87. Summer-Proof Your Yoga Teaching

If you teach in any climate with real seasons, summer attendance has its own logic. The first beautiful spring day empties the studio. A July heat wave fills it back up. By August you're juggling subs, outdoor classes, your own travel, and a schedule that no longer makes sense.

After twenty-plus years of teaching and fifteen years of co-owning a studio in North Carolina, a state with four seasons including a warm summer, I no longer take this personally. Summer isn't a problem to solve. It's a season to work with. In this episode, I share four moves to summer-proof your teaching: build a small repertoire of go-to classes, sequence for the heat, lean into the gift of small classes, and take real time off without guilt.

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Zone, my free community for yoga teachers, where the Greatest Hits Lesson Plan (built on the 6–4–2 framework) is waiting for you: https://comfortzoneyoga.com
• The Prep Station, with a full month of summer-themed lesson plans, sequences, and tips in June, including the legs-up-the-wall sequence: https://www.comfortzoneyoga.com/prep
• Episode 24, "What If No One Shows Up?"—for more on teaching to small classes

A lighter summer is not a smaller career. It's the foundation for a steady fall. If this episode was useful, share it with a teacher friend who is staring down June with dread.

Join the waitlist for the July cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing: A Mentorship Membership (MMM): sagerountree.com/mentorship

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!

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And come explore my mentorship program, my Yoga Class Prep Station membership, continuing education workshops and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers. It's all at sagerountree.com.

Transcript

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Can I tell you something? For 15 years, I co-owned a studio in North Carolina, and in all that time I learned exactly one reliable thing about attendance patterns. The weather decides everything. The first beautiful spring day in Chapel Hill. No one showed up. People wanted to be outside. They wanted patios and porches and long walks with the dog. I would teach to a couple of devoted regulars, stare at the empty mats and wonder what I had done wrong. Then July would hit 95 degrees thick humidity, the kind of heat that sticks to your skin, and suddenly the studio filled up. Again, air conditioning is a powerful draw. If you teach yoga in any climate that has actual seasons, you have felt this summer is unpredictable. Attendance dips, outdoor classes pop up, subs get called in more. Your own schedule starts to feel like a hot mess by mid-June. Here is what I have come to believe after 20 plus years of teaching. Summer is not a problem to solve. It is a season to work with. Today we are going to talk about how to summer proof your teaching, how to simplify, how to sequence for the heat, what to do when only three students show up, and how to handle your own time off without guilt. I'm Sage Rountree and this is Yoga Teacher Confidential. Let me paint the picture. You start the year off strong. Spring is a wonderful time to teach yoga students come back from winter. Energy is rising, classes are full, and you feel like a real yoga teacher again. Then late May hits school lets out. Families start traveling. The first wave of vacations begins, and your Tuesday class drops from 12 students to six. And four. Then you have one regular and a guest she brought along, and you're teaching as if there are 20 people in the room, because that is what you've always done by July. The unpredictability is the only predictable thing. You do not know who is coming. You do not know if it is going to be a small, intimate group or a to AC seeking crowd. Studios start cutting classes or at least talking about it. Outdoor classes appear on the schedule. And now you are hauling speakers and yoga blocks across a park lawn at eight in the morning. On top of all that, you might want to take some time off yourself. Here's the thing, a lot of teachers fight all of this. They take it personally when attendance drops, they think they're doing something wrong. They double down on planning frantically, theme every class around something fresh and exciting. Post more on Instagram and burn themselves out by the 4th of July. I've done this plenty of times. My first few summers teaching, I treated every empty mat like a referendum on my teaching, I made fancier playlists. This is back when I used music at all. I planned more elaborate sequences. I sweated through outdoor classes in the heat, smiling, pretending I liked it. It was not fine. I didn't like it. It was exhausting. 20 years of teaching has taught me this. The season is not personal. The weather is not personal. Your students still love you. They are simply at the lake. They're at their kids' swim meet. They're sitting on a porch with a glass of something cold because it's a hundred degrees outside and they cannot face the drive to a studio. It is just summer doing what summer does. the way we treat summer shapes the rest of our year. If you spend May through August, white knuckling it, planning every class from scratch, taking every sub request, refusing to rest, you're going to drag yourself into the fall depleted. And fall is when teaching tends to pick back up. Fall is when new students arrive, when studios run promotions, when your regulars come back from their travels. September was typically even bigger than January at my yoga studio. You want to meet that wave with energy, not with the exhausted shell of someone who refused to slow down in July. There's also something deeper here. As yoga teachers, we are constantly modeling something for our students. We are showing them what it looks like to live a yoga life. If we are frantic. If we're overscheduled and we are martyring our way through the heat, we are not modeling the practice. We are modeling burnout. Here is a permission slip for yoga teachers who are listening to this and feeling seen. Y'all, you are allowed to have a lighter summer. You are allowed to teach the same sequence two weeks in a row. Heck, I think you should teach the same sequence all summer long. You are allowed to combine that thinly attended class with another teacher's class, or move it to a different time slot, or let it rest for the season. You are also allowed to take a real break. This is where I want to gently challenge a story. A lot of us tell ourselves, the story goes, if I take time off, I will lose my students. They'll find another teacher. The studio will cut my class. I cannot afford to step away. In my experience, the opposite is closer to the truth. When we step away with a clear plan, we have a good sub. We give a heads up to our students. We have a set return date. Our students are usually fine. They miss us and they come back. The teachers who get into trouble are the ones who teach themselves into resentment and then disappear in a puff of frustration. A lighter summer is not a smaller career. Sometimes it's the most professional thing you can do. Less work, more energy. That math actually works. There's also the strategic angle. Summer is a great time to condense. If you teach two thinly attended classes back to back, talk to the studio about combining them for the season. Two small classes become one well attended class. Students get a fuller room, you get one prep instead of two, and the studio gets healthier numbers. Here are four moves to summer proof your teaching. Number one, build a small repertoire of go-to classes. Stop trying to invent something brand new every week and summer especially. You wanna a handful of sequences that are reliable. Scalable and physiologically sound they should work whether you have three students or 30, and whether you are indoors or out, listen to episode 83. For more on this. I have one of these sequences that I literally call my greatest hits lesson plan. It's built on the 6 4 2 framework. Six moves of the spine, four lines of the legs, two core actions, so it covers everything a body needs without any guesswork. I can teach it to a brand new student or to a yoga teacher with 20 years of experience and have it land for both. If you want it, it is free inside the zone. My community for yoga teachers join my newsletter and you'll have access. Head to comfort zone yoga.com. Tip number two, sequence for the heat. When it is 95 degrees and your students walk in already wilted, the worst thing you can do is march them through 40 minutes of sun salutations. Their nervous systems are already taxed. Their core temperatures are already up. They do not need more heat. They have had enough with the sun. What they need is less up and down and more hands-free work. Cut the Chaturangas. Spend more time on the floor. Use side body openers, gentle twists, supported back bends, and long held shapes that let the heart rate settle. Restorative bookends like a long opening and a really generous Shavasana. Do beautiful work on hot days. Inside the Prep station, my lesson planning membership, I share a legs up the wall sequence that is a hit on very hot days. Students walk out feeling cooled, refreshed, and like they actually got what they came for. It is the kind of class your regulars will remember in February when they're thinking about which teacher to come back to. Pointer. Number three, the small class playbook. When only three students show up, you have a choice. You can mourn the missing 12. Teach a flat version of your usual class and feel a little defeated, or you can lean in. A small class is a gift. You can use names. Many times you can ask people what they want. You can teach more conversationally, more responsibly. The students who showed up get the best version of you and they will remember, I went deep on this back in episode 24. What if no one shows up? If small classes are stressing you out this summer, go listen to that one. Here's the short version. Your job is to teach the people in front of you. Three real humans with mats. Unrolled is a real class. Treat it like one. And pointer. Four. Handle your own time off without guilt. Plan for it. Look at June, July, and August on the calendar and decide now where your breaks are. A full week off, a weekend away, a Tuesday in July. When you're not teaching anything, put it on the calendar before the season fills up around you. Then communicate. Tell your students at least two weeks before you go find a sub you trust. Or even better build a relationship with a couple of subs over the year so it's not a panic call in June. Let the studio know early. Come back and consider condensing. If your studio runs a quieter summer schedule, that's not a failure. That is good business. Two small classes combined into one is often the smartest move for everyone. Less work, more energy, fuller rooms. This whole approach, simplify sequence, smart, lean into small classes, take real time off is exactly what we are working on in the prep station this June. The whole month is summer themed with tips and sequences and lesson plans that build directly on what we just talked about. The legs up the wall sequence I mentioned is in there. So are all of my tips for summer proofing your teaching. If you want practical, ready to teach material to carry you through the season, this is the month to join. You can find the Prep Station at comfortzoneyoga.com/prep, and of course, in the show notes. Here's what I want you to take away. Summer is going to do what Summer does. The weather will pull your students outside. The schedule will get weird. Your own energy will ebb and flow. None of that is a referendum on your teaching. Your job is to work with the season not against it. Build a small set of go-to classes you trust sequence for the heat. Treat small classes like the gift they are. Take your own real time off and condense where it makes sense. A lighter summer is not a smaller career. It is the foundation for a steady fall. If this episode was useful to you, please share it with a teacher friend who is staring down June with dread. And if you're looking for a community to summer proof your teaching alongside, come join us in the Zone, my free community for yoga teachers, at comfortzoneyoga.com. The greatest hits lesson plan is waiting for you in there. Thank you for joining me. This is Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree, and I'll see you next time.