1. Serve others and share your Yoga passion.
Above everything you have to be committed and willing to serve other people and help them on their healing and spiritual journey.
You have to understand that teaching a yoga class is not about you but always about your students and their process.
You need to become aware of your students’ energy and adapt the class in general for them.
2. Understand what Yoga is not.
Yoga is not about being flexible or even about doing the funkiest asanas. Yoga is a way of living. It is much more about how you treat yourself, how you treat others and forever evolving as a spiritual being.
3. Requirements
You don’t need nothing much to become a Yoga Teacher, besides good overall health, drive and love for Yoga. Yoga is a philosophy, once you begin, you study it for the rest of your life.
In terms of teaching, you need a minimum of 200-H to become a yoga teacher, you can do this in 24 days straight, or you can also have it divided into modules/weekends depending where you choose to do the training.
Shades of Yoga offers a 200-H and 300-H training in a few locations around the world, including Bali.
4. Don’t wait until the perfect time to start.
When you are finished with your 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training, it might seem a little bit scary to jump in straight to teaching classes. But if that is your dream and what you want to pursue, then go for it!
If you wait until you get the perfect studio, perfect income, perfect place, you will never be able to start. Practice makes perfect.
Although the point is never about being perfect, but you do understand, don’t you?
5. Start teaching for free.
In the beginning, there’s a few things that you can do, so that you practice your new skills as a yoga teacher.
After a while, if number of people start increasing and more and more people become interested, you should start thinking about doing donation-based classes and further on set a small fee for every class, that you will increase over time, as much as you feel comfortable to do so.
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6. Volunteer in assisting classes.
If you’re drawn to any specific type of yoga, for examples seniors yoga, neonatal yoga or kids yoga, you can always assist different types of classes.
Specially for kids yoga, they are always looking for an extra hand and you can definitely learn a lot and incorporate many ideas.
7. Make sure you have insurance.
Once you make it official and start teaching classes in a studio/getting paid for, you need to check Yoga Alliance insurance and make sure you cover everything you need in order to cover yourself and to deliver a safe practice for your future students.
8. Build your community.
The word Yoga in Sanskrit means “union” – To yoke, to combine. Union with yourself, others and the universe. As a yoga teacher, it is important to start building your community in your hometown as soon as you finish your YTT.
You can start teaching lessons to your friends, family, close relatives.
When you get back home, you can create your own facebook/whatsapp group and organize a yoga class in a park, your backyard, any open and casual place that you feel comfortable practicing your teaching at first.
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9. Safety above everything.
Never teach anything that you can’t do yourself. Everything that you teach in a class, you are supposed to master it yourself first.
It is important that you always make sure to keep a routine and practice new asanas yourself first, so that you can teach your future students in the best and safest way possible.
10. Tap into your intuition and be creative.
Last but not least in our list of 10 things you need to know to become a Yoga Teacher – Find your voice. No Yoga class is the same because no teacher is the same. As much as you repeat the same sequence over and over, no one has your voice and that is your power and what makes you so unique.
My suggestion is that you first master the sequence that is taught you during the Yoga Teacher Training inside out (with Shades of Yoga, believe me, you will be ready the second you finish you training, which is awesome!).
Once you feel confident enough mastering that sequence, you can slowly introduce your unique transitions and twists and be comfortable sharing your creativity through Yoga. Just make sure that everything you do is always aligned with Yoga philosophy, and again, safe to do.
