you can get 100 yards for $30 or so online—or a spotlight (even just a desk lamp) to light your mat.

Or enhance the mood with candles. Before you use real candles, check with the management of the space where you’re teaching. They may be forbidden. Either way, consider using LED-lit faux candles. They avoid any risk of fire or wax spills, are odorless and smoke-free, and cast a very sweet light.

For video classes, lighting can make the difference between something mediocre and something really great. If you are teaching meditation, breath work, or other lecture-style and talking-head classes, a small camera-mounted ring light (like you see reality stars use for selfies) will do. For full-body demonstrations, a two- or three-light rig of LED lights on stands will get you a lot of bang for your buck. Set up what videographers call the “key light” just behind the camera at the height of (or just taller than) your head, angled at your face. Natural lighting can work well as a key light, too: Set the camera with its back to the window, and position yourself facing both window and camera. Set up a second light—the fill light—in a corner, shining toward you from the side, to fill in any shadows set by the key light. If you can afford a third light, use it as a fill light from the other side. A photographer’s reflector, a white wall, or even a white sheet can serve this purpose as well. Adding either barn doors to focus the light or soft boxes to diffuse it can customize the lighting to achieve different effects. Some LED lights offer both warm and cool light; be sure to match the ambient natural or electric light in the room, so color tones come out well. Visit yogateacherhandbook.com for a current list of equipment suggestions.

Smells

Some schools of yoga regularly light incense as part of the mood of the space. But students with allergies and breathing problems can find this highly irritating. Try an essential oil diffuser instead, or go without. If you must use incense, tell your students ahead of time, on your website or in your class description, so they can make an educated decision about whether to attend.

Similarly, if you are going to use essential oils on your hands during savasana or other assists, let students know in advance, and give them an easy way to opt out. People often have scent sensitivities or preferences. (I used lemongrass in my mask during a week of cadaver dissection and was immediately transported back to the lab when a teacher pressed on my shoulders with lemongrass oil on her hands!) And some oils aren’t great to have on your face—think peppermint or citrus. Oil from your hands will transfer to students’ clothes and hair, and while they may enjoy the smell of lavender for a moment, that doesn’t mean they want to be trailing it all day.

If you really, really want to use oil for aromatherapy purposes, put the oil on your own upper arm, chest, or shoulders, and let the smell transmit during your assist. That way, students get the experience without any lingering aftereffects. The trick in this is applying the oil to your arm without getting it on your hands! A tissue can help: Apply the oil to the edge of a folded tissue, then dab it on your arm or tuck it under your collar or shoulder strap. Do not push the brand if it is one that you personally distribute; students do not come to class to be upsold, and many studios specifically ban such sales.

Sound

If you are recording video, setting up sound is critical. An external microphone is always superior to the default microphone on your phone or video camera. Students may watch a class with subpar lighting, framing, or video resolution—but if they can’t hear you, they will click away. Depending on the room you’re teaching in and your budget, your choices include:

Bluetooth earbud microphone. These are budget-friendly if you already have a pair, and they are discreet since they fit in your ear. Apple AirPods, Beats Powerbeats, and similar products will capture your voice better than your computer or phone mic. Problems will arise if the fit isn’t good or your movement knocks the earbud loose, so be sure to practice before recording.

Lavalier or headset microphone with wireless transmitter and receiver. This three-piece setup involves a microphone clipped to your lapel (lavalier, sometimes shortened to “lav”) or hooked around your ears (headset), with a wire that runs to a transmitter, typically clipped to the back of your waistband or worn in a belt. The transmitter then delivers the sound signal to a matching receiver, which plugs in to your camera. These are nice for recording in bigger rooms, since the mic is close to your face, reducing echoes. They can also work for amplification within the room (for example, teaching at a bigger venue with many students), if given the proper setup. One drawback to the lavalier mic is that moving your arms, which you’ll often do while demonstrating, can cause your shirt fabric to brush along the microphone, causing distracting noises.

Directional (“shotgun”) microphone mounted to the camera. If you are teaching in a small space or one with carpeting, and your camera will be within around 10 feet (3 m) away from you, a directional or shotgun microphone is a nice choice. It requires no hardware for you to wear, and it delivers good sound, provided you face the camera. You’ll attach it to your camera or tripod with a cold shoe mount (cold means the mount is not electrified, as is a hot shoe mount for a flash attachment).

USB mic for voice over after the fact. If you aren’t teaching students in person in real time, consider recording the demonstration of the practice without talking at all. This eases the burden and lets you concentrate on holding poses and sides for the appropriate length. Then, you can use video editing software to record a voiceover in a quiet room later. If your home office space isn’t quiet, take a USB microphone into your closet and shut the door or build a pillow fort and cover yourself in a quilt. Both of these approximate a quiet, sound-deadened studio. They are also a good choice for recording audio-only content, like guided meditations.

Whatever microphone you are using, be sure that it is set as the chosen microphone on your camera, phone, or computer. Tap it to confirm; the audio signal display on your camera should jump. In any wireless microphone setup, radio and cell signal interference can cause pops and glitches on the audio. Record a few test sessions, and listen carefully. Wireless microphones often allow you to switch to a different frequency if there is interference. Be sure to set your cell phone (and smart watch, if you wear one) to airplane mode. If you are using your phone to transmit via Wi-Fi while you record, you can then turn the Wi-Fi back on, while keeping the cell signal off.

If you are inputting the sound from a microphone to a cell phone, you will need a few adapters to allow the transmission: One is a TRS to TRRS adapter and the second, if you are using a phone without a headphone jack, is a converter of TRRS to whatever input you do have (say, Lightning connector or Micro USB).

The last step to generating good sound is to consider people who will never hear it at all. Closed captions make your video more accessible to people with hearing impairments and those who encounter your content while scrolling online. Many video hosts like YouTube and Facebook automatically (though sometimes inaccurately) generate captions, which you can edit for precision. If you are using other platforms for your video, it’s worth using YouTube Studio or a paid service like 3Play, Amara, Kapwing, or Rev to generate captions for you. Then, you can upload the captions file to your preferred video host.

Visit yogateacherhandbook.com for recommendations on equipment, editing, and captioning services at various price points.

Music

The right music can set a lovely tone for class and boost—or lower—the mood according to what you are going for. But there are several arguments against music. Here are the biggest.

Associations. Students will have an emotional reaction to music. While that can be good, it can also be bad. Consider the student who can’t stand a certain genre, or who hears “their song” with a partner who just dumped them. You’ll never know exactly what emotions your playlist evokes. Even if you’re playing instrumental music, students can have reactions according to their own experiences. I had a playlist that included Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” during savasana, and after class a student walked up and said, “Clair de Lune!” “Yes,” I said, “Beautiful, right?” “Ugh! It was my piano recital piece and I get tense every time I hear it!”

Words. Lyrics can pull students away from inner experience and into the music. And you’ll never realize how many expletives are in a song until you’re playing it in class! If you’re trying to avoid this distraction by playing Sanskrit chants, know that can be off-putting to students who don’t know what the words mean.

Volume. Volume can be very difficult to get right. Depending on the sound system, students near the speaker might get a very different volume than those across the room. Personally, I find nothing more distracting than music played at a low volume. My ears prick up trying to hear it. I’m in the go-loud-or-go-home camp. But some students will have trouble hearing you if the music is too loud.

Surprises. You’ll inevitably mess it up: You’ll forget to put your phone on airplane mode and a call will come in; your carefully curated playlist will be on shuffle and you won’t know how to turn it off; the Wi-Fi will be down or stuttering when you intended to stream your music.

Licensing. Because yoga class can be deemed a public performance, you will need to pay a royalty fee to each of the song licensing outfits, ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, in order to be aboveboard in playing recorded songs in class. And they are relentless in their pursuit of your money! You can work around this by using royalty-free music; using a service like YogiTunes, where a subscription includes performance rights; by having live music played in class, such as classical guitar during savasana; or by skipping music entirely.

Considerations for online classes. All these arguments against using music—licensing included—apply to online classes, with some special complications. If you are teaching a class in real time, it can be hard enough to get the sound levels right on your voice. Adding music further confounds the sound mix. Often, the music comes out as just one or two random notes that viewers notice from time to time. Teachers work around this by curating and sharing playlists they suggest students play during class (“OK, everyone, if you’re using the playlist, start it now!”), which also works around licensing regulations. Going without music is simpler for you, and it allows your students to enjoy the quiet or add their personal favorite soundtrack as they follow along at home.

Of course, there are many good reasons for using music in class.

Sonic buffer. If you are teaching in a gym, you may need music to create a buffer between the serene environment in the studio space and the pop hits and clanking weight plates outside. Some gyms even require you to use music, because students expect it. (If so, they should cover your licensing fees or provide you with the music.)

Set the mood. Especially at the beginning of class, as students are coming in and setting up, music can fill the space and set a relaxing tone. The dinner party analogy still holds here—if it’s a good party, you only notice the music when you arrive or if there’s a lull in conversation. Otherwise, it fades into the background. Consider playing some walk-in music at the start of class, and possibly a short, calming song for the first part of savasana.

Familiarize the foreign. For students who find yoga intimidating, hearing familiar popular music in class can increase their comfort level.

Ultimately, your students won’t notice or care about the music as much as you do. As a former radio DJ, I used to put great effort into my playlists for studio classes. But as I traveled to teach teams on fields and in gyms, I grew used to going without music, and eventually I stopped using it entirely.

One night after class, one of my long-term regular students commented, “You didn’t use music tonight.”

“That’s right,” I replied. “And I haven’t for six months.”

When students are really in the zone—when they are doing yoga—their attention is focused inward, not on the music.

If you do choose to use music, consider mentioning that in the class description or keying to it in the title of your class. Some studios will display a musical note like an asterisk alongside the title of any class using music. I love this: It sets and manages students’ expectations for whether there will be music in class.

One of my students recounted to me her scouting visit to the training facility of a National Football League team that hired her. She scoped out the room where she’d be teaching, assessed the lighting and sound, and discussed goals for her work with the players. At the end of the tour, her client said, “Let’s talk dress code.” “Sure,” she replied, “Shorts and T-shirts are fine—what the players are wearing today will work well.” “No,” said the client, “I mean your dress code.” He walked her into the equipment room, handed her a large T-shirt, and directed, “Wear this. Neutral colors: black, gray, green.” Now in her fourth year of teaching the team, she reports consciously dressing modestly with “basic attire and minimal makeup.”

Dressing professionally in yoga is very different from dressing professionally in virtually any other field. Skintight leggings aren’t just allowed, they are the norm. So is a body-skimming top. Both make your personal practice more comfortable—no one wants a mouth full of material in downward-facing dog—and when you are teaching, they make your alignment clear to your students.

As you choose your clothing for work as a professional yoga teacher, consider the setting. What I’d wear to teach in my own studio—leggings, a tank top, and a top layer or two for warmth—might not be appropriate in other environments. In your day-to-day teaching, be aware of how much you are showing, within the parameters of typical yoga clothing and your own studio culture. While students are looking to you to see how to do a pose, they should not be distracted by extremely low-cut tops or sheer pants.

If you haven’t already reached this conclusion, you’ll soon realize that all yoga pants are sheer under the right (wrong?) circumstances. For your teaching wardrobe, choose the heaviest weight fabric that’s feasible, and check in the mirror under strong lighting that you aren’t showing more than your alignment in a wide-legged forward fold.

Positioning Mats

Early on in your teaching career, you’ll cling to your mat like it’s a life raft. But there’s much to see from every angle of the room, so be on your mat only as much as is needed for you to demonstrate to your students. If you are always in sight, you will remain the focus. Move to the side and your students have to pay attention to their own experience.

It’s common for the teacher to set up a mat—or even to have a platform—at the designated front of the room, and the students arranged in rows with the short side of their mats facing the teacher’s area. This is also an efficient use of space. When you are in charge of how to set up, you’ll need to decide whether to follow this row format, and if you do, which side of the room will be the front. If the room is a narrow rectangle, will you be at the short or the long end of the rectangle? Both of these can make it hard for students to see. Or will students face in to the center of the room, where your mat is set up perpendicular to theirs? In addition to thinking this through, consider the lighting sources in the room.

Also consider the aesthetics of what students are seeing throughout class. Are students looking at you, at a view, or at each other? If the latter, are they familiar to each other, as when you are teaching a team or a corporate class, or are they strangers? My friend Vivian was a high-powered lawyer and, as such, once found herself having yet another stressful day. All day she looked forward to her practice, and she hurried to her Ashtanga Yoga class after work. As is sometimes typical, the class was set up in two rows facing inward toward a central channel. And at the end of this long day, guess who set up across from Vivian: her boss!

Smaller classes and certain formats—like teaching a team or a corporate class at an office, where people know each other—lend themselves to a circle or oval setup. If you do this, be aware that right and left become confusing to people directly across from you. Remind students that you are not mirroring them, or tell them when you are.

Help your students set out their mats in a way that accommodates the needs of the class and your expectation of how full it will be. Be a little bossy up front. Ask students to set their mats close together at the start so that you won’t have to disrupt people once class begins. Like choosing the seating arrangement for your dinner guests for the best connections and conversations to occur, where you put students will affect their experience.

In a crowded room, it’s good to put taller students in the back. Be aware that students with hearing issues need to be closer to you and may not mention this, so don’t be a stickler for bumping tall people to the back of the room.

If you expect a full classroom, it’s to everyone’s benefit for you to control the way the room fills as it’s happening. Decide how many rows there should be, and encourage students to line up in these rows and reasonably close to each other. It may even be helpful to set up some guideline mats, or play the role of sheepdog herding the first few arrivals into the grid you hope to deploy. Some spaces have tape or stickers on the floor to help students align in a tight grid. If there will be a video camera in class, set it up before students enter, and be sure everyone in the shot has signed a model release form.

Expansion is far easier than contraction. If, close to class time, there are empty spaces in the room, then students can move into them. It’s far easier to start tight, then spread out, than for each new arrival to cause a reshifting of mats.

If your studio culture and class format allow for students to enter after class has begun, be sure to leave a few obvious holes near the entry door for latecomers’ mats. This helps minimize the distraction late arrivals can create. One benefit of online registration is that you can see how many students haven’t arrived at the beginning of class, and leave them open spots or even set out mats and props for them.

If teaching a studio class is like hosting a dinner party or running your own restaurant, teaching off-site at a business or private home is like being a caterer. You’ll need to think through how to construct your meal without your usual resources on hand. Consider how you will carry props, whether music is feasible, and, for corporate classes, how you might construct a sequence that can be done in office clothes. It’s smart to pay a scouting visit ahead of time so you’re aware of what the venue offers and what you’ll need to supply. For a fascinating look at how real caterers make do in the most unwelcoming venues, read the wonderful book Hotbox: Inside Catering, the Food World’s Riskiest Business, by Matt and Ted Lee. The brothers evoke a world where the professionals must be present and adapt with flexibility moment to moment—it’s a real form of yoga!

If teaching off-site is like being a caterer, recording asynchronous classes for online use or preparing other online content is like working the craft services snack table on a film set. You take great care to prepare and serve food that will suit your audience. But you don’t usually get to see how they wind up eating it, since it’s being consumed at times that best suit the diners. If you ran craft services, you’d take careful note of what disappears quickly—so you can stock and serve more of that—and what is still untouched at the end of the day. To get the same kind of feedback from your online video viewers, dig in to the statistics. Your video host likely will provide data on views. Even basic hosts like YouTube will give you view counts. More in-depth statistics on how many videos are started, played halfway, or played to completion will be even more useful information. Similarly, if you are posting on social media or a blog, use the insights and statistics available to determine what content is being accessed most often. This will steer you toward what to create next.

Building a Set

If you are setting up for video instead of live class, you’ll have a different set of considerations. You’ll want a relatively neutral set that reduces visual distraction for viewers and allows them to focus on you. If you are teaching for a studio, they may want a set that clearly identifies the video as part of the studio’s brand, with features like a mural or mandala. If you are creating your own content, seek to come up with something attractive but not busy. A plain wall, your mat, and a few plants or pieces of artwork are probably all you’ll need. If you’re regularly recording, mark where you placed your mat, tripod, and light stands against the floor, so you can recreate the same frame and setup in subsequent videos. Be sure to take some test shots of your sequence before filming, so you can be sure you are well-lit and in the frame throughout the entire video. Be sure to wear clothes that contrast with the background, so you will be most visible.

Props

If you know you’ll be using props in your sequence, or simply for convenience to your students, stack a display set of props by your mat. Or carry props over to students as they get settled—it’s a warm way to welcome them and make them feel seen. Almost all students benefit from using props, so it’s better for them to have props and wind up not using them than to want them and not have them.

To that end, make props a requirement for at least one pose. For example, have students stand on a block (or, for the bigger-footed, two blocks placed short end to short end) for a standing balance pose. Now students see that blocks can make a pose harder—they aren’t just to make poses easier. It then is far easier, both physically and psychologically, for them to grab the blocks in a lunge, or in some other pose where they would benefit from using props.

If students still perceive using props as a crutch or an admission that they are not good at yoga, you can change their minds with a little spin: Call props an “upgrade.” I’ve begun doing this for props in savasana. I’ll bring a bolster for the knees or a blanket to serve as a pillow and say to the student, “Let me upgrade you.”

The most profound lesson I received in my own yoga teacher training came in an explanation from Lesa Crocker, my yoga teacher training leader, that “nothing lets go unless it feels supported.” Consider a child who receives a glowing report at preschool pickup, Lesa said, but then becomes a holy terror for the rest of the evening. Or imagine you’ve kept it together during a bad day, but one kind word from your parent or spouse (“Honey, what’s wrong?”) sets you bawling. Without this compassionate support, the body—especially the muscles and nervous system—will hold tension in. Only in the presence of true support do we feel free to lay our burdens down. As you set up your classroom, and throughout an asana practice with the use of props, be sure to let your students feel the freedom conferred by loving support.

greet your students

Be welcoming to your students. Be ready for them to arrive. Don’t be that hostess who’s in the shower as her guests show up! Once, I walked into a class at a yoga retreat center five minutes before start time to find the teacher lying on the podium in savasana wrapped in a blanket. I gaped for twenty seconds, then walked right back out and chose a different class.

If you use music, have it settled and set up long before class; don’t be messing with your phone, especially with your back to the room, while students come in. Getting soft music rolling can help you calm your own nerves if you’re feeling them. When you are nervous, it can be tempting to hide from your students or find busywork. Instead, channel this energy into welcoming students and making them feel comfortable. This will remind you that you are there as a helper, not a performer.

As students arrive, be a gracious host—just like the flight attendant standing by the door. Whenever possible, welcome them individually. Shake hands, learn names, and ask what brings them to yoga. I’ll say, “Are you new in town or just new to the studio?” and “Are you new to yoga or just new to us?” Help students get situated: Show them where to leave their shoes, where to put their belongings, where to find the props.

Learning names is easier for some people than for others. Find a graceful way to get refreshers in case you were wrong. (Ask a fellow student discreetly, or simply admit that you feel unsure about the name.) My colleague Alexandra introduced me to this useful prompt: “Hi! Are you a new face for me?” It lets students say, “Yes!” or “I’ve been a few times but it’s been awhile,” in which case you follow up with, “Welcome back! Remind me of your name.” If you find yourself handling your own class check-in, you’ll have a golden chance to learn names: You’ll hear it from the student, think it with your brain, and type it into the computer with your hands.

Just as a good host will introduce guests to each other, then drop in a conversation topic or connection and move on, you can foster interpersonal connections in the classroom by introducing your students to each other. This can be especially welcoming to a student who is new in town. Yoga studios can be a powerful site of community connection. People who come to class want to be in the presence of other people; otherwise, they’d stream a class at home. Help them feel this connection.

If you have the pleasure of having other teachers in class, don’t flinch: Rejoice! While your first reaction might be to recoil in horror, thinking you are going to be judged, please reframe your reaction. Unless another teacher is explicitly sent to offer feedback, they are not in your class to evaluate you or to steal from you—they want to be led through a practice and not have to make decisions. As I often put it, they want someone else to drive the bus. Celebrate having teachers as students!

When I have colleagues in class, I make a point of introducing them. This serves a few purposes. First, it cross-promotes their classes. (“This is Alexandra, who teaches the Pilates class before this class. They are wonderful back-to-back! And Alexandra is my regular sub—you’ll see her in two weeks when I’m teaching out of town.”) Second, it creates a friendly vibe. Students love to know that teachers are students, too, and that the studio community is a supportive one. Third, it gives the teacher permission to practice in her own way without intimidating students. “Oh,” they’ll think, “she’s a teacher, so she’s been doing this awhile. I can appreciate the aesthetics of her practice without having to copy it.” Sometimes I make this explicit!

Best of all, having teachers in class means you have a group of potential subs who know exactly how you run your classroom and what and how you teach. This is priceless for providing your students continuity when you are away, and thus for best supporting their practices.

When you do have a colleague in class, ask them for feedback. Teachers are always better equipped than students to give you helpful advice. Students will say only, “I liked it!” or “Felt good!” or “That was hard!” Teachers can tell you straight about the clarity of your cuing, the fluidity of your sequences, and the filler words you rely on.

Even with the best-laid plans, every class you teach offers you a new chance to improve. Do you need to tweak the lights, music, tone, volume, or pacing? If something felt off in your last class, it can be helpful to take the time between classes to design new approaches. Was the room too cold? Could you bring a space heater? (Clear it with the building management first!) Was your music not working right? Now’s your chance to reflect on your teaching—to troubleshoot until you feel really confident you’ll have things the way you want them next time.

self-study and reflection

Much of the development you’ll see as a teacher comes incrementally, week to week, as you reflect on your previous class and plan for the next one. Have you heard of a “hostess diary”? It’s an old-fashioned device to record a personal debrief after throwing a party. (You can find some cute ones on Amazon or at fancy stationery stores.) The great hostesses make notes after each party. What was the theme or occasion of the party? What was served, who sat where, what was discussed? What could be changed for next time?

The same practice works well for yoga teachers. As soon as is feasible after class, and no later than the next day, take some notes of your own in your journal or notes file. Here’s a workbook prompt for you.

Reflect on Class

Make notes on your last class. What did you plan? What went well? What surprised you? Was there any deviation from your plan, and if so, why? How did it land? What did not go well? If it works for you, you can list these as roses (the pros), thorns (the cons), and buds (things to build on next time).

If you wrote out a class plan ahead of time, either on paper or, better yet, on your computer, this could simply be another column or section in the notes, including the date and your reflections on what happened.

self-evaluation with video

To identify your personal filler words and to quickly clean up your language, I suggest a two-part process, executed every few months. First, record yourself during a real class. This doesn’t have to be a professional-grade video; even five minutes captured on your phone will teach you volumes. Be sure you let your students know that you are doing this solely for your self-improvement, and angle the camera so that your students aren’t on-screen—or obtain their permission before including them. If you are producing videos—live or edited—regularly watch them for self-evaluation and quality control.

Now take a few deep breaths, settle down, and watch. Here’s what to do:

1. Be alone. Watch the video and allow yourself all the cringing you want. If your experience is like mine, you’ll think, in quick succession: “Do I really look like that?!?” “Do I really sound like that?!?” and “When did I turn into my mother[/father]?!?”

2. Start over. Look for the good. Pinpoint at least three things you did well.

3. Start over again. Listen for the filler. Hear your go-to words, and determine which could be cut. If you don’t hear any, try transcribing your own video, which will likely make them jump out. Even five minutes of typing a transcription will show you what could go. You will very quickly type and see every extraneous word. Even ten minutes of this task will help you immensely.

4. Start over yet again. Use a timer to gauge whether you are offering a similar duration of hold on both sides of asymmetrical poses, and listen to hear whether you give students express permission to stay longer or move out of a pose early.

5. Repeat this exercise, making a new recording and reviewing it, again at regular intervals. Aim to do it a few times each year. It’s painful, I know, but self-review with video is one of the quickest tools to make you the best teacher you can be.

Articulate Your Role

If you find your video review disheartening, it can be helpful to articulate what kind of teacher you want to be, so that you have a goal to be striving toward, and to know when you are meeting your vision for yourself as a teacher. Periodic redefinition or reinforcement of your goals will keep you on track.

Start by noting what you think your own teachers do well. Write a little about:

▸ The tone your teachers use with students in class and out of class

▸ The body language and physical reaction your teachers use with students in class and out of class

▸ The interactions you see your teachers use with students in class and out of class, including on social media, if relevant

Now write a description of the kind of teacher you want to be. Notice any friction between how you want to act and how you feel you have been acting.

Consider Your Tone

Given what you know about your students and the content of the class, write a little about the right tone for the class. Is it drill sergeant? Sympathetic coach? Caring mother figure? Sassy best friend? Repeat for each of the classes in your schedule. When you review recordings of your class, be sure to check whether the tone you hear matches the tone you meant to convey.

peer evaluation

Students can’t give you the best feedback; they don’t have the tools to describe what worked and what didn’t. It’s like a chef cooking for, say, a teenage lacrosse team—they won’t have the palate or vocabulary to critique the food; they’re just glad to eat. Your peers, especially your colleagues in teacher training and at the venue where you teach, will be better. To get useful feedback, the chef must serve other chefs and experienced eaters. And it’s probably best if these chefs are skilled in the same kind of cooking—that is, your best evaluators will come from a similar background as you and work with a student population similar to yours.

Invite a friend to class expressly for this evaluation. If your friend can set up discreetly in the back, they may even make a few notes. If the venue allows observation and you are especially open and willing to succeed, you can have them sit and watch instead of participating, or record a whole class for them to review. (At Carolina Yoga, we do not allow nonparticipating students to sit and observe class, as we think it creates a strange situation for the participating students.) If you are teaching in video format, share your recordings with a colleague to get feedback.

be kind to yourself

Growth is hard. Growth requires being uncomfortable. But without opening yourself up to constructive criticism, there will be no growth at all, and your career will wither on the vine. All your good intentions about helping your students through yoga will come to nothing if you don’t challenge yourself to improve.

When it’s tough to hear a critique, go back to the start. Remember why you love yoga and why you became a teacher. It may be useful to revisit the work you did in part 1 of this book. And remember this quote from Winston Churchill: “I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.” The improvement is worth the discomfort.

Pep Talk and Rainy Day Notes

Give yourself a pep talk! Using the voice of a loving friend, write yourself a blurb about all your good points as a teacher. If you like, distill it into a phrase (“You’re authentic!”) or a word (“Real!”) that you can revisit as needed.

In a notes file or a journal, collect praise you’ve received from your students, and visit these rainy-day notes to cheer yourself up when you are feeling disheartened or down.

enthusiastic studentship

Take classes with a teacher’s ear—listen for what works and what doesn’t. Stay attuned to the choices, conscious and unconscious, that your teachers make when you are in the classroom. Feel your way through transitions that are useful; notice how it feels and how the room looks when something doesn’t land. Set up in different parts of the room to see what the student experience is like there. The view from the back and the front could be vastly different; being closer to the door or window or farther from it may affect the student experience a lot.

It’s especially useful to be a student in the very classroom(s) where you teach, so you can notice things that you won’t see when you’re teaching. Strive to have the same experience your students have, down to using the studio-issued mat. You may find that your hands slip in downward-facing dog or your knees need some extra cushioning in tabletop, and these observations can translate into a direct positive experience for your students when you offer modifications in your next class.

Make note of anything that works particularly well, and consider how you would do things differently when things don’t work well. It can help to put this down on paper. For example, my don’ts would be having the music too quiet (I find this a distraction), shining bright light in students’ eyes, and not telling students what to expect in the course of the class.

Classroom Management

Describe your ideal classroom environment from the point of view of both a student and a teacher. List any don’ts you’ve personally witnessed, and make notes about how you would do things differently.

be a teaching assistant

Once you are comfortable offering manual assists, or even just quiet verbal cuing and demonstrating in a large beginner class, offer to assist in a friend’s class, or your primary teacher’s class. This affords you a chance to look at what’s happening at some remove. You can observe the teacher without needing to follow their cues, which gives you insight into language, energy, tone, and pacing. You can see which cues land and which don’t. You can also observe the students as a whole and as individuals without being in charge of the entire room at once.

After each class you assist, make notes as you would for your own class. List the sequence and, if relevant, the theme; detail who was in the room; note roses, thorns, and buds.

look at models

Find master teachers online. If there is a class you especially enjoyed participating in as a student, watch it again as an observer, without participating. What makes it special? Is it the teacher’s sequencing, cuing, pacing, language? Reverse engineer the parts you like best to discover ways you can deploy the magic in your own classes. The humorist Finley Peter Dunne wrote that it is the duty of newspapers to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I would apply this in a serious way to yoga teachers. I’ve learned a lot from watching Leslie Kaminoff, who fulfills the role of comforting the afflicted by reassuring students when they are confused and afflicting the comfortable by challenging those who would benefit from it.

When one class ends, the reflection begins, as does the planning for the next one. Now you’re ready to lead the next class through a yoga practice! That’s our focus in chapter 8.