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
48. How to Plan Your Yoga Class Quickly and Easily with the Prep Station
If you’ve ever found yourself spending hours on Sunday night scrolling Instagram for yoga class ideas, this episode is for you. I share the real struggle teachers face with planning: the overwhelm, the blank-page anxiety, or the temptation to just wing it.
After 20+ years of teaching, I’ve discovered that the most successful teachers aren’t the most creative or the most flexible. They’re the ones who reliably deliver balanced classes week after week. That’s why I created the Yoga Class Prep Station: a resource designed to end the Sunday night scramble once and for all.
In this episode, I walk you through what the Prep Station offers—from the Movement Library to the monthly yoga snacks, theme seeds, and live calls—and how it follows the S.E.R.V.E. Method in bite-sized, practical ways.
You’ll also hear how the Prep Station differs from my deeper mentorship program, Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing, and why both exist to serve you at different points in your teaching journey.
By the end, you’ll see that great teaching isn’t about reinventing the wheel every week. It’s about being consistent, reliable, and nourished as a teacher. The Prep Station gives you the tools to do just that.
Pull up a seat at the counter: Join the Prep Station here!
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? I got an email recently from a teacher who's been certified for three years. She wrote, I'm exhausted. I spend my Sunday nights scrolling through Instagram for sequence ideas. Then I spend hours trying to make them work for my students who are mostly over 50. Half the time I end up teaching the same three classes on rotation because nothing else feels right. I know I need help, but I don't have time for another 200 hour training. I wrote her back. You don't need another training. You need a prep station. I am Sage Rountree, and this is Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher. On this show, we take a clear-eyed look at how we can serve our students best, and let me tell you, you wearing yourself ragged, trying to be creative and innovative is not the way to serve your students best. You being dependable, reliable, and nourished is. Now that email could have been from any number of teachers I hear from every week, either. You're spending way too much time planning classes. It's the lesson planning equivalent of dressing yourself by growing your own cotton, spinning it into thread, weaving it into fabric, and sewing it into a new garment. Every single week or at the other end of the spectrum, you're winging it, showing up with vibes only and hoping for the best. I guess that's like the yoga teacher. Bad dream of showing up naked, or having to teach in a skirt, which is a nightmare. I personally have all the time. Neither approach is serving you, and more importantly, neither is serving your students. After 20 plus years of teaching and running teacher trainings, I've learned something absolutely crucial. The teachers who thrive are not the ones with the most creative sequences or the best Sanskrit pronunciation or the fanciest playlists. They're the ones who can consistently deliver solid, balanced classes that actually work for real humans week after week without burning out. If you've been following my work, you may have noticed I love a food analogy. Well, I love to eat and my husband owns a restaurant. For years now, I've been using cooking metaphors to explain yoga sequencing. My signature program, Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing: A Mentorship Membership, MMM, or MMM, because it's delicious. It's like going to culinary school. It's six months of intensive work where we go deep into the art and science of sequencing yoga classes, and thus into the art and science of becoming a confident, helpful yoga teacher. You know that proverb, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Well, in Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing, my mentorship membership, I do both and I take it further. First, I make you a gourmet meal and I serve it to you so you can enjoy it. Then we go into the kitchen for a cooking class where we collaborate to tweak the recipe for your unique student population. So in MMM, I don't just teach you to fish. I take you out on the boat. I show you where the fish are, teach you which lures to use in certain conditions, how to clean or prepare your catch by the end. You know how to create a five course seafood feast from scratch. You've learned to feed yourself and your yoga students for a lifetime. That's transformative when you're ready for it, when you have the time, energy, and bandwidth for that level of commitment. What about when you are just hungry? Now what about when you need nourishment that's ready when you are? What about when the gap between where you are and where this intensive education that you and I could do together will take you? Feels too wide to cross right now. That's exactly why I've created the yoga class prep station. Think of the prep station as your teaching lunch. Anette, your local diner where you can grab something good, something nourishing, something that works. No pretense, no seven course production. Just solid, reliable fuel for your teaching. The beauty of a lunch anette is that everything is ready when you need it. You can pop in for a quick coffee and toast, or you can sit at the counter and have the daily special. You can be in and out in 15 minutes, or you can linger over your meal and chat with other regulars. Let me tell you what you'll get when you join the prep station. First, there's the Movement library. Think Netflix for yoga teachers. Some nights you open Netflix knowing exactly what you want to watch. Other nights you browse until something catches your eye. Still, other nights you binge an entire series. The Movement library works the same way. It's organized, searchable, and always there when you need inspiration. But here's what makes it different from browsing Instagram or Pinterest. Every single sequence in your movement library is designed for actual humans, the ones who show up to your classes, the ones who sit at desks all day, who can't touch their toes, who tweaked their back gardening last weekend. These aren't performance pieces for social media. They're practical, doable sequences that work. Then there's a custom GPT that I personally trained on my books and my approach. It's like having me in your pocket ready to answer questions like, what should I practice today? Or is this sequence balanced according to the 6 4 2 framework? No more. Second guessing whether you've covered all the movements of the spine, or wondering if you've worked the legs evenly or whether your sequence is balanced. Every month that you are in the prep station, we will gather for one live call. It's going to be part yoga snack, a short guided movement practice to feed your own body and part teacher's lounge, shooting the breeze about whatever's on your mind as a teacher. Because one of the hardest things about teaching yoga is how isolating it can feel. You are always the one at the front of the room. You're always the one holding space. Where do you go to? Just be yourself with others who get it. That's what our monthly calls will offer. There will also, of course, be replays if you can't make it live. In the prep station, you'll also get one new sequence idea per month. It's a mini recipe, a snack, not a whole cookbook. You'll get monthly theme seeds, just a bite-sized idea, like a quote, a poem, or a piece of yoga philosophy to plant in your classes. If you're familiar with my books Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses and Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses, Volume 2, this is going to feed your soul. It. You'll also get one specific action step to improve your teaching this month. Think of things that you may have read in my book The Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook, and we'll go even further. Plus there's space for us to talk about real teaching situations, so you'll have support both from me and from your colleagues. I think of the prep station as the anti Instagram place to come for teaching ideas. I'm not interested in sequences that photograph well. I'm not interested in poses that require you to apparently have no bones. I am interested in sequences that work for your student who's 65 and just retired and wants to stay mobile for your student who's training for a marathon and needs to not get injured so they can hit their personal best. For your student who's recovering from grief and needs to feel held, every sequence, every idea, every tool in the Prep station is designed for real humans with real bodies and real lives. Everything in the Prep station follows my serve method, but in bite-size pieces. The S in Serve stands for structure. You will get solid frameworks like my 6 4 2 sequencing approach without the overwhelm of learning an entire new system at once. The first E in SERVE stands for experience. You have to experience your sequences as a student before you can teach them well, and that monthly yoga snack, the movement library with over 100 videos for you to choose from. That's you experiencing being a student. Because when you regularly put yourself in the student role, you remember what it feels like when a transition is awkward, when a cue doesn't land, when permission to rest is a great relief, and you get fresh ideas and inspiration for your teaching without even needing to think about it. The R in SERVE stands for repeat. The monthly sequence ideas are designed to be repeated with small variations throughout the month. Your students get the consistency they need to progress, and you get to reclaim some RAM for your teaching brain. The V in SERVE stands for vary. Those monthly theme seeds and discussion prompts give you just enough variety to keep things fresh without reinventing everything. And that second E in SERVE stands for Evolve over time. These small, consistent steps, you take these small consistent practices, help you evolve into the teacher you're meant to be. Not overnight, but sustainably. The Prep Station addresses several urgent and ongoing problems. The Sunday night Scramble, you know it, it's Sunday night. You teach Monday morning and you're steering at a blank page or computer screen. With the Prep station, you will always have something ready, not prescribed, not rigid, but ready to meet your students where they are on Monday morning. The Prep Station is here to help you bridge the confidence gap. When you are constantly reinventing your lesson plans and your class style, you will never get comfortable. When you have reliable material that you know works, your confidence naturally grows. The prep station is here to pull you up out of the isolation trap. Teaching yoga can be incredibly lonely. The monthly calls that we'll have in the community discussions give you a place to be a regular human who happens to teach yoga. The Prep Station is here to save you from comparison itis from getting trapped in the comparison game. When your main source of inspiration is social media, I'm looking at you Instagram, it's easy to feel inadequate. The Prep Station gives you a different measuring stick. Are your students well served? Now people ask me, how is the prep station different from my mentorship program? Mastering the Art of Yoga sequencing? My mentorship membership is transformative education. It's fully half of my 300 hour yoga teacher training. It's six months of deep work that will fundamentally define how you sequence and teach your yoga classes. You will understand the why behind every choice. I make and suggest to you and every choice you make, hence forward. You'll develop your own signature style. You'll graduate knowing how to create a feast from scratch.. The prep station is sustaining nourishment. It's for when you need support right now, not six months from now. It's for when you want to be a better teacher on Tuesday, not after you've completed a whole six month program. Some people will start with the prep station and realize they're ready for more, so they will join MMM. Some complete MMM and then use the Prep Station as their ongoing support system. Some just need the prep station period. All paths are valid. What does the prep station cost? Only $39 a month. That's less than what some students pay for a single drop in class. And this is professional development that actually fits into your real life and your real budget. This isn't about becoming a different teacher, it's about becoming a more confident, more consistent, more sustainable version of the wonderful yoga teacher you already are. Now the prep station is for you if you're tired of the Sunday night scramble. The prep station is for you if you want to spend less time planning and more time living your life. The Prep Station is for you if you teach real humans, not Instagram Yogis, not gymnasts. The Prep station is for you if you value consistency, but need a little variety. The Prep Station is for you if you want continuing education without clearing your calendar, you could take three CEUs per month for each month that you're in the program. The Prep Station is for you. If you're craving community with other teachers. The Prep station is for you if you need practical solutions, not more heady theory. Here's my invitation. Come grab a seat at the counter. The yoga class Prep station is open for business at comfortzoneyoga.com for $39 a month. You get professional development that actually works for your real life, your real students, and your real teaching schedule. I offer a little discount if you commit for longer, but $39 a month should fit your budget and your life. Come in and stay in for as long as you like, and when you feel like you're full, you can cancel your way out anytime. It's super easy. Great teaching isn't about being the most creative or the most knowledgeable, or the most flexible. Great teaching is about showing up consistently with something useful to offer your students. It's about serving your students where they are, not where Instagram tells you they should be. Every month in the Prep station, you will get tools that help you do exactly that. Not overwhelming comprehensive systems, not heady theoretical frameworks, just practical, useful tools that work. Your students tomorrow will. Thank you for the choice you make today. If this episode resonated with you, if you're interested in the Prep station, but you have some questions, drop me a line. You can reach me at info@sagerountree.com. No letter D in Rountree, or find me on social media at @sagerountree, again, no letter D. And when you're ready to stop the Sunday night scramble and start feeding your teaching in a sustainable way, come join us at the Prep Station. We've got a stool at the counter waiting for you. Thanks for listening to Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree and I'll see you next time.
