Enjoy this excerpt from Chapter 3 of the soon-to-be released Volume 2 of Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses by Sage Rountree and Alexandra Desiato. This companion volume—with all-new material—offers 54 ready-made ideas and templates to elevate your classes, refine your voice, and teach inspired themes with joy and confidence. Available for pre-order now on Amazon.com.
How You Can Best Help Your Students
Students like authentic teachers offering simple, personally resonant, yet pro- found lessons. Offering these lessons and bits of philosophy isn’t fluff or filling; it’s part of the job we take on when we become yoga teachers. We offer messages as a way to connect to our students. We offer them as a way to connect students to ancient wisdom and philosophical ideas. We offer them as a way to connect our students to themselves. All of this connection is yoga.
In order to spread yoga, you need a student base. Even if it’s just a small group of hard-core regulars you teach once a week, by sharing yoga’s message with people, you are helping them move toward freedom and liberation, moksha. Let’s look at how you can attract these students and, once you’re connected with them, how you can help them best.
How Theming Can Build Your Following
While we know you teach because you love yoga and you know it does profound good for your students, we know it feels good when your classes are fuller. So much outside you determines whether students attend: the day and time of the class, the season, the weather, and so on. But students also attend classes with teachers they love and enjoy. They come back to classes for many reasons, and one is that the ideas on offer strike a chord in them. In this way, good and thoughtful theming, like all the other parts of the class, will help you grow your student base.
Students come back when they relate to your messages. We don’t typically get much feedback as yoga teachers—certainly not from the students. Usually the most verbal feedback you’ll get is, “Thanks, that was a great class.” The best pos- itive feedback we have is returning students. They may not tell you exactly what they came back for, but we wager it’s about how they felt during and after your class. It’s not just about your creative choreography or skillful sequencing—in fact, that probably matters far less than you think, so don’t feel like you need to plan out every second of class or come up with something creative and new every time. It’s probably not the playlist you labored over, editing and adding songs like a con- summate DJ. What matters most to students is how what you said and led in class made them feel. Remember the wonderful quote frequently attributed to Maya Angelou (but which most certainly predates her): “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This definitely applies in yoga class.
Do you give assists in your yoga classes? Or even offer something simple and special during Savasana, like a gentle shoulder press, or a little lavender-oil scalp massage? If so, you know that students come to expect and anticipate this part of class. They see it as a special treat, and they associate it with your specific classes and teaching style. In this same way, when you offer themes that allow your stu- dents to know themselves more, make them feel less alone and more connected to human experience, encourage them to reflect on their values, or help them regu- late their challenging emotions, they start to expect that as part of the offering in your class, and they come back for your next message.
We discussed this briefly in chapter 2, but offering students some sort of take- away is one way to grow the impact of your theme or message. If you have an email list for your classes and send newsletters to your students, you can further strengthen and reiterate your themes by writing them out. And you can do this beforeclass, as a way to entice students to the practice or whet their appetites for the theme you’ll be sharing. Alexandra teaches an all-levels community class in a small village west of where she lives. She’s been teaching some version of the class for close to fifteen years, and some of the students have been attending for that long. Each week before class, she sends out an email that usually includes a little story from her life that week, along with how yoga or yoga philosophy or some other moral or spiritual lesson has given her a new way to look at the story she’s sharing. In this way, students know what idea will be showing up in the practice. During class, the offered theme builds on what was already offered in the email. Students chat and joke with her and each other before class about the content of the email, and it grows the community and connection of the class. In this way, Alexandra spreads the message before, during, and after class.
Finding the Students Who Need Your Message
Any yoga class can be themed, no matter the format. But it’s smart to be sure that the class style, the student population, and the message you deliver all work together harmoniously. Take some time to consider your students’ expectations coming into the class. You could ask yourself (and your students, when you arrive!):
- How did they hear about this class? Was it from an internet search, a friend, a Groupon special? Will this source have primed them to receive philosophy along with movement in class?
- What is the title and, if relevant, the description of the class your students will have read? How does that set their expectations of what the class will be like, and what your message might be?
- Consider too that the time of day and the length of the class should impact the message you choose to offer and how you offer it. Night classes may feel more magical, and students attending at night might feel more open to spiritual ideas. Sunday morning classes may correlate with your stu- dents’ childhood memories of church, and they may unconsciously seek and expect a dharma talk during that time. A midweek lunch-break class may be a better place for a pragmatic philosophical lesson. Meet your students where they’re at.
- For returning students, what message have you been sharing lately? What related themes would be relevant to build on that?
- How much experience do these students have with yoga asana? With yoga philosophy? What is their comfort level with Sanskrit, with chanting?
- Given your students’ experience and expectations, can you find a good fit between the theme you choose and the amount of other talking you’ll be doing to cue the movement portions of class? Will you still be able to offer silence?
- Is there some timely local or global event that ties in to your theme?
Students who need your message may be very much like you or very much dif- ferent from you. Don’t presume that your message is falling flat just because the audience is dissimilar to you—or because they aren’t smiling and nodding as you deliver it. Often a listening face reads like a bored or disaffected face. The sooner you can divorce your interpretation of a facial expression from your belief that what you’re saying matters, the better a teacher you’ll be.
Finding the Right Words for Your Students
The words you choose to convey a theme may be more ephemeral and esoteric or more grounded and pragmatic, based on who’s in the yoga room with you. Maybe your theme incorporates slang or swear words, depending on how well you know your students and what you think they’ll hear best. Let your theming be a constant practice of creative reframing. Try a theme from a variety of angles, varying your sentences until you find language that rings true from your mouth and thus in your students’ ears.
Remember, repetition is fine—and even more than that, it’s necessary. We talked about this in volume 1 of TeachingYogaBeyondthePoses.You’re the only one who’s ever heard every word to come out of your own mouth; students hear only about a third of the things you say. Never be concerned you’re repeating yourself too much. You rarely are.
When in doubt, speak plainly and simplify. Bring your message back to its essential point. Or say less. In class, your voice is the only voice. It’s your obli- gation to speak during class, but that also means that any silence in the room is yours to offer too. Use that power smartly and wisely. Give your students enough to listen to. Offer your students enough space to hear themselves.
Finally, recognize that the time on either side of the yoga practice is the best time to listen to your students. Greet them, make eye contact, and ask them questions. Speak during the practice; listen before and after.
The Basics of Storytelling
Humans love stories. Good storytelling is the foundation of everything from edu- cation to gossip to sales copy writing. A story works best when it has memora- ble details, a surprising element, and a clear resolution. The memorable details include a relatable main character—that might be you, or it could be “a friend” (who’s really you), or a real friend or family member. It could even be a public figure whom you heard interviewed or read some news about. Look to find some way for your students to connect to this main character. What do they want from life? How are they like the students? Or, if they are drastically different from your students, what other point of connection do they have? Around this relatable main character, sketch in other memorable details, like where and when the story takes place, so the scene is set for action.
The action of your story will captivate your audience when it has a surprising element. To find that and exploit it, consider what your listeners will expect to happen, then subvert those expectations. If Alexandra were telling her “No Blond Mommies” story that appears later in this book, she might say, “Heading home from the salon, I felt like a million bucks. I looked like a Disney princess. So, of course, I thought my daughter would be delighted to see my new hairstyle.” This sets up the expectation that is then subverted when her daughter recoils and hides behind her bedroom door, freshly hung with a sign reading “No Blond Mommies.” This plot twist keeps the listeners hooked—even in a short narrative that takes less than thirty seconds to recount.
Finally, the story you tell should have a clear resolution. The finale of your story should justify it being told, with some message or takeaway that ties right back to your theme. And to implicitly add “The End” to your personal story, you can pivot back to your theme using a quote, a few words about how this applies to the practice, or an invitation to your students to consider (and to share, if your class is small and conversational) how this story relates to their own personal experience.
Be human, and don’t be afraid to be humorous too! Humor is OK when shar- ing a story in a yoga class. We don’t always have to hold a sacred, ascetic space. But also don’t be alarmed if no one laughs! And be aware of when you are using humor as a way to feel validated by your students. You are there to give to them; they are not there to give to you. Blank expressions are often a sign of deep inner work. Smiles and engagement might indicate a more superficial experience, which might be fine in some formats, but which in yoga doesn’t allow time for the pro- found connection we seek.
As you tell your story in class, connecting your theme to both a personal and a universal experience, you must find the balance between making the theme relat- able and making it all about you. As our evolved template now includes, we sug- gest that after you first present your message, you then give students a moment to look back and reflect about a time in their lives when this theme would have applied. And again at the end of class, ask students to think forward toward how this message will play out for them in the future. This can also become a prompt for journaling in your takeaway at the end of class. Adding in this time lets the students process your message more fully, and it centers their connection to your message, rather than your own experience.