Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher

59. Evolve Your Voice: The Power of Self-Assessment for Yoga Teachers

• Sage Rountree • Episode 59

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Most yoga teachers avoid watching themselves teach. The cringe factor is real. But self-assessment through video recording is the single most effective—and completely free—tool you have for evolving as a teacher.

In this episode, we're diving deep into the second E in my S.E.R.V.E. Method: Evolve Your Voice. I'm sharing the complete framework I teach in Module One of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing—the multi-pass review system, reflection techniques, and advanced strategies that transform video self-assessment from a painful one-time exercise into a sustainable practice for continuous growth.

You'll learn how to set clear intentions before recording, use the structured observation system to identify both strengths and growth areas, close the loop with actionable next steps, and track your evolution over time. Plus, I'm sharing advanced techniques like embodied review (practicing along with your own recording) and linguistic analysis that reveal patterns you'd never notice just by watching.

This isn't about perfection—it's about becoming more fully, more skillfully, more authentically yourself in service of your students. If you're ready to commit to your evolution as a teacher, this episode will show you exactly how.

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

And come explore my mentorship program, my Yoga Class Prep Station membership, continuing education workshops and 300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers. It's all at ...

Can I tell you something? I spend a lot of time watching and listening to myself teaching and talking about yoga. I edit my own podcast, this very podcast you're listening to or watching. Right now. I edit my YouTube videos. I record and edit all my course lectures for my online training. I've read every single one of my own audio books as the narrator and even edited one of them, which means I've sat in a recording booth, listening to my voice, come back through headphones for hours and hours, making tiny adjustments to pacing and tone and emphasis. And back when I worked in public radio, we had to do regular self-assessments. Recording yourself, listening back and critically evaluating your work wasn't optional. It was just part of the job and what I had to do with the chief announcer reviewing my work. My movement library available as part of my Yoga Class Prep Station membership has over 140 videos and counting. So by now I have definitely logged hundreds and probably thousands of hours reviewing my own teaching. And here's what I know. Most yoga teachers avoid this practice like the plague. The very thought of watching or listening to themselves teach makes them want to crawl under their mat and hide. Now I get it. I really do. That first viewing is rough. You will cringe. You will think, do I really sound like that? Do I really look like that? You might even have that unsettling moment where you realize you've turned into your mother or your father. But here's the thing, self-assessment is the single most effective and completely free tool that you have for evolving as a teacher and evolution. That's exactly what we're talking about today. I'm Sage Rountree, and this is Yoga Teacher Confidential. If you listened to episode 14 of this podcast, you already know I am passionate about this topic. I call video self-assessment the most painful and productive way to improve your teaching. Today, we're going deeper. We are exploring how self-assessment fits into a complete framework for your development as a teacher through my signatures. Serve method, a system I developed over more than two decades of teaching to help yoga teachers find that middle path between rigid formulas and chaotic improvisation. And specifically, we are going deep into the second E in serve. Evolve your voice. First, let me give you the full picture of the serve method, because the second E doesn't exist in isolation. It's part of the complete system to help you develop as a yoga teacher. I have an entire course on my YouTube channel breaking this down for you. Look in the show notes for a link. Briefly though, serve stands for S Structure Your Foundation using the 6 4 2 framework to create physiologically balanced classes without spending hours on planning, e experience before teaching practice sequences in your own body first so you understand what you're asking of your students. R repeat with purpose. Use thoughtful repetition to build your confidence and your students' familiarity. Reducing your planning time while actually improving teaching quality. V vary with intention. Make purposeful adaptations based on your student needs and contexts. Changing elements with clear intention rather than just randomly chasing creativity. And then that second E, evolve your voice, which is where we are today. This is about ongoing development. It's about self-assessment for your continuous improvement. It's about refining your, queuing, your demo, your voice quality, and your presence in the classroom. The Serve method is the backbone of my mastering, the Art of Yoga sequencing mentorship program we call it, um, for short, because it's Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing, mentorship, membership, three m's. Um, and it's delicious. That's where I work with teachers over six months to develop all five of these competencies. And you know what the very first module is in, um. Self-assessment, not sequencing theory, not queuing techniques, not theming your yoga classes, although we do get to that. The first step is self-assessment because here's what I've learned in over 20 years of teaching yoga and training yoga teachers. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you can't see yourself clearly, if you can't identify what's working well and what needs refinement, you're going to stay stuck. Self-assessment is the most effective way to grow as a teacher, period. And that's why in Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing in, um, when we work together in that mentorship membership, I give you the nudge to actually do this. What you'll learn will no joke be worth the price, $1,800 of your entire investment in the program. That's why it's module one, not module six, not a bonus at the end. It's where we start, because everything else builds on this foundation of being able to see yourself clearly. Now if you heard episode 14, you already know the basic mechanics of recording yourself and the immediate benefits, catching filler words, checking your pacing, seeing if you're making eye contact with your students. That episode was about getting you over the hump of actually pressing record and dealing with the cringe factor. Today, I want to go further into why this practice of seeing yourself is so foundational to your evolution as a teacher and how it connects to everything else you're building as a professional. When you're teaching, you are in the flow of it. You're reading the room, you're making micro adjustments. You're focused on your students' needs and experiences. All of that is exactly as it should be. Your students are the heroes of their yoga experience, and you are there as their guide. But here's what happens inevitably to us as yoga teachers, we develop blind spots. And these blind spots aren't just about verbal ticks or whether you said, um, too many times or how much you talk with your hands. They're deeper than that. They're about patterns in how you show up patterns You can't see when you're in the midst of teaching because you're too close to it. Maybe you consistently underestimate how long students need and oppose because you are ready to move on. Maybe you unconsciously favor one side of the room with your attention. Maybe your voice quality changes dramatically between the active portion of class and Shavasana, but you have no awareness. Of it, maybe you think you're creating an inclusive, welcoming environment, but your body language by facing away from students or by staying glued to your mat, tells a different story. These patterns shape your students' entire experience of your class, and the only way to make them visible is to step outside yourself and watch. In my book, the Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook, I write about this extensively in the chapter on developing your class. I share how growth as a teacher comes incrementally week to week as you reflect on your previous class and plan for the next one. But here's the challenge. Your memory of how class went is inherently subjective. It's colored by your nerves, your energy level that day, your interpretation of student reactions. Video gives you objectivity. It lets you compare what you felt happened with what actually happened, and that gap between feeling and reality, that's where your most valuable insights live. Let me give you an example from my own teaching. By reviewing my teaching and by asking my colleagues for their feedback, I've caught myself overusing a little bit to the point of meaninglessness. I've realized that my presentation of options as neutral as I thought I was making, it was subconsciously implying that the Spiciest option was the best. That was all in the tone of voice When I said, you could do this, you could do this, or you could do this. Your students won't tell you about these patterns. They don't have the vocabulary or the perspective. They will just say, great class, or, I loved it, or, Ooh, that was hard today. They're not going to give you a detailed analysis of your teaching methodology. They're there to practice yoga, not to evaluate your performance. Your colleagues might give you better feedback and we'll talk about peer evaluation in a little bit. Oh, I said a little bit again, but even they can only see what you are doing from their mat in real time. They can't pause and rewind unless you are brave enough to share your video with them, and they're generous enough to dedicate the time to helping you improve. But your peers can't watch you multiple times with different lenses. First for emotional reaction, then for strengths, then for areas of growth, the only person who can do that kind of comprehensive, multi-layered observation is you, and that's why self-assessment is so powerful. When you can see yourself clearly, you can make deliberate choices about how to evolve. You're not just randomly trying new things and hoping they work. You're identifying specific patterns, testing targeted adjustments, and tracking your progress over time. This is what I mean by evolve your voice, that second e in the serve method. It's not about changing who you are as a teacher. It's about becoming more fully, more skillfully, and more authentically yourself in service of your students. And here's something that might surprise you. This evolution never stops. I've been teaching for over two decades and I still record myself regularly. I still find things to refine. I still discover new layers of my teaching that could be clearer, more effective, more supportive of my students' experiences, and that's not a failing on my part. That's the nature of being a dedicated teacher. Growth is a lifelong practice. And the practice of self-assessment, it's not just about fixing problems, it's about understanding your teaching on a deeper level so you can make conscious choices about where to develop next. This is how to evolve to become almost everyone's favorite teacher. That's the so what of this whole conversation? All right. In episode 14 I talked you through the basic mechanics. Charge your phone, prop it up on some yoga blocks. Hit record. Deal with the cringe. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, go back and listen. After this one, it will give you the confidence to actually take that first step and press record. Today I want to go deeper into the process of self-assessment. The specific frameworks and techniques I teach in Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing my mentorship, membership, and that I detail in the Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook. Now, these are the methods that transform video recording from a one-time excruciatingly painful experience into a sustainable practice that genuinely evolves your teaching. First, before you even press record, take a moment to set your intention. This is something I don't think I emphasized enough in episode 14, and it's really crucial. Before you record yourself, decide what you want to learn from this particular recording. Are you specifically working on eliminating filler words? Focus on that. Are you trying to improve your pricing? Track that. Are you concerned about your body language and your positioning in the room? Make that your lens. You can't fix everything at once and trying to will only overwhelm you. Pick one or two specific areas of focus for each recording cycle. Write down your intention before you teach in. Um, we have students use their workbook for this. You might use a journal or a notes file, whatever works. Just get it written down. Then after the recording, but before you press play to watch, write down your predictions. How do you think the class went overall, how do you think you did on your specific areas of focus? What do you expect to see when you watch? This step is critical because it helps you recognize what stories you're telling yourself about your teaching. Then you can compare your subjective impression, your feeling of how class went with the objective reality of what you see on video. Often there's a significant gap between these two things. You might think you totally bombed a class and then you watch the video and realize you were fine, or you might think everything went great, and then you see places where you could have been clearer or more present or more skillful. Both insights are valuable, both help you recalibrate your internal sense of what's happening when you teach. Now the multiple viewing passes I suggest you do aren't just about managing your emotional reaction, though that's part of it. They're actually a structured system for different types of observation. The first pass is an emotional purge. Watch just the first five or 10 minutes of your recording. Let yourself react, naturally, cringe all you want. Write down whatever you're feeling. The good, the bad, the uncomfortable. Get it out of your system. This isn't wasted time. This is you building tolerance for seeing yourself and that tolerance is necessary before you can move into constructive observation. Let your second pass be a strengths inventory. Watch the full recording with one specific question. What am I already doing? Well. This is where you create what I call in the professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook, your Strengths inventory. You are literally making a list of moments when you really connected with a student of cues that landed beautifully, of transitions that felt smooth of your genuine care coming through in your voice. Of your body language, radiating warmth, and welcome of times when you made a skillful adjustment in the moment. Write these down. Be specific. Don't just say good connection. Write made eye contact with the student in the back corner when I cued Warrior two and saw her shoulders relax. Why does this matter? Because when you're working on areas for improvement in your next pass, you need to know what to preserve. You need to protect your strengths while you're developing new skills. Otherwise, you might accidentally fix something that was already working beautifully. Now the third pass is for targeted observation. This is where your pre-recording intention comes in. Watch the recording again, but this time with your laser focus on the one or two specific things you wanted to observe. If you're tracking filler words, you might literally tally them with hash marks. If you're watching for pacing, you might use a timer and note how long you hold each side. If you're observing, positioning, and movement through the room, you might map your path on paper. It. Take detailed notes, be as specific as possible, I said, and then 23 times in the peak sequence is more useful than I use too many filler words. The optional fourth pass is to analyze student experience. If you have students visible in your recording and they have given permission for this, watch the recording one more time with your attention on them, not on yourself. How are they responding to your cues? Where do they look confused? Where do they light up? When do they seem to disconnect? This gives you invaluable information about how your teaching is actually landing rather than how you think it's landing. After you've done your multi-pass review, it's time to close the loop by connecting observation to action. In Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing my mentorship membership. We use a specific framework for this that I also detail in the Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook. It's based on the classic roses, thorns and buds reflection model, but adapted specifically for teaching. Keep Is the roses based on your strengths inventory? What do you want to actively preserve and continue doing? Write it down. Specifically drop are the thorns based on your targeted observation, what do you want to eliminate? To drop or to refine? Be specific about the behavior and your strategy for changing it. Then add are the buds. What new elements do you want to experiment with and grow in your next class? These might be alternatives to things you're dropping, or they could be completely new directions for growth then, and this is the crucial step that many teachers skip. Schedule your next recording session. Put it on your calendar right now, three months out at maximum, one month out, if you're serious about rapid development. It. Once you've done this process a few times and you're comfortable with the basics, you can add some of these more advanced techniques. Make an embodied review by following along as a student. I mentioned this briefly in episode 14, but let me go a little further into why this matters. A few days or weeks after you make the recording, enough time that the class isn't fresh in your mind, roll out your mat. Press play and actually practice along with the recording as if you were a student. Don't think about what you were trying to teach or why you made certain choices. Try to follow the cues and feel the experience in your body. This will reveal things you would never notice just by watching like cues that made perfect sense in your head, but are actually confusing in practice or timing that feels rushed or dragging from the student's side. Or moments where you needed to give more information or less information, or transitions that feel awkward in your body, even though they looked fine on the video. Take notes immediately after you practice as a student while these sensations are fresh. In episode 14, I mentioned transcribing your video as extra credit. Lemme tell you why this is actually one of the most powerful tools for rapid improvement when you transcribe even five or 10 minutes of your teaching, either manually or using a tool like D Script or ot. Or fathom, you see patterns in your language that you would never hear just by listening. Oh, there's an affiliate link to Ds script in the show notes. It's a great product that saves me hundreds of hours a year. It's where I spend all my time watching myself on video while I edit. Now when you transcribe, you'll see how often you start sentences with the same phrase that phrase might be and now from here we're gonna, you'll see your filler words jump off the page. Uh uh, um, um, you'll see where you contradict yourself or where your instructions could be tighter. One technique I love. After you have your transcript, copy it and run it through a word cloud generator. The visual representation of your most used words is incredibly revealing. Maybe like I did, you'll see little bit pop out at you, but you'll certainly get a clear picture of your go-tos. Then ask, are your most common words actually serving your teaching, or are they just verbal padding? Now articulating your teaching identity. This exercise comes directly from the Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook, and it's particularly useful if you find video self review discouraging rather than energizing. Take some time to articulate what kind of teacher you want to be. Not in vague terms. I want to be a good teacher, but with specific characteristics. Start by identifying teachers you admire. For each one, think or write about the tone they use with students, both in and out of class. Their body language and their physical presence. How they interact with their students, including on social media if relevant, and what makes their teaching feel authentic to who they are. Then write your own teaching identity statement. Describe the kind of teacher you want to be in concrete, observable terms. Now, here's the powerful part. Compare your identity statement to what you see in your video. Where's the alignment and where's the gap? That gap isn't a source of shame, y'all. It's a roadmap for your development. It's the direction to step in as you become the best version of your teaching self. I also suggest you create your rainy day notes file. This might seem tangential to video self-assessment, but it's actually crucial for your sustainability as a yoga teacher. As you're going through this process of reviewing your teaching, which can feel really vulnerable and really exposing. You also need to be collecting external validation. Start a file where you save praise from your students. Screenshot those comments on social media. Save the emails where someone tells you how much your class meant to them. Write down the kind words people say after class. Then on a rainy day when you're in the depths of video review or a low class numbers row, and you're feeling discouraged, visit this file. Let it remind you of your impact. Let it ground you in why you do this work. These notes might also become testimonials for your website someday, but that's secondary. The primary purpose is to give you a lift when the self-assessment process feels heavy. And while you're building this file, write yourself a pep talk. Use the voice of a loving friend, someone who sees your best self, and write about all your good points as a teacher. Keep it somewhere you can revisit when you need the reminder. Finally, while self-assessment is incredibly powerful, there's also huge value in inviting a trusted peer into this process. After you've done your own multi-pass review and you have a clear sense of what you're working on, share your recording with a colleague you trust. Give them specific questions based on your areas of focus. Don't just ask, what did you think? That's too vague to be useful. Ask things like, I'm working on reducing filler words. Can you track how many times I say and then, and let me know, or, I'm trying to improve my queing clarity. Were there any moments where you felt confused about what to do? Or I'm focusing on being more present with students rather than stuck on my mat. How did my movement through the room feel to you? When you work with me in Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing, I will review your video and I will mirror for you and you can share your video in our community space and request feedback. We call that space tasters, please, using the keep drop ad or roses, thorns and buds framework. The other teachers, the other chefs in our kitchen will give you compassionate, constructive insights. But even if you're doing this work on your own, a trusted peer can offer perspectives You would never see yourself. Just make sure you're directing their attention to specific areas rather than asking for vague or general impressions. Here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Self-assessment through video recording isn't a one-time exercise you do to check a box. It's not something you do once decide it's painful and never do again. It is a practice. It is a discipline. It is a commitment to ongoing evolution as a teacher. In episode 14, I focused on getting you over that initial hump on helping you actually press record for the first time and helping you deal with the cringe factor. And that's important because you have to start somewhere. But today I wanted to show you what lies beyond that first uncomfortable viewing. I wanted to give you a framework, a system for turning video self-assessment into a sustainable practice that genuinely transforms your teaching. Because when you approach self-assessment with intention, with structure, with specific lenses for observation, it stops being just a painful exercise in facing your flaws. It becomes a tool for conscious evolution. That's what the second E in the Serve method is all about. Evolving your voice, not overnight transformation, not perfection, but steady, consistent evolution toward becoming a clearer, more skillful and more authentically yourself teacher for your students. When we work together in Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing, this entire self-assessment framework is where we will start. Because you can't build sophisticated sequencing skills. You can't develop confident queuing. You can't learn to vary with intention until you can see yourself clearly enough to know what's actually happening when you teach versus what you think is happening. And if you want to dive deeper into these techniques on your own, pick up a copy of the Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook. The whole chapter on self-study and reflection walks you through these exercises in detail with additional prompts and frameworks to support your growth. When you buy, read and Love that book, I would be so grateful for your five star review. But whether you work with me in, um, whether you use the handbook as your guide, or whether you simply take what I've shared today and in episode 14 and build your own practice around it, please commit to this work. Record yourself, watch it back. Do it regularly. Use a framework and track your growth over time. Your students are counting on you to show up as the best teacher you can be, and you can't become that teacher without seeing yourself clearly first. Thanks so much for listening to Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree, and I'll see you next time.

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Sage Rountree

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