Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher

Why Every Yoga Teacher Should Lead Workshops (Even Beginners!)

• Sage Rountree | Yoga Teacher Trainer and Author of The Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Life as a yoga teacher can feel like a grind, but workshops can change that.

Whether you’re a fresh graduate of your 200-hour training or a seasoned teacher, a workshop is a smart next choice for your yoga career. Leading a yoga workshop can elevate your teaching, solve your students’ problems, and build your confidence.

Listen to hear:

  • Why workshops are essential for building confidence and teaching your niche
  • How workshops can deepen your students’ yoga practice and loyalty
  • The difference between workshops and weekly classes
  • How to use feedback to improve future workshops

Introduction (0:00): Why workshops are the perfect next step for yoga teachers.

Workshops Build Confidence (1:00): How leading workshops can help you hone your niche and feel secure in your teaching.

Workshops Test Ideas (3:00): Experimenting with low-commitment content to solve specific problems.

Workshops Can Happen Online (4:43): Expanding the definition of workshops beyond in-person formats.

Workshops Are Like Movies (5:02): Delivering deep, impactful experiences compared to weekly yoga classes.

Stories: Good and Bad (7:30): Lessons I learned from teaching workshops early in my career.

Collect Feedback (12:58): Why gathering feedback is key to improving and iterating workshops.

Give Clear Takeaways (14:24): The importance of providing actionable solutions for your students.

Help Your Students Better (15:43): How workshops support students’ growth and problem-solving.

Scaling Your Career (17:00): Using workshops to diversify your income and teaching impact.

How to Get Started: Resources (17:13): Free and paid tools to help you plan and promote workshops.

Affirmation (18:46): “I help students solve problems with yoga.”

Mentioned resources:

📧 Free 5-Lesson Email Course: Learn how to design and lead your first workshop

📘 Workshop Workbook: The ultimate guide to creating, marketing, and improving yoga workshops

For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential, check out my YouTube channel, and follow me on socials:


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.

S1E10: Teaching Yoga Workshops

[00:00:00]

Can I tell you something? Most teachers wait way too long to design and lead their first yoga workshop. But designing and teaching a yoga workshop is actually a great first next step, right out of your 200 hour yoga teacher training. I know, you're probably thinking if you're a newer teacher, oh, but I'm not experienced enough. 

That's okay. It's actually your fresh experience. That's going to make you a good yoga workshop leader because you can help your students solve problems with yoga in the context of a workshop in ways that go way beyond where you could get your students in the course of a regular week in and week out class. And a yoga workshop allows you to focus on one thing. And you can pull in modalities from outside of yoga, like journaling or discussion, in order to help your students feel connected and feel like they're solving their problems with yoga. I'm Sage Rountree. 

And this is Yoga Teacher Confidential, [00:01:00] where I share the secrets of becoming a truly great yoga teacher. I bet when you're thinking of your favorite teachers, you're thinking of people with whom you have studied in the context of a yoga workshop. Yes, it's wonderful to take a regular weekly class with a teacher, but in the context of a workshop, you can really go deep on a particular topic. 

You can solve a particular problem, and I bet your favorite teachers have done that for you.

If you are feeling like you are too fresh of a yoga teacher to consider designing a yoga workshop or offering a yoga workshop. Let me say, I think it's that very freshness that may be your super power, that you are still excited about yoga, that you have recently solved some problems in your own life using tools from yoga. You're probably listening to this season of Yoga Teacher Confidential because we're covering the topic of building confidence as a yoga teacher. And if you are a newer teacher [00:02:00] or out of practice teaching yoga, you probably think I don't have the chops. 

I don't feel confident enough to lead a workshop, but I would argue the exact opposite. That workshops are a format in which you can quickly build confidence and feel really secure in what you're teaching, because you get to make it so specific. You get to teach your niche, which is kind of a tongue twister to say, but you will learn to teach your niche as you develop yoga workshops. And that means that you're going to feel like you have a really good grasp about the material. Where your regular weekly class might go kind of broad, cover a broad range of movements of broad range of planes, of movement, about broad range of post categories and types. What you do in a workshop can get really, really specific. 

It helps you hone in on exactly what your students need in order to solve their problems with yoga in order to progress in their hero's journeys. 

[00:02:59] Workshops test ideas

[00:03:00] Workshops also give you a way to test ideas with low commitment. You aren't asking people to sign up for a weekly experience. You're not committing yourself and that slot in your schedule to a weekly experience, you can try these as a one-off, even as a pop-up. It's an experience that has a specific purpose solving a particular problem with yoga. And that is the only reason why it needs to happen. 

Now workshops can drive people to your regular class. 

If people have a good experience with you, because you helped them solve a problem with yoga. In the context of the workshop that you teach, you probably will have developed a regular returning customer, a regular returning student for your career. 

[00:03:43] Workshops can happen online

Now, when we're thinking about workshops, please don't think that I'm talking only about the kind of yoga workshop that happens at a studio on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon or on retreat in Bali or Costa Rica. Our workshop is simply a unique [00:04:00] piece of content that solves a problem using yoga. Now in this definition, you'll see that your workshop doesn't have to happen in person. It can happen online. 

It can happen in a private podcast. It can happen via some other kind of audio recording. Or can it happen via asynchronous video, which is just to say, you're making a recording available on demand to people. In fact, this is a great way to help people at their time of need. If they are, for example, a caregiver, who's having a hard time. Finding ways to take care of themselves, then what better way to serve than to meet them online in small packages that could even be a workshop right there. 

So when I say workshop, don't just think that this is something that happens at the studio with six weeks of promotion leading up to it. It doesn't need to be like that. Our workshop is simply a way in which you can help people [00:05:00] solve their problems with yoga.

[00:05:02] Workshops are like movies

 I like to think of workshops as feature films. They exist in and of themselves. 

You can, in the context of a yoga workshop, deliver a really satisfying narrative arc so that you have introduced a problem. You explore a variety of solutions and then you guide people to choose the solution that will work best for them. The problem might be something like I can't do a handstand and then you show some various ways to get into a handstand. The student makes a choice to decide what has solved their problem in getting into handstand. Or maybe it is I'm a caregiver 

and I am having a tough time finding self care time in my caregiving schedule for myself. So that's the problem. The solution might be to teach a few mindful. Mindfulness exercises does teach some breath exercises to deliver a short yoga nidra, maybe via recording. And [00:06:00] all of those will be potential solutions from what your students can choose the pieces that will work for them, and then weave it into their schedule. 

So each of these is a problem that reaches a solution, just like a movie has a character that goes through a narrative arc and reaches a denouement, a resolution at the end. 

If a movie does really well, maybe it has a sequel, a part two, or maybe it becomes a regular series, like Fast and the Furious or the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. But it can stand alone as a particular discrete and unique work of art. 

By contrast a regular weekly class is much more like a sit-com. People drop in. 

They drop out. They're familiar with the characters, I guess, here the poses are the characters. And you get some satisfying jokes out of it. You get some conclusion to the storyline in the episode, but it isn't as [00:07:00] deep as you would receive in a workshop. What we like to say in workshops speak is you haven't built a world in the regular class that you can build in the context of a workshop. 

Workshops can include some really specific world-building, um, some rules and mores of their own, um, some branding of their own imagery, imagery, music. All of this can get really hyper specific in the context of a workshop in ways that go beyond what would ever happen in a regular class. 

[00:07:30] Stories: good and bad

Story time. 

Let me share some stories from my career with teaching workshops. First, the good. I was not slow to begin teaching workshops in the first years of my yoga teaching career in part, because I was super eager to teach my niche. Yeah. That is a tongue twister. I was super eager to teach my niche. And to bring yoga to athletes. 

So I saw this opportunity to teach yoga in the running [00:08:00] store to teach yoga at the local bike store to teach yoga, to running clubs at the Y M C A. And I began offering workshops to these people that let me have this focus group of students who had a particular problem. Their bodies were tight and they were tired because they were training for a marathon. 

Say, And I was able to develop some really specialized programming, some sequences, some techniques, some exercises that would help them solve their problems using yoga. As I grew more aware of what their problems were and how I could serve them and help them solve them. That gave me ideas to generate more workshops and create more content. For people who were facing this very same problem. That led me in the first wave of podcasting back in the mid two thousands to create a little slideshow podcast called Sage Yoga Training. 

I think you can still find it if you dig around for it. And Sage Yoga Training was images and voice [00:09:00] instructions for brief routines to help you unwind directly after your workout, you would put them on your iPod. You may be too young, or you may be of the age to remember that iPods at first had no screen. 

And then they had a screen that could show a static image. So that's why I used a slide show format. At any rate, the podcast was itself, a little mini version of a workshop. 

That podcast wound up getting me a book deal. When I was thinking about writing the Athlete's Guide to Yoga, I pitched a publisher, the one and only publisher I pitched wound up taking this pitch. And I had sent them the podcast as an example of the kind of content that I was creating and the kind of messaging, the kind of problems that I could help reader solve with yoga. 

And I am quite convinced that that was a major part of my ability to secure that first book deal. So teaching on workshop early on that might lead your career in a really, really exciting directions. Let me tell you [00:10:00] a story from the first big deal workshop that I taught. I taught at Yoga Works in New York city down on Union Square, a workshop, 

it was a teaching yoga to athletes workshop. This must've been 2007 or so I think it was before the book had even come out. Maybe I was drafting the book. I maybe had one or two articles written, um, published in Runner's World. Possibly one or two in Yoga Journal, maybe not even at that point at any rate, it was just enough to get me in at Yoga Works, which was a big studio at Union Square. And across the country, of course. And I taught a workshop. 

It was two hours. I think of yoga for athletes. We did sun salutations and moon salutations, and I thought I was very clever to take people out of the plane of motion that they usually are in as runners and into the side to side. I remember there was a particular participant in that workshop who [00:11:00] was, uh, Unique. Coming into the workshop. 

There was some unique energy there. And he had asked me before the workshop even began, I guess, to prove what a big deal runner he was that he had asked me, did I have any Advil that he could take he needed? As he said, his vitamin I. 

Now quick sidebar that is strange to ask your yoga teacher for drugs. And it's also not a great idea. If you are reaching for the Advil or the vitamin I every day, yoga is not the fix to your problems. Doing less running is probably the number one fix to your problems. And in fact, yoga, if it's practiced too vociferously too aggressively can only increase the amount of inflammation in your body. But back to the topic at hand. I taught the workshop. 

I was nervous and excited. I felt like it went well. And the next day I got an email from this guy. Saying that my workshops sucked and like for very, very [00:12:00] clear, Um, very clear reasons. He's like, I didn't get a takeaway from your workshop. I D I D I don't understand what was in it for me from this workshop. Now, given the way that he had asked his yoga teacher for drugs and the energy that he was bringing to the classroom, I was able to contextualize it for myself and remind myself that feedback is very often expression of the giver's taste and not necessarily an expression of my own performance and my delivery of the workshop itself. But it stuck with me. And I've come to realize over time that he had a really, really good point. Your workshop participants need to be really clear on what's in it for them, and they need to be really clear on how they're going to take the tools that you deliver in your workshop and apply them to solve problems in an ongoing manner across time, into the rest of their lives. So 

[00:12:58] Collect feedback

I have some points for you here that [00:13:00] I think will really help you as you begin to design and deliver yoga workshops. Number one is that feedback is something you can and should collect at the end of the yoga workshop. I didn't even think to ask for feedback. 

This guy gave me unsolicited feedback, but it's really useful because this is a, we know that this is a one-off experience, the best way for you to grow and iterate the workshop so that it's better every time. So that next time you spiraled up and the time after that it's spiraled even better. The best way to do that is to ask for feedback. You can do this just by handing out a blank piece of paper or by sending people to a website, it will all depend on who your host is for the workshop, what their non-solicitation policies are, what their tech capabilities are. 

But at the very minimum, ask people for a, keep, a drop and an ad I'd like to call those roses, thorns and buds. Keep the roses. What were the things that [00:14:00] you learned? What were the main takeaways that you expect to walk out of this with drop the thorns? What could have been cut for time or what was unclear? 

And then what are the buds? What would you like to add? If you were to receive this workshop again in the future, what would you like to see added? So feedback collection. Perfectly proforma in a workshop, not typical for a yoga class.

[00:14:24] Give clear takeaways

Having a clear takeaway might look like providing your students with a syllabus of what you want over in the workshop. With maybe a mapped out version of the sequence or written instructions describing the technique that you taught. Having a takeaway might mean pointing them to a private YouTube video where you're demonstrating the very thing that, that you spent the workshop working on. Or it might mean sending them with some other action step. Waste that they can deploy the skills that they learned in your workshop, in the context of their regular lives. When you do this, then your impact goes [00:15:00] beyond the 90 minutes or two hours of your workshop. Then it seeps into your students' regular lives and continues to help them grow and solve their problems with yoga.

Working backward from this takeaway and understanding that you'll be collecting feedback from your students, 

each workshop that you teach is an opportunity to really focus your message, to solve one particular problem for one particular person. Each of your audience is, uh, an N of one. And to solve it in a way that is replicable, even without your physically being there to give them tools that they can use in their day-to-day lives.

[00:15:43] Help your students better

Teaching workshops is going to help your students immensely. It helps them grow it fast, tracks their practice. It solves their problems. It also gives them a chance to see you really shine as an expert in the areas that you have expertise [00:16:00] on, whether it is doing a handstand or finding a little three minute exercise to give yourself some self-care in the context of a difficult situation.

And when your students see this, they're going to come back, not only to your next workshop, but probably also to your regular classes.

Not only will leading workshops sooner than later help your students. It will, of course also help your career. 

You will develop teaching skill, your ability to deliver a compact message in the course of anything that you teach, be at a workshop or a regular class. You will become known as an expert in a particular niche as the one who can teach their niche and solve problems with yoga.

This can be huge. As you seek to move beyond the hustle grind of studio culture, of teaching a regular weekly class, and diversify your yoga teaching career in ways 

that mean you don't have to be physically present to have an impact. [00:17:00] And that's where you can really scale your yoga teaching. You can scale your impact. And of course you can also scale your income, particularly when you're offering your workshops and your content online, as opposed to in-person. 

[00:17:13] How to get started: resources

How will you get started teaching a workshop? 

I have a resource for you. In fact, I have two. If you'll come to my website at sagerountree.com, you'll see that I am offering a free five- lesson email course. I drip it out over 10 days, but there's also an option to binge it like a Netflix show. So you can always skip to the next email and you could do them all over the course of an hour or so, and sketch out your own. Workshop, including next steps toward placing it toward planning it toward promoting it and toward replicating it. 

But I also have a workshop work book available to you for only $37. It will give you all the prompts you need first to know yourself, then to start to plan how you can help your students solve their problems with [00:18:00] yoga, how to place the workshop at a studio or at a location of your choosing or online, how to write a promotion plan, how to contract your workshop. 

And of course, how to collect feedback from your students and iterate your workshop. The Workshop Workbook you'll find in the show notes, of course, but then also I, in the tab on yoga teacher resources on my website at sagerountree.com. When you buy the Workshop Workbook, you'll also get access to some videos explaining how to use it. 

But I believe that the workbook itself gives you everything that you need. So you could create a good workshop in under an hour or so. If you're a fast typer.

I know you will get huge value by helping your students solve problems with yoga. 

[00:18:46] Affirmation

So here's your affirmation. I help students solve problems with yoga. I help students solve problems with yoga.

Come on over to sagerountree.com. Grab that five lesson [00:19:00] email course, pick up the Workshop Workbook and let me know what you're working on. As you develop workshops to help your students and your career. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree, and I will see you next time. 

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