Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher
Yoga Teacher Confidential is your exclusive backstage pass to the unspoken truths of being a yoga teacher. Hosted by Sage Rountree, PhD, E-RYT500, this podcast pulls back the curtain on what really happens in the yoga classroom—and how you can become the most confident, capable teacher for your students.
Season 1 is all about building confidence in your teaching practice. From overcoming imposter syndrome to learning and using students’ names effectively, you’ll gain actionable tips to improve your presence. We’ll explore what it takes to be a standout substitute teacher and much more.
Each week across the season, you’ll receive Sage’s expert advice, delivered mostly in solo episodes. Through personal stories and examples from her extensive experience, Sage will help you feel more authentic and comfortable in front of your class. Plus, you’ll hear from seasoned yoga teachers who, like you, are working to lead their yoga classrooms with confidence, grace, and ease.
Sage has over two decades of experience teaching yoga, running a yoga studio, and working with everyone from beginners to elite athletes, including NFL and NBA players and several University of North Carolina teams and coaches. Her signature offering, Teaching Yoga to Athletes, helps teachers master the skills needed to serve a specialized and rewarding niche turning athletes into champions while earning good money.
Sage also specializes in yoga teacher development. You might know Sage from her 11 books, including The Art of Yoga Sequencing, The Professional Yoga Teacher’s Handbook, and Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses (co-authored with Alexandra DeSiato). Maybe you’ve taken a class with her online or at major yoga festivals like Wanderlust and Yoga Journal LIVE, or read her advice for teachers in Yoga Journal.
Join Sage as she shares the secrets to becoming (almost) every student’s favorite yoga teacher. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your skills, and whether you teach athletes, beginners, or other yoga teachers, this podcast will help you teach with confidence, clarity, and authenticity. Your students—and your career—will thank you.
Connect with Sage and find more valuable resources, including her Teaching Yoga to Athletes online yoga teacher training program, at sagerountree.com.
Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher
Why Blank Expressions in Your Yoga Class Aren’t What You Think
Ever looked out during a yoga class and thought, “Why do my students look so disengaged? They must be hating this!” Good news: those blank faces are often a sign of deep connection—not disinterest.
In this episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential, Sage Rountree sheds light on the often misunderstood signals yoga teachers receive from their students during class. Discover why blank expressions, furrowed brows, and even sleepy faces could be indicators of a truly engaged, introspective practice. Sage shares her own teaching experiences and valuable insights to help you embrace the quiet, counterintuitive signs of a successful yoga class, freeing yourself from the need to entertain or seek outward validation. Learn to recognize that true connection in yoga is often subtle and inward.
You’ll hear how:
• Students’ expressions in yoga often don’t reflect disengagement; they signal deep personal connection.
• In yoga, unlike in academic or high-intensity fitness classes, students don’t need to actively respond or engage with the instructor.
• Quiet faces, even sleepy ones, often mean students are having an inward experience, processing their practice.
• Focusing on your students’ journey rather than outward engagement frees you from the need to entertain and reinforces your role as a guide rather than the center of attention.
For more, visit Sage’s site: sagerountree.com.
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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.
S1E8: Why Blank Expressions in Your Yoga Class Aren’t What You Think
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[00:00:00] Can I tell you something? From the front of your classroom, it looks like your students are not having a great time in your yoga class. But that could not be farther from the truth. The sooner you get used to looking out and seeing a room full of blank expressions, the more comfortable you are going to be as a yoga teacher.
This is Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree. In this podcast, we explore the secrets of becoming a truly great yoga teacher. And one thing I have had to learn over 20 plus years of teaching yoga is to drop the story that I began to tell myself when I look out and see my students' expressions are completely blank.
I used to teach English literature while I was in graduate school at the University of North Carolina, working on my PhD. I started off teaching composition and then taught literature. This is how I know to fill the time with the sound of my voice on this podcast. And when in my English classroom, [00:01:00] I asked a question and I looked out and saw blank expressions, that was not a good thing.
Right? We want our students in that kind of classroom situation to be engaged with us. We want them to interact and we want them to do so out loud, but that's not what's going on in a yoga class. In a yoga class, you are asking questions and then your students are silently supplying their own answers to the questions. The thing is as a yoga teacher, you never get to hear that. And part of what supplying your own answers to your teacher's question looks like is a very blank expression. Another thing I used to teach is spinning or indoor cycling.
This is an indoor cycling class on a stationary bike with music and lights and a, for some folks, they would sequence with a very difficult workout. My classes were generally more rooted in actual on cycling training. So they were never like full out sprint the whole time. But in those classes, if I looked out and I saw [00:02:00] my students with furrowed brows or gritted teeth, that was actually a good sign. So there's another example of a different kind of reaction that we're looking for in class, where in indoor cycling, we're trying to get our students, um, out toward the edge of their comfort zone to ask them to do a whole bunch of work.
They're sweating and furrowed brows is a good sign. Again, that is not the case in a yoga classroom. Don't want to look out and see your students working to that level of intensity. So again, looking out and seeing blank expressions, which is something that does happen in a yoga class can actually be a positive thing because it means that your students are working well within their boundaries. And not going too far toward the edge. In an English classroom,
if you look out and the students are asleep, that's a bad thing. In a yoga classroom, if you look out and your students are asleep, that's pretty much a good thing. It means they were exploring the [00:03:00] other edge, not that upper edge of intensity, where we sometimes are and say a single leg standing balance pose in yoga and not that edge of just barely hanging on in an indoor cycling class, but down at the lower edge, the edge of consciousness. And if our students slip over that edge, nothing bad happens except maybe they snore and feel slightly embarrassed to catch themselves snoring. That is a good place to be.
And that often comes after several minutes of a very blank expression.
When I teach advanced studies teacher trainings, either my signature program, teaching yoga to athletes, or the modules that I lead as part of our 300 slash 500 hour yoga teacher training at my studio,
inevitably the experienced teachers in the room confirm this. It is often the student who has the most blank expression or even the furrowed brow kind of serious resting bitch face expression in class. Who leaves directly after class, [00:04:00] without you getting a chance to check in. Cause they look like they didn't like it and you wanted to see how they're feeling, but they hustle out of the room. Those are the very students that then send you a message later saying your class is exactly what I needed today. Why would that be? Why would it be that experienced teachers are seeing this happen over and over and over again? It's because when someone is having this deep internal experience that their faces go to this kind of strange place socially, it's not the kind of face we are used to feeling comfortable looking at from one person, let alone from a room full of 20, or plus people making that same face and pointing it in our direction.
But that face can be the face of inner experience of connection. Of union and of yoga.
Similarly experienced teachers will tell you it's the classes that you think you are whiffing, the ones where you think you are [00:05:00] bombing, the ones you think are not landing with your students. That usually generate the best feedback afterward. Again, it's because your students' expressions are not a reliable indication of their internal experience in a yoga class. In an English classroom, maybe. In a spinning indoor cycling classroom, maybe. In a yoga classroom?
No. In fact, I think the converse is true. I think if you look out and you see your students smiling, where your students are laughing, where your students' eyes are tracking you around the room now we're operating on a different plane. And it isn't the most fruitful plane for yoga, union, and connection on the student's part, because if your students are engaged with you, if you have a conversational class, if you're telling jokes, trying to get a rise out of them, you are entertaining your students. And that is by definition, pulling them out of their internal experience and trying to draw them into your [00:06:00] world. Remember in your yoga class, you are just the guide.
You are not the hero. You are just the stage manager. You are not the star. So if you find that your students are giving you back a whole lot of smiles and laughter, while that can feel really good to your ego, please check yourself and make sure that you aren't simply entertaining that you're guiding them more toward their inner experience.
That inner experience is often accompanied by a blank expression.
Here's an exercise that I would often do in the first weekend of the 200 hour yoga teacher training we offer at my studio. And Hey, did you know, there's a video version of this podcast? Maybe you're watching it right now on YouTube, but if you're listening to the audio version, I'll describe this face for you. So I'm furrowing my brow and I'm kind of gazing off looking vaguely peeved.
And I'd asked my students. What am I thinking? [00:07:00]
And they would all say, Ooh, you're not happy. You're not liking this. No, the answer always. And even just now, as I was making this face, for those of you watching the video version was pizza. I'm thinking pizza. I'm always thinking pizza and just doing it with this expression that doesn't have much connection to the actual consideration in my head of how I could really go for some pizza. If you can't discern what I am thinking, pizza, a happy thought, from a furrowed brow and a kind of intense glare, then please don't try to discern what your students are thinking when they give you those blank expressions in your yoga class.
How are you going to remember this?
The next time you are in front of the room, looking out on a sea of blank expressions. Well, you're going to remind yourself of your role of your scope of practice [00:08:00] as a yoga teacher. You are the guide. You are not the hero. Here's an affirmation to help you.
I don't get hung up on my students' expressions. I don't get hung up on my students' expressions.
That is the short and sweet message for this little episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree. So glad that you took the time to listen to this message. I really hope it lands with you. And I hope you remember this message the next time you look out and see your students giving you that kind of weird expression, socially, it's strange, but in the context of your yoga classroom, it's really, really useful.
Let me know how this lands with you and how you are coping with this new reality in your next few classes, you can reach me at sagerountree.com with no letter D or on the socials at @sagerountree. Be well, I'll see you next time.
