Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher
Yoga Teacher Confidential is your backstage pass to the unspoken truths of being a yoga teacher. Sage Rountree, PhD, E-RYT500, dives into the real challenges and rewards of teaching yoga, offering expert advice and secrets to help you build confidence, connect with your students, and teach with authenticity. Sage draws on her two decades of experience teaching yoga, running a studio, and training teachers to share practical insights you can use right away. You'll also hear advice from her books, including Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses, The Art of Yoga Sequencing, and The Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook. Whether you’re navigating imposter syndrome, mastering classroom presence, or refining your skills to teach specialized niches like athletes, this podcast empowers you to lead your classes with clarity, grace, and ease.
Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher
The Most Painful and Productive Way to Improve as a Yoga Teacher
What’s the best way to improve your yoga teaching? It’s using the tool you may be holding right now: your phone. It’s simple, free—and yes, a bit painful. In this episode, I walk you through how recording and reviewing your classes can help you identify areas for growth and fast-track your teaching improvement.
Chapters:
1.[00:00:00] The Best Thing You Can Do for Your Teaching
The uncomfortable but transformative habit that will elevate your teaching.
2.[00:02:09] The Power of Video for Self-Evaluation
Video recordings can help you spot verbal tics, unclear cues, and pacing issues.
3.[00:06:29] How to Use Video for Growth
I walk you through the steps for recording your classes and reviewing them effectively.
4.[00:09:00] Bonus Exercises for Deeper Insights
Discover next-level techniques like transcribing your teaching or following your own class to evaluate pacing and clarity.
5.[00:11:00] Affirmation: I Self-Evaluate for Growth
Remind yourself why self-assessment is a vital tool for serving your students.
👉 Ready to improve your teaching? Check out my books and mentorship opportunities:
Resources Mentioned:
• Mentorship waitlist: sagerountree.com/live-online/
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.
Can I tell you something? If your goal is to become almost everyone's favorite yoga teacher, to be the very best teacher you can be, you need to do one thing. It's going to be incredibly painful, but it's also free. And it's the very best thing you can do to be a good teacher. In this episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential, I will break it down for you. I will walk you through it and then I will encourage you to actually follow my Sage advice. I'm Sage Rountree. Thank you so much for listening. Okay. There is one thing you can do to get to your goal of being a fantastic yoga teacher, as soon as possible. The good news is it's totally free. And it's using a tool that you probably already have on your person at this time. The bad news is it's going to take some discomfort on your part. Have you figured out what it is yet. It is self-assessment using video. Pulling out your phone and pressing record on the video. So that you can watch yourself teaching later. When you watch yourself teaching later, you are going to very quickly find some easy fixes so that you can be the teacher you dream of being. In the last episode of the show, we talked about yoga teacher burnout and how important it is to recognize it so that we can address the problem. And the same principle applies here without knowing that there is a problem. How can we ever hope to fix it? I know that you're probably already experiencing some resistance to this idea, but know that if you do not take the effort to correct your mistakes, you're never going to grow. You're never going to adapt. And do you know who suffers? Ultimately, it's not just you, it's your students. You're keeping yourself from being the best teacher that you can be so that you can help them best. And if that is your job, as I believe it is. And as I bet you do too, then it's worth taking the time to go through this discomfort of watching yourself on video so that you can learn and grow. Here's what you need to do. Record yourself. If you are worried about video, like this just feels like: Sage! This is a bridge too far! Okay. Let's just start with audio. And as you grow used to hearing your own voice, you'll hear it a ton just from the audio. Then along the way down the line, you can upgrade to video. When you watch the video, you will see so much, you will very quickly see what your verbal ticks are, what your filler words are, where you fall into sing-songy yoga teacher, voice. Oh, that's a killer. You'll hear that on the audio as well. You'll also check whether you are looking at your students. Are you making eye contact with your students or are you somehow facing away from your students or sticking to your mat like it's a life raft? All of this will very quickly become evident in the first five or six minutes of video that you watch. And that means you will recognize the problem and therefore be able to begin to correct. You'll also see on video where your cues may be unclear either because you'll notice your students standing there without following the cues, or because you will hear the language that doesn't make sense even to you, even though it came out of your own mouth. And by recording yourself and then timing scientist's side, you'll notice where your class pacing may be off where you might move too fast on one side relative to the other. Or where things start to slow and drag. Now I do this a lot. I am not hypocritically encouraging you to do something that I am not willing to do myself. For many years, I recorded my classes first onto an SD card that I would then send off to a streaming service to share. And then for a good year or so with a live streaming camera in the room. And, y'all, this was before the pandemic made recording and airing classes really normal.
I got to tell you:that was extra pressure. It was extremely stressful for me to be both holding the space for the live students in the room who had paid. And also be managing the camera. And when we were live streaming the class, dealing with live students and trying to keep the stream alive, keep myself in frame. Ooh, that was a whole lot to think about. So know that when you are simply setting up your camera to record yourself for a self audit for self evaluation, the pressure will be considerably lower. But what you wind up with is real gold in helping you fast track your development as a teacher. Did you know that this show has a video element? Well, maybe you do know because you're watching it on YouTube right now, but if you don't. I'd like for you to know that this is also a video podcast and the episodes are up on my YouTube channel at Sage Rountree, which has no letter D and my last name Rountree. Now did you know this? I am, at least at present, a one-woman show for this podcast. I am recording it on my own. I'm editing it and producing it on my own. And I am promoting it on my own, which means that I don't get to just turn on the camera and then dump the files off on a producer who handles it from there. No, I get to watch and listen to every word I say. That is why I am especially grateful for your enthusiasm about this podcast, for telling your yoga teacher training colleagues about it, for giving it a five- star rating and a review on your favorite podcast app, or adding a comment on Spotify, which I just learned exists. And I have been really grateful to find the sweet comments y'all have left me there. I intend to do better at logging in and responding to them in the future. I get real time feedback immediately after I record each episode into what my ticks are, where my sing-songy-ness comes in, what my sibilant esses sound like. And so on. It can be painful, but I am here to tell you: it gets easier. The more you look at yourself on video, the more you hear yourself on audio, the less cringey it becomes. Don't let this initial cringe factor stop you from doing this very important exercise. Let's talk about exactly how you can use video or audio for self assessment. Number one, you make sure your phone is charged. Number two. You take it to your next class and you have a really quick and Frank conversation with the students who are there about what you're using it for. You explain, I am doing this simply for self evaluation. It is not going on YouTube. It is not going to be shared with anybody, but me and this is so I can be the best teacher I can be for you. If you do not want to appear even on video for my own, self-assessment please set up on this side of the room. You'll be angling your phone away from that side of the room, if you don't mind being on so that I can see how my cues land, please set up on this side of the room. Then you prop your phone against some yoga blocks. You could even kind of use the blocks to hold it up. At some level where it will capture you for some or most of the time that you're teaching. You don't need to use an external mic. You'll probably hear just fine. In fact, as you're getting used to the self-evaluation process. Having less than perfect audio quality might actually be a bonus for you. It's one less thing to cringe about. Then you'll make sure that you hit record and you will teach your class. After class, you will set aside an hour or two. You will take a deep breath. Do your own calming practice. Pour yourself your favorite beverage and sit down and watch or listen to the recording. Your first reaction. If you're anything like me is like, oh my gosh. When did I turn into my mother? Do I really look like that? Do I really sound like that? The answer is generally. Yes, you do. Um, hear our own voices differently inside our own heads. So get that initial cringe. Let that initial feeling pass through you. Then go back and watch a second time. When you go back the second time, how about we look for the Sri? We look for the good we put on our heart eyes and we appreciate all the things that we're already doing. Right. I know you will see so much you're doing right on your video. You'll see your great care for your students. You'll see your inspiring use of themes or your creative cues. You'll see the love that you have to share with your yoga students, because you love your yoga practice so much. Hooray. Let's celebrate that on this next pass through. Go back again. And look with again, heart eyes, but with some constructive feedback for yourself. What could be even better. Listen carefully for your filler words for your verbal ticks, listen carefully for the things that aren't landing properly. If you have students on video, look to see how your cues are landing with them, make yourself some notes and some action steps so that you can begin to improve on the things that you could be doing even better. Here's some extra credit. This is real next level stuff. Could you put on the video and follow along with it and see how it feels to be a student. This will give you huge feedback about your timing and your pacing. This might be an exercise that works even better a month after you make the recording so that it's not so fresh in your mind. Exactly what the sequence was. Exactly. The things that you said, you get to experience it with a fresh eyes and ears. One more piece of bonus, extra credit you can do in your self evaluation is to transcribe your video. Two ways to do this one is literally to type it out. There've been a few circumstances in my career where I needed to do this. And boy did that show me the ways that I could have been a better communicator. Another way to get a transcript is to run your video through a service like Descript, which is the app that I use to record, edit, produce this podcast or Otter AI, or some other AI bot that will give you a transcript because reading it, you might see things differently than when you're listening. Finally you'll rinse and repeat. Do this at least quarterly, if not monthly. Hey, if you do it twice a year, I promise it will make you a better teacher, more than anything I or any of your mentors could tell you to do. You will be your own best self-mentor, your own best self-coach. When you get over this fear of seeing yourself on video, it's one of the best things you can do to help your students. Here's an affirmation to help you remember. I self-evaluate because I care about my students and my own growth. I self-evaluate because I care about my students and my own growth. We can connect at the links in the show notes. I am @sagerountree on social media. I am setting up a wonderful mentorship membership program for you where I'll be giving you exercises and advice like this. You can join the waitlist at the link in the show notes and hear more about that as we roll into 2025. That's it for this episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential with me, Sage Rountree. I really hope this is helpful. I really hope I have encouraged you enough to get you over that hump and setting up your phone in your next class so that you can do this one important thing in service of your students. I wish you all the best for this new year, and I will see you in the next episode.
