Teaching Yoga

I always thought teaching yoga is easy as the teacher seems effortless when instructing the class. But after these three days of teaching, I started to understand the effort that goes behind the scene.

There are a lot of factors (see below) need to be considered when conducting the yoga class and usually these factors needed to be performed simultaneously. As mentioned by Master Paalu, teaching one hour class might be equivalent to two hours of working in office due to the intensity of the focus you given to the students in the class.

  • Breathing instruction
  • Counting
  • Sequence of asana
  • Transition of asana
  • Variation of asana for different level of student
  • Anatomy of asana
  • Physical alignment for student
  • Observation/ attention to student to prevent injuries
  • Instructor’s tone/ Morale of the class
  • Benefit of the asana
  • Detachment of personal emotional of the teacher

Last but not least, the most important key is to teach with heart. We need to put ourselves in our student shoes, we might be able to do all the advance poses but the student we teaching might be ultra-beginner who are not able to bend or stretch properly or elderly persons who has physical health problem such as knee cap or leg injuries. Regardless of the type of students we have, we need to be empathize with them by teaching them the poses which are suitable to their physical limitation.

Teaching yoga is not an easy job. I really respect and appreciate the seen or unseen effort of all the yoga teachers.