Lesson planning and teaching

Yoga instructors develop a lesson plan for each class. As students, we don’t think about the amount of effort a yogi puts into planning a class to ensure you get achieve progress within one class and get value for your money and time. Certain instructors make their classes feel integrated and smooth flowing, but only highly experienced yogis are able to make teaching effortless.

If you decide to join a YTT-200 course, the training will expose you to how much effort, practice and confidence goes into becoming a Yoga instructor. In the Tirisula program, trainees are required develop a lesson plan and conduct a test class among classmates. Three days were dedicated to lesson planning. During the first day, we made and applied a plan for Ultra Beginner students; the second day was for Beginner students; and the third day was for Intermediate students.

I missed the second day (hence I am making a blog specifically about this topic), which meant that I went from test teaching for Ultra Beginner to Advanced. Some people might struggle to shift their mind-set from student to teacher — and I quickly realized that I was one of those people. Lesson planning can be challenging. Applying the lesson plan on actual students is even more challenging.

There are three key aspects to consider:

  • Student level

Students coming in will have different levels of experience and ability. So, classes are segregated between, Ultra Beginner, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. Your style as a teacher will fit one of these levels better than the others. The trick is figuring out which one and also continually trying to improve on teaching for the other levels.

  • Program and sequence

There is a flow to the segments of a class. Generally, there is a teacher’s welcome, checking for injuries, opening chant, breathing exercise, warm up, asanas, cool down and closing chant. During warm up, you can include simple test poses to see the average ability level of the class. As for asanas, the ideal sequence is from standing, sitting, prone, supine, and lastly, inversions. For every pose, there should also be a counter pose. Transitioning between segments of the class and between asanas is also important to maintain pace, energy flow and momentum build-up.

  • Teaching technique

Aside from the lesson plan, the actual teaching part is important to rehearse. There are four key things to consider for teaching:

  • Demonstration (show to students how to get in and out of a challenging pose)
    • Instruction (guide the inhale/exhale, describe the exact movement and mention the asana name with a clear voice and relaxed but firm tone)
    • Counting (sync the breathing for consistent movements)
    • Adjustment (improve alignment and stretch with touch and motivating words)

During the course, I really struggled with applying my lesson plans. I am still at the stage where I understand the technique but am poor at verbalizing it. I fixate on recalling what the next step should be that I pay no mind to the student, which is a quick recipe to becoming a horrible yoga instructor. Being a yoga teacher is not easy, and for people like me, it does not happen over the course of a month. It’s an ongoing process of learning and applying then passing the knowledge on.

Our master trainers tell us that a high percentage of those who complete the YTT 200 do not pursue a Yoga teaching career; and I hope I do not become part of that percentage. I have a long way to go before I can say I have confidence in my lesson planning and teaching skills. I don’t know if I will make it, but I hope I do. One thing is for sure though – I learned so much from one month of Yoga teacher training than two years of being a Yoga pupil.