Are Your Strengths as a Practitioner Holding You Back as a Teacher?

Could the very things that drew you to yoga be standing in your way as a teacher? In this episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential, Sage Rountree explores how the strengths that make you a natural fit for yoga can also become blind spots in your teaching. When you haven’t had to struggle with certain aspects of the practice, it can be harder to empathize with students who do. Sage shares personal stories and offers guidance on how to identify and work through these blind spots to become a more effective teacher.

Listen to hear:

• How your natural strengths in yoga can create blind spots in teaching
• Why you are the best teacher for the student you once were
• Tips for identifying and working through your teaching blind spots
• And a few quick stories about body parts and the weird things they do

Are you aware of your teaching blind spots? Let me know on social media @sagerountree, and check out my resources to help you grow as a teacher at sagerountree.com.

Links:

• Sage's website for yoga resources
• Connect with Sage on Instagram
• Yoga Teacher Confidential podcast site

Help me reach more yoga teachers like you by following the show and leaving a rating or review on Apple and Spotify!

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Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Explore my continuing education workshops and 300/500-hour teacher training programs. It's all at sagerountree.com.

Transcript

Can I tell you something? The very things that make you good at yoga that made you love yoga may be the exact things that are holding you back from being the best teacher you can be to your students. This is Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree. 

On this podcast, I share the secrets from my 20 plus years teaching yoga and my dozen plus years as a studio owner and yoga teacher trainer. To help you become almost everyone's favorite yoga teacher. And the key to becoming a great teacher is establishing confidence in yourself. But you need to have the right kind of confidence. 

It needs to be confidence that you have from having learned through your practice. And that's why the very things that make you good as a yoga practitioner might be the exact things that are holding you back from being the best teacher. You can be. Even if you feel like you are the farthest outlying yoga teacher on the planet, in terms of [00:01:00] flexibility or typicality as a yoga teacher, you really are blessed with some inherent strengths that drew you to the practice of yoga. If yoga never felt good in your body, you wouldn't have kept going back to yoga class. If you didn't feel an inherent resonance with, um, the techniques of mindfulness and meditation that yoga offers you, you wouldn't have kept practicing. So recognize that you already have some gifts and blessings that you may not have even taken the time to name to yourself. They gave you this natural affinity for the practice of yoga. And if you vibed with yoga from day one, if it was love at first sight, it's going to be harder for you to understand and therefore to help your students who may not have had that same experience, or even who may not be having that same experience with you when they come to their first yoga class ever with you. May I tell you I hated the first yoga class I went to and I [00:02:00] don't use the word hate lightly. 

I really, really hated it. I had been looking. Um, through the window at my gym, where I was on the stair climber doing my cardio, looking through the window into the studio space and saw people stretching. And I realized that was yoga. And I thought, oh, I'm, I'm pretty good at stretching. I think I'll go to that yoga class. 

This was back in like 1996 or seven, I think. Anyway, I went into the class and took the yoga stretching class. And was completely out of my depth. It was so much harder than it looked like it would be the teacher was speaking a foreign language and not explaining what the postures were. He would put us into these poses and I would be shaking and quivering because they were so hard to be in. And then he would walk around and correct people. Of course I didn't know how to do those poses. It was my first ever yoga class. It was kind of [00:03:00] cold in the room. And by the end I desperately had to pee. And I didn't know what the protocol was because everything else about that class experience in the gym, where I was comfortable doing my step aerobics and my slide aerobics—and my, all my other cardio- style classes spinning and so on. All of them, it would be totally fine to get off the bike and go take care of my physical needs and come back to class. 

But at the end of yoga, even though I really had to go to the bathroom, I didn't know if it would be rude or somehow disrespectful to walk out of the room, use the toilet and come back in. So I laid there shivering and desperate for the facilities. And I had such a negative experience when I walked out of that class, 

I thought that's it. Now I know how much yoga sucks. I'm never going back to yoga. Then I gave myself a moment to consider that more. And I realized I had had such a strong, negative reaction that perhaps this was something worth exploring just a [00:04:00] little bit more. If my reaction had been like my reaction to slide aerobics, which was a thing that we would do in the late nineties. 

We had this, um, big plastic sheet with bumpers on either end, we'd put booties over our sneakers and we go side to side and kind of on an ice skating, speed, skating motion. 

It was interesting, but it's not any form of exercise that I felt like I needed to repeat on the regular. And if my reaction to that first yoga class was the same as my reaction to slide aerobics. 

You wouldn't be listening to me. Talk about yoga right now because I would have been a one and done yoga student. 

Because my reaction was so intense, I thought it was something that I needed to explore. So I went back to the same class, same time the next week. The teacher was not there. He had sent a substitute teacher in his stead and this substitute teacher had us do partner yoga [00:05:00] at the gym. I had to touch some woman 

I had never met before. She was putting her feet on my back and I was supposed to be reaching back and holding her legs. Oh, I hated it even more than my first class, if that was even possible. And with that second experience I said to myself, that's it. Yoga is not for you Sage. Fast forward a few years. Until I was pregnant with my daughter. 

Who's now 23 years old, almost 24 years old. And I had best friend who lived literally four doors down from me. She was also pregnant at the same time, her son was born about six weeks after my daughter. And we said, let's go to prenatal yoga together. It was great. I had a buddy even walking into the studio and then the moment that we entered the studio, Evelyn and I knew that everybody there was in the same situation as we were, they were all pregnant too. 

So we were making friends and we were comparing woes and it was such a wonderful sense of community and connection before the class [00:06:00] even started. I was having such a 180 degree different experience at that yoga class. And in walks the teacher. It was the sub from my second ever yoga class. Now there to lead my third ever yoga class. And I saw her, I recognized her and it kind of flinched inwardly. 

Then I scanned down and I saw that she was also pregnant, leading the prenatal yoga class. And somehow I thought, okay, she knows what's going on. And she had us do partner yoga. And rub each other's swollen ankles. And I thought it was fan tastic. Now what changed? 

Did Sabine change? No Sabine was the exact same teacher in my second yoga class ever. 

And my third yoga class ever. Did Sage change? Yes. Sage was ready for the sense of connection that yoga offers because the vibe was already there. I went over with Evie. [00:07:00] We met all these other people in the class who were also pregnant and I was just ready and open for connection, yoga for union. 

And of course I had Lily inside me. So we had this symbiotic connection right there. So the entire situation is completely different from my first two experiences. And that's when I found my inherent affinity for yoga. And when I started to understand that yoga doesn't need to be a provocative and intense experience, that it can be a salve, it can be a balm. It can be a soothing experience. Chef's kiss. 

It was fantastic. 

What does this have to do with you? Each of your students is coming into your yoga classroom with their own unique set of experiences. And some of them have had very different days, very different months, years, and very different lives than you have had. The things that made you like yoga enough to want to pursue it, study, to [00:08:00] train to teach it, and then to share yoga's gifts with your students. All of those are kind of your blind spots as a teacher. So when you're thinking about checking your privilege, you need to consider where your strengths lie as a practitioner, maybe you're naturally strong and good at balancing. 

Maybe you're naturally flexible. Maybe you're really good at being still. All of these are strengths that make yoga a pleasant experience for you. But that may not be the same strengths your students share. These may be things that you need to teach to them. And here's where the problem arises. If you never had to learn it, it's going to be difficult for you to teach it. That doesn't mean it's impossible. 

It's definitely possible. And with practice, you can get their practice and listening to your students both by asking them what their struggles are. And by listening with your eyes and seeing the ways that your queues land, trying to find ways that you can get them deeper toward connection and union and [00:09:00] making their own empowered and smart choices about what to do with their bodies. But your students are not starting from the same starting point you are. Have you ever heard the phrase you're the best teacher to the student you once were. I think this is a great phrase. So I'll say it again. You are the best teacher to the student you once were. Because you had to go through the struggles to understand how to perform or, um, engage in an exercise that was difficult for you. 

It teaches you ways to break it down. You have a lived experience. If you were born really good at doing Lotus pose, you're not going to be the best teacher for someone to do Lotus pose. Should you be doing Lotus pose at all? That would be the subject of another episode, but you'll see that your inherent strengths can be the very things that you find it difficult to articulate and explain in the context of your yoga [00:10:00] classroom.

Here's where I'm really grateful that I had those first two negative experiences in yoga classes. I now know, I don't want the room to be too cold. I need to explicitly give my students permission to leave the room and come back. I don't offer corrective assists. 

In fact, I don't offer assists any more these days at all. So all of that are lessons that I learned in my very first yoga class experience. And at the same time, unless I am teaching to a group that already knows each other, or has expressly come signing up for partner yoga experience, I don't ask my students to touch each other. That comes from my second yoga class experience. I also think that there is a special, um, affinity in having a teacher who's been in the same boat as the students. 

That's what I learned from my third yoga class, where Sabine was pregnant, but Sabine couldn't stay pregnant all the time. She could keep teaching prenatal yoga, even [00:11:00] after her daughter was born. And at the same time, you may know, I specialize in teaching yoga to athletes. So some of my students are in bodies that are completely different from mine. In ways that my body would never, ever be in a million years until I am born in another manifestation.

I hope you understand. I'm not saying that you should only teach the kind of students that you once were. You may know that I specialize in teaching yoga to athletes. So I spend a lot of time working with athletes in very, very, very different bodies than my own body is. Some of them are 300 plus pound 20 year old men. 

I have never been 300 pounds. I have never been a man. I have been 20, but I think my experience at 20 was very different from these players' bodies. And then some of them are people exactly like me, like 50 year old marathoners. I get what it feels like to be a 50 year old marathoner. But that doesn't mean that I [00:12:00] can't teach the linebacker. 

I can, I just distill the lessons down to keep them really simple. I use my eyes. I. I use my ears. I talk to my students about how things are landing in their bodies. So please do not think, I am saying you should only teach the people you once were. But I do think that the things that come easiest to you as a practitioner are going to be your blind spots, the blind spots you need to check as a yoga teacher.

There is a flip side. To what your blind spots are. It is that the very things that you may be most self-conscious about as a yoga practitioner may turn out to be your greatest strengths as a yoga teacher, because those are the areas in which you have hard won experience. Those are the things that you had to learn to overcome. 

Those are the things that you had to find work arounds or alternatives for. This is how you are a sympathetic and an empathetic yoga [00:13:00] teacher to your students. It's in reflecting on your struggles in finding ways to adapt the practice, to suit your needs. Moment to moment, year to year, shape, to shape in various conditions in various climates and various weather and political circumstances. 

All of these experiences you've been amassing over the course of your yoga practice are strengths that you can parlay into guiding your yoga students toward better connection. 

Maybe you've had a knee replacement. Great. I mean, I'm not happy for you about the surgery and the rehab, but boy, does that make you better at helping people find ways to express the shapes and the awareness in their bodies that you also had to work through as you were rehabbing your knees, and as you were dealing with ways to cushion your knee scars, when you're on hands and knees, all of this is making you not only a better teacher to other people who have had knee replacements, but a better teacher to everyone. [00:14:00] Similarly, if you are an atypical size or an atypical height. That is not necessarily a detraction from your ability to teach yoga. 

It may actually be your super power as a yoga teacher. 

I have practiced and taught yoga at a variety of ages and a variety of sizes. I have practiced and taught yoga in my thirties, forties, and fifties, I have practiced and taught yoga um pregnant. Like hugely pregnant. I have practiced and taught yoga postpartum. I have practiced and taught yoga deep in marathon and Ironman training when I was really tired. I practiced and taught yoga um, the day after running an ultra marathon, where I have to actually had to get a student to demo, because while I could talk through the class, I couldn't do any demonstrating at all. 

Because once that was done on the floor, I was not going to be getting back up. I've practiced and taught yoga 50 pounds heavier than I am now. And I've practiced and taught yoga at my current weight. And [00:15:00] all of this is giving me a well of experience from which I can help my students. So there has been some variability in my body and the way I use it over the years, but there are some things that are fixed in my body. I'm a cis het woman. I am in a female body. 

And I don't understand without being told what it's like to have male genitalia and to have like male musculature. This is something I have learned quite explicitly from my students. And I don't mean this is going to be graphic. I just mean they had to be explicit and tell me. Oh, no, please. Don't ask me to do that. Years ago, maybe 10 years ago or so I was working with the football team in their locker room. 

And I went over, this was back in the days when I did some manual assists, I went over to give one of the players. This was a big guy. He was a defensive lineman. He was probably 280 pounds. You know, absolute like muscle, like fantastic shape, big, big, [00:16:00] bulky, strong a player, lying down on his back with his knees, stacked and dropped over to the side in a reclining twist. 

I approached to give him that assist where you'd put one hand on the chest and the other hand on the outer knee and ease him a little bit deeper into the twist. He saw me coming. He put his finger up. To signal, stop. Don't do it, which is great right there. Right? That your students feel like they have permission to decline any touch at any time. 

That's something we very much want for our students, but he held up his finger said, wait, he reached down, separated his legs, repeated repositioned, his genitalia, closed his knees again, and then gave me two thumbs up. Was I interested in that. Yes, I was. Was there anything sexual or graphic about it? 

Absolutely not. I was interested because I don't have those particular body parts that I was about to, bless his sweet heart, I was about to completely smush him by putting my hands on him in that way. And [00:17:00] it's not that I was putting my hands anywhere near those body parts. It was that he had a different physical circumstance, something that I do not understand. I have practiced yoga uh, as a nursing mother. I remember going into a child's pose, feeling all relaxed. 

I felt so relaxed. My milk let down. I pulled up and I had two big wet patches on my boobs, like bodies do interesting things. And unless you are a nursing mother, you don't understand what a protracted hold in child's pose might do to the mammary glands. So bodies are interesting and bodies are diverse student to student. What are we supposed to do about that? 

We want to give our students the agency. We want to remember that our students are the heroes and we are simply there as the guides to present them with a range of options of things they might like to try doing, and then give them the trust to make their own choices. And to [00:18:00] lead their practice where it needs to go given the body that they have. It would be the height of arrogance for you with your privilege, whatever that privilege is, whether it's being naturally flexible or naturally strong or naturally a particular size, it would be the height of arrogance for you to tell your students, oh, just do it this way, or you need to do it this way. No, you need, you need to let your students be the heroes you need to let your students make the choices that work best in their bodies, given whatever it is that's going on. So my reminder to you is not to take your blind spots and let them lead you. Instead it's to begin the hard work of recognizing your privilege. Of realizing there is so much that you don't know. About yoga in general. 

And about each of your students' bodies in yoga that you couldn't possibly try to [00:19:00] work from the assumption that you knew best. Instead, this is a reminder for you to center your students' agency, to let them be the heroes and to re, to remember your place as a simple guide for your students, so that they can find yoga, connection, and union. 

Here's an affirmation to help you remember. I recognize, I don't even know what I don't know. I recognize, I don't even know what I don't know. Maybe you've heard this presented as one definition of learning. Is that once you start to perceive the enormity of all the things you don't know, that's when you begin to achieve true wisdom. So, how are you going to learn to help your students? 

You're going to ask them to tell you what works for them. You're going to use your eyes and your ears, and you're going to keep them at the center of the [00:20:00] stage. 

As you start to see clearly that you have blind spots and start to get the sense of what might be in your blind spots. The best thing you can do is to continue to grow as a yoga teacher, to talk to your students, to see your students and to engage in ongoing continuing education. And that's not just for the CEUs. 

That's because growth is critical to your ongoing practice. Growth is part of the journey. I have a lot of resources if you're interested in studying with me. I've written several books on yoga for athletes and several books on teaching yoga. I have a host of courses on my website that will help you be a better yoga teacher, to people of various populations, including athletes, but also folks who need a more gentle yoga practice. 

And I share tips in my newsletter and on my social media that I hope will help you be a more sympathetic and empathetic yoga teacher to all of your [00:21:00] students. 

Let's connect. You can find me sagerountree.com, on the socials @sagerountree, and on the podcast website at yogateacherconfidential.com. Thank you so much for listening. I'm really grateful for your time. And I see the work that you are putting in to be a better yoga teacher to all of your students. Recognizing your blind spots is one way to help.