How the New Yoga Teacher Can Improve Their Training Skills

Here are the tips to improve your skills and abilities as a yoga teacher.

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” Aristotle

Teaching yoga is a responsible job. It goes beyond just instructing the yoga poses. It is a life transforming and amazing profession that lets you share ancient wisdom with others. Yoga teacher is someone who is responsible for spreading yogic knowledge, and to become an authentic yoga teacher, opting for a yoga teacher training is the basic yet important step.

The training aims to provide the techniques required to teach about the ancient practice of yoga, to provide the major lessons, and trains one to become an effective yoga teacher.

Each time you teach yoga, there is a great opportunity to learn and grow as teachers. And here are some tips to hone your yoga teaching skills. 

1. Open to Diversity:

This helps you bring new ideas and unique methods to your practice. You can achieve diversity by practicing with as many different teachers who have their own style. Learning new varieties takes your teaching to a new level.

Also, it gives you a great opportunity to learn beyond your comfort zone. Join the mature and seasoned yoga instructors of a certain style you may not have considered before. 

2. Achieving Balance is Important:

Being a yoga teacher requires you to be balanced on every side, whether it’s mentally, emotionally or physically. This lets your students count on your teaching for long term learning.

While we aim to find balance in certain postures on the mat, there is a kind of balance that goes beyond your asana practice. The emotional and mental balance will improve your positive, peace of mind and helps you develop a deep bond with your inner-self as well as with others. Plus, you will live in the present at the moment and feel more focused. 

3. Ability to Demonstrate and Explain:

How does this yoga pose work? How to perform yoga poses? What if physical limitation doesn’t allow your student to perform certain yoga poses?

It goes without saying that you need to provide them a clear and legitimate explanation behind everything. The knowledge goes beyond poses to breathing and anatomical breakdown of one’s body as well as the function of each yoga pose. 

4. Ask For a Feedback:

Whether it’s positive or negative, feedback helps you improve your practice. However, getting constructive feedback is often difficult when you are imparting yoga lessons. Therefore, look for a trusted person. You can ask fellow instructors to know where you need improvement. Again, they should be trusted and unbiased.

Above all, don’t be harsh on yourself. We are a human being and likely to make mistakes until we get perfect. All you need to pick those areas of improvement. 

5. Know How to Meet Your Students’ Specific Needs:

Not all students are the same. One of them may be a pregnant woman. One might be someone who is totally new to yoga. Then, there are students with a certain injury. 

The point is here to understand your students and design your yoga programs to their concerns. In this scenario, you should continuously learn from education programs and workshops so that you can instruct those students more confidently. These classes or programs will help you know what modifications are suitable to offer in each particular situation.

So these are the tips that help you grow as an effective yoga teacher over time. It is all about grasping knowledge and sharing it with your students in a clear way.