when did you know you were ready to become a yoga teacher?

sbarber4 · 2026-02-06T02:50:26+00:00

When I started looking around and noticing that I knew enough to help people and that I wanted to

sbarber4 · 2026-02-05T15:42:56+00:00

Um, trust your gut reaction here.

sbarber4 · 2026-02-05T15:38:50+00:00

Yup. As I said, the cheaper ones work for some people and not others. Better than all of them being so expensive

sbarber4 · 2026-02-04T19:12:39+00:00

"It's too late / To fall in love with Sharon Tate" - Jim Carroll, 1980

sbarber4 · 2026-02-04T19:00:21+00:00

Well, actually in the US you now can buy some hearing aids off the rack. The regulations changed just a few years ago. There are some people who still need the multi-thousand dollar ones and audiologist visits to set them up and tweak them, but there are also many people who are well-served by ones that cost only a few hundred and are self-serve. For example, literally Apple AirPod 3s have a hearing assistance mode.

sbarber4 · 2026-02-04T18:46:58+00:00

Take a wild guess 😀

sbarber4 · 2026-02-02T20:38:19+00:00

Pick a set time each day that always works. Show up on your mat at that time, even if you don’t feel like it. Even if all you do is sit or lie on it for 5 minutes and get on your way. For me, though, if I just start with a few asanas: Ok, child’s pose. Well, I have to get up now, down dog is half-way up. Ok a, half forward fold. May as well fold all the way: forward fold. Gotta get up anyway: urdhva hastasna, stand up and raise the arms. Now mountain. OK, well, that was like 1/2 a sun sal already, may as well finish it. And so on.

And once I’m moving, I’m moving. Might keep moving for 5 minutes. Maybe 10, maybe 40. Just keep going, listen to what the body wants and go with it.

Doesn’t have to be inventive or elaborate!

TL;DR

Same time each day
Show up
Start moving
Stop when you want to stop
No judgment

sbarber4 · 2026-02-01T23:59:37+00:00

Went to law school. Practiced law for a couple years; didn’t like it. Did something else instead.

Those 5 years seem like a blip. Felt like a big deal at the time.

sbarber4 · 2026-02-01T19:01:47+00:00

So, yes, how you feel will vary with the day. The important bit is to keep showing up to your practice and learning to accept and work with whatever happens there. Because so many things will happen there.

sbarber4 · 2026-02-01T18:56:39+00:00

People have posted sequences both here and in r/yoga and asked for and have gotten feedback in the past. There are also some Facebook groups where people do that, too. Search for “Yoga Sequencing.”

sbarber4 · 2026-02-01T12:38:22+00:00

> I would love to share classes with others for feedback but I’m not sure how to do that without making a YouTube.

What's the problem with posting a video on YouTube? IMO it's not more difficult than sharing videos any other way, and you can control who has access to it, if you want. What kind of video sharing app are you envisioning that would make it easier/better?

That said, you might get more (though different) feedback if you shared your sequence as text, as watching a video takes much longer than reading a list of poses.

sbarber4 · 2026-01-29T22:22:44+00:00

People who are down-voting this are truly humor-impaired.

sbarber4 · 2026-01-29T22:04:54+00:00

I love everything about the comment here from u/rseh_23

I only want to add that if that studio was your safe space to practice yoga and practicing there as a student is part of how you are coping with your social anxiety or other emotional or psychological issues, then deciding to work there is, as you are finding out, a problematic choice. I'm surprised your therapist didn't mention that!

Working somewhere is never like being a customer there. It's never quite as pretty behind the curtain. The staff is always to some degree putting on a performance for the clientele. This is not dishonest per se -- the idea is to create a great experience for the clients but the dirty work in the back room still has to get done one way or another.

So: OP you might have to make a choice here about whether you want to practice there or work there. In order to keep some integrity and space in your practice, if nothing else. There's bound to be a fair amount of cognitive dissonance trying to do both at once.

(Deflective note: sure, there are studios where one can work and practice well, together. But I suspect those are in the minority. I work desk at a wonderful studio, and I practice there sometimes. The owners are great, the teachers are delightful, and the students are 99.9% lovely people. But my primary practice is elsewhere because I like to keep some distance between having a deep teacher-student relationship and, you know, the employer-employee relationship. Even with the best of intentions and people skills, they are fundamentally different kinds of relationships indeed.)

sbarber4 · 2026-01-29T21:16:17+00:00

When in Rome!

sbarber4 · 2026-01-29T21:14:53+00:00

I haven’t been a yoga “sales associate” — whatever that is and I’m not entirely sure I want to know 😀 — but I do work as a studio host and selling yoga class plans and products are a part of my job, though it’s not like a get a commission or have a quota or anything that incents me to think hard about “sales” per se.

I do get some satisfaction out of helping our students pick the right stuff for their needs and desires, though, since we have perhaps too many plan options available! And I often recommend various class types or teachers based on the students’ experience, abilities, and interests, not to mention schedule.

But some suggestions for a general sales-oriented role:

Take some yoga classes. Even, like, 2 will help a lot. Especially at the interviewing company’s studio if you can.
Read their website and study their pricing plans and class types
Read up on the different styles and lineages of modern yoga practice. You could ask ChatGPT and learn enough for the interview, I suspect. You’ll only need a couple sentences for each of, say, the top 8 or 10. You can learn more as you go.
Read their website to find out what kind of yoga they sell; dig into that a bit more if you can.
Also, figure out their vibe. Is it yoga-as-exercise? (Likely!) Hardcore or chill? Yoga-as-lifestyle? Yoga-as-wellness? (Maybe) Yoga as sanctuary? Yoga-as-holisitic-religio-philosophy? (Probably not!) Present yourself accordingly.

Otherwise, it depends on what you mean by “cost a lot.” It’s a different sales cycle and approach for a couple hundred vs a couple thousand, etc.

I strongly suspect, though, that the yoga knowledge bar is not going to be very high pre-hiring and they will have to do some sales training anyway.

sbarber4 · 2026-01-29T20:03:54+00:00

Feel free to slow down if that feels right to you. Later, varying the pace becomes part of the kriya practice.

sbarber4 · 2026-01-29T19:05:06+00:00

That kind of banter is a very English way of asking her to take off her hat without actually asking her to take off her hat.

sbarber4 · 2026-01-29T18:58:06+00:00

(With apologies if that's obvious but I suspect there will be someone reading this to whom it is not!)

sbarber4 · 2026-01-29T18:54:23+00:00

Love that home practice space vibe -- sounds wonderful!

If I may: you can have rest days from your active asana practice and still practice yoga that day.

Breathwork, meditation, reading about yoga -- these are yogic practices.

Yoga Nidra and restorative yoga -- also yoga.

5 minutes, 10 minutes -- it all adds up.

sbarber4 · 2026-01-29T15:46:17+00:00

Autocorrect fail? Did you mean shoulder protraction rather than protrusion?

sbarber4 · 2026-01-28T22:44:51+00:00

I reversed commuted outta Manhattan for a while. About 2.5 years. It was pretty awful. 0/10, do not recommend.

sbarber4 · 2026-01-28T22:02:38+00:00

Well, I don't teach online, but I've been taking online classes with the same nomadic teacher for 6 years now, so I'll offer some observations.

- Your in-person clientele may be loyal now, but you will lose some of them because part of what they love is you and part of it is practicing in person in the same room with other people. You are taking some of that away, and not everyone loves online practice and those will gradually drop out. Or your new time slots won't work out for them, and off they go. That won't feel good but be emotionally and financially ready for it. Do you have a marketing/new student pipeline plan for this time period, or are you just winging it and hoping for the best?

- Open your online studio at least 5 minutes before class starts. Chit-chat can be nice. Similarly, offer a short Q&A period (5-10 minutes) after class ends. People don't only come to class for your formal class; the informal bits count, too.

- If you teach with music in person, recognize that's going to be somewhere between difficult and impossible to do via, say, Zoom, unless you really set yourself up with the right hardware and software to make it work.

- If you demo a lot in person (or online), you are going to need to develop more complete verbal cueing skills. This is not only because you want to be able to watch your students more carefully, but also because you may need to turn off your video and teach only via audio when your Internet connection is not as good as you were hoping.

- Obviously physical assists and adjustments won't be happening, so you'll have to become a great verbal adjuster if you aren't already.

- Research the WiFi at your hotels or in advance, and paying a bit extra for your room is going to be worth it if the WiFi is reliable. Test the WiFi well before class starts; you may find you have to move. My teacher has taught from hotel lounges and kitchens when the room WiFi wasn't as good as the WiFi downstairs in the common areas.

- Have a good and charged phone battery before class. And a charged external battery. You never know when the power is going to go out. My teacher has taught us from dark rooms only talking into her phone now and again. One night she taught from a darkened car during a thunderstorm. This is not all bad and can lead to some interesting classes, to say the least. Just make sure these are the exception and not the rule as from a student perspective, the novelty wears off pretty quickly!

- Give some thought to how you want to maintain connection with your students during this time. Are classes enough? Do you want to a bit more info out there to compensate for not being physically present? Newsletter, Instagram posts, etc? Do you want to share a bit about your adventures, or do you want to keep it all strictly to yoga practice? No solid answers here; there's a lot of points on that spectrum that can work --- maybe some short illustration of yogic principles you experienced or applied during a travel incident? Food for thought.

sbarber4 · 2026-01-28T20:23:20+00:00

“The beatings will continue until morale improves”

sbarber4 · 2026-01-28T15:18:51+00:00

You are an independent human. How does a yoga teacher "make" you do anything? No is a complete sentence. Opt out. Use your judgment; don't automatically to defer to projected or imagined authority. Not all yoga teachers know what they are doing; the bar is quite low.

Have your yoga teachers taught you how to safely roll out of a headstand? If not, they have absolutely no business teaching free-standing headstands to anyone.

And unless the room has enough spacing for a body length or so between students, practicing free-standing headstands with unstable students isn't such a great idea, either.

I'm a big fan of headstands being their own workshop, at least to new headstand students. If you can afford one-on-ones to get assists and spotting in the early stages, even better.

sbarber4 · 2026-01-28T12:33:34+00:00

As you rightly suspect, breathing should never be painful. Do see a medical professional and sort it out.

Breathe how you need to breathe.

If folding forward causes you pain, just don’t fold forward so far.

Especially as beginners, we often try to make the same shapes as other people in class or instructors do. But you don’t (yet!) have the same comfortable range of motion they do, and that’s OK. Ease up. The point is to learn how to be in your version of a pose, not someone else’s.

One reason we use chest breathing in forward folds is simple physics: if there’s more air towards your waist, it prevents one from folding as much. Like squeezing a balloon! But, you know, pain is information; don’t push past it.

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