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
44. The Yoga Teacher Success Timeline: Where You Are, What’s Next, and How to Move Forward
“I’ve been teaching for years and I still feel like I’m faking it.”
If that sounds familiar, I'm here to reassure you: you’re not alone, and you’re not behind.
In this episode, I share the Yoga Teacher Success Timeline, a five-phase framework that helps you name where you are in your growth as a yoga teacher—and understand what’s coming next.
Whether you’re fresh out of teacher training or you’ve been leading classes for years, this roadmap gives you language, perspective, and permission. You’ll learn:
- The five distinct phases yoga teachers move through
- Why it’s completely normal to revisit early phases again and again
- The most common mistake that keeps teachers stuck
- How to build a class around what you already know how to teach
- A free resource that helps you move forward with more ease and confidence
🎧 Plus, I’ll share one practical homework assignment to help you apply this right away.
Links from the episode:
→ Join the free mini course: Fundamentals of Confident Teaching
Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Get in the Zone at Comfort Zone Yoga, my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you—let's chat there!
For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential, check out my YouTube channel, and follow me on socials:
And come explore my mentorship program, continuing education workshops and 300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers. It's all at sagerountree.com.
Can I tell you something? Over the last year, I've been asking yoga teachers what their biggest struggles are, and almost everyone says something like, Sage, I've been teaching for three years and I still feel like I'm faking it. When does it get easier? The truth is, if you're asking when it gets easier, you're already on the right track. You care enough to want to improve.
Welcome to Yoga Teacher Confidential:Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher. I'm Sage Rountree. This show is for yoga teachers who want to feel confident, capable, and relaxed in front of the classroom. Today we are starting something special, a multi-episode look at what I call the Yoga Teacher Success timeline. If you've ever wondered, am I normal or will I ever feel like I know what I'm doing, this episode is for you. Whether you finished your 200 hour training last month, or you've been teaching for years, understanding where you are on this journey changes everything about how you approach your growth as a teacher. Let me paint a picture. You've just finished your 200 hour yoga teacher training. You're holding that certificate. Maybe you've even posted the graduation photo on Instagram. Your friends are asking when they can take your first class, and you are staring at that first teaching opportunity thinking, what have I gotten myself into? Maybe you're spending four hours planning a 75 minute class. Maybe you've memorized your sequence word for word only to forget everything the moment you see actual humans in front of you. Maybe you're comparing yourself to teachers who seem to effortlessly guide students through beautiful flows while you're still figuring out which side is left. Here's what I want you to know. You are not broken, you are not behind. You are exactly where you're supposed to be. The myth we need to bust right now is that teaching yoga should feel natural immediately that some people are just born teachers who never struggle with sequencing or never get nervous before class, or never wonder if they're qualified to be in front of the room. Personally, I'd be suspicious of someone with that level of confidence because they're likely delusional. I've been teaching yoga for over 20 years, and I can tell you even the teachers who look effortless today had their moments of panic. I certainly did. In fact, I still do, and it's not the big things like teaching an NBA team that freak me out. It's the class I sub in a style that isn't quite my usual style. But I remind myself it's not about being perfect, it's about being useful to the students. So today I'm going to give you a roadmap, five distinct phases that most yoga teachers move through on their journey from feeling overwhelmed to feeling like they've achieved some mastery. Think of this not as a timeline with deadlines, but as a GPS for your teaching career. Sometimes you'll skip ahead, sometimes you'll circle back, and that's totally normal. The five phases are, number one, the post-training overwhelm zone number two, the identity formation zone. Number three, the professional development zone. Number four, the thriving teacher zone, and number five, the mastery and legacy zone. Each phase has its own symptoms, its own gifts, and its own challenges. And here's the thing, you don't graduate from one and never look back. You might find yourself confidently in phase four when you're teaching your regular classes, but back in phase one when you're asked to say, teach chair yoga for the first time, So why does understanding this roadmap matter? Because right now if you're struggling, you might think you're the only one. You might think everyone else figured it out faster than you. You might even think you're not cut out for this. None of that is true. When we don't understand that there are phases of growth, as yoga teachers, we do two really destructive things. First, we beat ourselves up for being exactly where we are. And second, we try to skip steps, which usually just creates more confusion and less confidence. Let me tell you about the cost of staying stuck in phase one, that post training overwhelm. I see teachers who spend years reinventing the wheel for every single class. They're exhausted before they even get to the studio because they've spent three hours planning what should take them 30 minutes. Their students can feel this energy when you walk into a room uncertain about what you're going to teach your students pick up on that uncertainty. It doesn't matter how perfect your sequence is on paper, if you're not confident in your container, your students won't feel safe to go deep in their practice. I learned this the hard way for years, and I am talking years. I would change my Monday night class completely from week to week. One week we'd be doing Paul Grilley's beautiful flowy yang sequences that I was studying. Then the next week, maybe some spicy balance stuff, because I had just learned that the week that Pattabhi Jois died, I pulled out my Ashtanga books, took them into class, and taught the primary series. That wasn't serving my students. That was serving my ego. What your students actually need is consistency. They need to know what to expect from you so they can relax into the practice instead of spending their mental energy trying to figure out what's coming next. Here's what I want you to understand about each phase. They all serve a purpose. Phase one, post-training overwhelm teaches you to care deeply about your students and to take the responsibility seriously. The anxiety you feel that's your conscience working. That's you recognizing that people are trusting you with their bodies and their time. Phase two, identity formation is where you start to figure out who you are as a teacher, not who you think you should be. This is where you stop trying to teach like your favorite teacher and start finding your own voice. Phase three. Professional development is where your teaching becomes sustainable. You're not just surviving your classes anymore. You're building a career that can support you while genuinely helping your students. Phase four thriving teacher is where the magic happens. Students seek you out, specifically your planning becomes intuitive, and you remember why you fell in love with teaching in the first place. Phase five, mastery and legacy is where you start giving back to the next generation of yoga teachers. And this isn't about ego or recognition, it's about understanding that you have something valuable to share with other teachers who are still figuring it out. Now, here's something crucial to understand. This isn't a linear progression where you check boxes and move on. I still have moments of phase one overwhelm when I'm teaching something new. I have colleagues who've been teaching for decades who sometimes question their identity as teachers. The difference is that when you understand the phases, you don't panic. When you find yourself back in an earlier one, you recognize it. You give yourself what you need, and you move forward. If you've been listening to this podcast since the beginning, you'll remember that my colleague, Karen Fabian, was my first guest in episode six. She shared this affirmation for us. When I teach, from what I know, my confidence grows when I teach, from what I know, my confidence grows. That's it. That's the secret. You don't need to know everything. You just need to teach from what you do know and trust that your knowledge will grow as you continue to show up. So what do you do with this information? First, give yourself permission to identify where you are without judgment. If you're in phase one, spending hours, planning every class and feeling anxious before you teach, that's not a character flaw. That's a phase, and there are specific tools and frameworks that can help you move through it more efficiently. If you're in phase two teaching regularly, but still feeling like an imposter, you're not broken. You're in identity formation, and that takes time. If you're in phase three, competent, but maybe plateauing, you're ready for the next level of professional development. If you're in phase four, thriving and confident, you might be ready to start sharing your knowledge with other teachers. And if you're in phase five, you have a responsibility to mentor others on this journey. Over some coming episodes, I'm going to take you deeper into each of these five phases. We'll talk about what's really happening, why it's necessary, and more importantly, what you can do to move through it with more ease and bigger confidence. But I want to give you something actionable right now. So here's your homework from this episode. First, come to the Zone at Comfort Zone Yoga. It's free, and there's a link in the show notes. You'll find a free mini course there called Fundamentals of Confident Teaching, and there's a full presentation of the Yoga Teacher Success timeline inside that mini course. Identify your current phase. Be honest about where you are right now, not where you think you should be or where you were last month. Where are you today? Name one thing. You definitely know how to teach. Well, maybe it's child's pose. Maybe it's a simple sun salutation. Maybe it's how to help someone get comfortable in Shavasana. Whatever it is, write it down. Commit to teaching from what you know for your next class. Build around that thing. You know you can teach well. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Teach from your confidence in the zone@comfortzoneyoga.com. You'll connect with teachers at every phase of this journey. You can ask questions, share victories, and remember that you're not alone in figuring this out. Coming up, we are going deeper into phase one post-training overwhelm. I'm going to share the one mistake that keeps new teachers trapped and overwhelmed for years, and the simple framework that can cut your planning time in half while actually improving your classes. Remember, you don't have to be perfect to be helpful. You just have to show up with intention and care for your students. Thanks for being here. If you're enjoying this podcast, please leave a rating and review wherever you listen. It helps other teachers find this resource too. I'm Sage Rountree. This is Yoga Teacher Confidential, and I'll see you next time.
