95. When and How to Demo Poses in Your Yoga Class

Most yoga teachers have heard some version of don't demo. Get off your mat. Cue with your words. Be a real teacher. The advice is reaching for something true—but the rule, as it usually gets delivered, hurts newer teachers and doesn't actually capture what experienced teachers are doing differently.

In this episode, Sage walks through when demonstration genuinely serves your students (and when it doesn't), why studios that ban demo entirely are missing the point, and the truth that flips the whole conversation: the more you demo, the less you see. You'll hear the four ways to present a pose, the teacher-trainee habit that proves the teacher isn't really in the room, and the six rules for demoing in a way that keeps your eyes—and your attention—on the students who came to practice.

Repetition is what makes all of this easier. Teach the same sequence over four weeks and your students learn the shapes; your demo load drops on its own. The Prep Station ($39/month) is built exactly for that—a 6–4–2 sequence each month, a Movement Library with 180+ follow-along practice videos so you've already had your practice, and a community of 2,400+ teachers refining their craft alongside you. Pull up a stool at comfortzoneyoga.com/prep.

Join the conversation in The Zone, Sage's free community for yoga teachers, at comfortzoneyoga.com. And if this episode helped you think differently about your time on the mat in front of the room, please rate and review—it helps other teachers find the show.

Join the Comfort Zone Yoga 200-hour yoga teacher training—curriculum is open now and our live cohort runs September through November 2026. Be sure to tell your students who are interested in teaching, too!

Read all about it here.

Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga, my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you!

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

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Threads

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

...

Transcript

0:00

Can I tell you something? Some of the most well-meaning advice in yoga teacher land is, "Don't demo. Get off your mat, cue with your words, be a real teacher." And honestly, most of it is right, eventually. But the version that gets passed around, the studios that ban demo, the trainings that shame you for showing a pose, the colleague who whispers that real teachers never get on their mat, that version is doing more harm than good. It's especially harmful for newer teachers who genuinely need demonstration as a tool while they're building the rest of their craft. So today, we're going to talk about when to demo, when to stop, and when you do demo, how to do it in a way that serves your students instead of accidentally turning your class into your own practice. I'm Sage Rountree, and this is Yoga Teacher Confidential. The first thing I want to say, and I want to say it loudly enough that you hear it from the back of the studio, you are allowed to demonstrate poses. You are allowed to demonstrate when your students are new and don't have reference for the shapes yet. You are allowed to demonstrate when you're showing a transition that's hard to put into words. You are allowed to demonstrate when you're offering a variation, a spicier option, a sweeter option, something for the body in the room that's clearly looking for an alternative. You are allowed to demonstrate when you teach beginners. You are allowed to demonstrate when you teach asynchronous video because the camera doesn't know how to look at itself. The rule that demo is bad is not actually a rule. It's a generalization that got hardened into dogma somewhere along the way, and now newer teachers hear it as a moral instruction."Don't demo. Real teachers don't demo." As if the only way to prove you're a real teacher is to white-knuckle your way through cueing a pose verbally to a room of students who have never even seen the shape.

Here's the thing: 1:58

demo is a tool. It's one of four ways you can present a pose, and we'll get to all four later. Some classes need more demo. Some need less. Some need almost none. The question isn't, should I demo or not? The question is, does this group of students in this room on this day need me to show them what this shape looks like? Let me walk through a few quick examples. In a beginner class, and I mean a true beginner class where students may have never seen tabletop position before, they do need you to demo so they can see it. They don't have the reference points yet. If you say, "Come into downward-facing dog," and you don't show them what that looks like, you've just left half the room scrambling, looking at their neighbors, hoping to figure it out before you move on. That isn't teaching. That's withholding. In a restorative class on the other end of the spectrum, you barely need to demo at all. Restorative isn't a moving practice for you. You will set the students up. You'll walk them through the prop arrangement. You'll show them maybe briefly what the supported shape looks like before they get into it, and then they close their eyes and they rest. You're a presence in the room, not a body on a mat. You should not be doing the practice with them. You should be there to attend to them. Vinyasa classes are somewhere in the middle, and this is where it gets interesting. A lot of studios, especially the kind that pride themselves on a certain aesthetic of teaching, will tell you not to demo in higher level flow classes. Get off your mat, walk the room, watch your students. The underlying advice here is good. The reason it's good will become clear in a minute, but the prescription never demo is too rigid. If your room is full of students who've done 1,000 vinyasa flows, sure, you don't need to show them downward-facing dog again. But if half your room is dropping in for the first time, or if you're cueing a transition you suspect is going to confuse people, or you're offering a variation that needs a body to point to, show it briefly, then step out. What I do not want you doing is wedging yourself into a studio's pet rule about demo when that rule is hurting your students. You set the tone in the room. If feeling grounded and relaxed and ready to teach requires you to step onto your mat for the first pose of the warmup, okay, do it. Your nervous system regulating itself is part of how the class regulates itself. We don't want a teacher up at the front white-knuckling the rule book while the whole room can tell that she is stressed. So permission first, you are allowed to demo. The question then becomes when and how much, and this is the part most of us never get coached on, how to demo. Because there is a way to demo that serves the students, and there is a way to demo that turns into your own practice while the room watches. They look almost identical from the outside, but they are completely different inside That was a pause for Stinger. Here's the plain truth. The more you demo, the less you see. When you're doing the pose yourself, your eyes are often on the floor or on your own foot or on the wall in front of you. They are not on your students. You can't see the student in the back row compensating with their lower back. You can't see the student in the front who's holding their breath. You can't see the student in the middle who is about to need a modification you would've offered if you'd been looking at them instead of at your knees in downward-facing dog. Here's how I think about it. In a kitchen, there's a difference between the chef who's tasting the dish and the expediter who's watching the diners eat. Tasting the dish is part of the job. You have to know what's in it. You have to know how it's seasoned. But if you spend the whole service tasting your own food, you would never see the table where the soup has gone cold or the table that needs more bread or the table waving you over because something is wrong. The dining room is where the work lands. The kitchen is where you prepare. A teacher who's always demoing is a chef who never leaves the kitchen. And here's where I want to drop a hard observation because I have watched this happen more times than I care to admit. I have seen so many yoga teacher trainees in their first classes on their mats with their eyes closed or with their backs to the room saying, "Good," or,"Nice," or, "Beautiful," to a room they are literally not looking at. Picture that for a second. A teacher, eyes closed, in a pose, telling the room they look beautiful from inside her own closed eyes. How does she know? She doesn't. She can't. She's not seeing them. That good isn't feedback. It's filler. It's a word she assumed good teachers say, deployed at a moment when she has no information about whether good is what's actually happening. The student in the back who has just tweaked something, the student in the front who looks completely lost, they are not the good being affirmed. How do you affirm good in yoga anyway? So giving a blanket good to your class makes them invisible, and the worst part isn't the teacher missing the room. The worst part is that the teacher has just told the room that she isn't in it. The class can feel that. They know. This is not your practice. I have to say that like clapping my hands and saying it in caps in my head. Every time I teach, I say it to myself, even now. This is not your practice. This is their practice. You already practiced. That's what experience before teaching means. That's the first E in the SERVE method, and you'll practice again later. The hour or more that you are standing in front of your students in a room is for them. So when you demo, your eyes don't close. Your back doesn't turn unless there's a very specific structural reason, like you're showing reverse prayer hands or making a point about how a shape looks from the side. Your head stays up, your gaze stays on the room. You are not in the pose for yourself. You are in the pose so that the bodies in front of you can see it as a reference, and the second they have what they need, you can step out. This is also where repetition saves you. If you teach the same sequence over four weeks, and yes, I want you teaching the same sequence over four weeks, this is not laziness, it's craft, the second week you will demo a little less than the first. The third week even less. By the fourth week, your students know the shapes. They know the transitions. You can stand up, walk the room, and cue almost completely with your voice because their bodies already know what your words mean. The repetition has done the work for you. The same is true inside a single class. The first time you cue half pigeon, you might show it briefly. The second time, few minutes later on the other side, you don't need to. They have it. Demo once, cue twice, observe 100 times. That's the ratio that gets you the kind of teaching where you actually catch the things that matter. And this is what most of the well-intentioned don't demo advice is reaching for, even when it overshoots. It's reaching for the idea that your default mode over time should be watching and guiding, not modeling, watching. The demonstration becomes one tool among several used on purpose in the moments where it is truly the best choice. The rest of the time, you can be on your feet in the room, eyes up, watching what the people who paid to be there are actually doing. Because here's what nobody tells you about the watching part. When you are actually watching your students, your cueing gets better, specifically, concretely better. You notice that three people just fell out of the balance pose, and the cue that comes out of your mouth next is different from what it would have been if you hadn't seen it. You notice the student who keeps dropping their head, and you adjust your language in real time. You notice the room is breathing fast, and you slow down. You become more responsive. The class becomes more of the student's class. None of that happens when your eyes are on your own foot. That's what's actually under the get off your mat advice. It isn't a rule against demo, it's an invitation to the watching. The teachers who never demo aren't winning some kind of teacher purity contest. They've just figured out that watching is where the craft lives, and they have structured their teaching to maximize it. You can want the same thing without making demo the enemy. Okay, so we have established demo is a tool, not a sin, but your goal over time is to need it less because the more you need to be on your mat, the less of the room you can see. So how do you actually use demo when you do use it? Let's get practical. There are four ways to present a pose to your students, and each one has its own place. The first is full demonstration with verbal cues. You do the pose, you talk through it, your students follow along. This is the default for new teachers and for asynchronous video and for beginner classes when a shape is unfamiliar. The catch is the one we've already discussed. When you are in the pose, you cannot see the room completely, so use this sparingly, use it intentionally, and use it only for short stretches of time. The second approach is partial demonstration. You set up the pose, you show the key moment, maybe the foot placement, maybe the angle of the front knee, maybe what the back of the body looks like, and then you step out. You become a teacher again. You become a watcher again. The students have gotten the visual reference, and then you get your eyes back. This is the version most newer teachers underuse. Demo the entry, then get out. The third is verbal cues only, no demonstration. You guide entirely with your words. This is the gold standard for experienced teachers, for poses that your students know, and for the second time through a sequence in the same class. It forces your language to get more precise, and it keeps your attention on the room. This is something to aim toward and to grow into. The fourth approach is student demonstration. You invite a student with their permission always to demo while you cue from the side. This works really well in workshops or when you want to celebrate a student's variation or when you want to show a different body holding a pose. Don't lean on it constantly, and please never put someone on the spot. Ask first in advance when you can and choose someone who clearly seems to be comfortable being looked at. Most of your teaching over time will become a fluid mix of the partial demonstration and verbal cueing with full demonstration as the occasional moment when a pose is genuinely new and complex now, when you do demo, here are the rules I want you to remember or even come read the transcript and write them down. Six of them. Number one, do it quickly. The point of a demo is to give your students a visual reference. The point is not to model the pose for the entire duration of the hold. Show it, step out, observe. If you find yourself in the pose for more than a breath or two while your students are also in it, you may have stopped teaching and started practicing. That's the slip, and I know your practice feels like your home base, but it is not your practice, it is the yoga class. Number two, demo mildly. Don't show your personal yoga teacher full expression of the pose. Don't show the deepest backbend you can do. Don't show the variation that took you a decade to access. Never show off. The demo's job is to communicate the shape, not to display the teacher's range. When you show a mild version, you are also implicitly giving permission for a mild version, which is what most of the room needs anyway. The student watching doesn't benefit from seeing your end range. They benefit from seeing the shape they are about to attempt Number three, keep your eyes on your students. This is the big one. Eyes up on the room, on the person who needs a modification, on the person who looks confused, on the person who's breathing fast or not breathing at all. Your demo is for them, not for you. If you cannot do a pose with your eyes up, you probably do not need to demo that pose. Describe it, show a modification, have someone else demo while you cue. Number four, do not close your eyes in a class with live students. I shouldn't have to say it, but I have to say it. If your eyes are closed, you are not teaching. You may be performing teaching, you may be modeling presence for yourself, but you are not in the room with the people who are paying to be there. Eyes open, always. The drishti is on your students. Number five, do not turn your back with two exceptions. One, you're showing something that legitimately reads better from behind, like reverse prayer hands or the alignment of the back foot. Number two, you're making a specific choice. You're facing the long edge of the mat, demonstrating from a different angle, or intentionally giving the room a back view of a shape. Otherwise, your face is to the room because your eyes are on your students, which we already said. And number six, when your students are supine, on their backs, lying down for restorative yoga or for the end of class, lean against the wall, sit on a block, sit at the front of the room. You're not on your mat. You're not lying down. You're not modeling Shavasana, and nor are you looming over your students, moving around without explaining why you are. You might say something like, "I'm going to get up and head over to dim the lights." You're present, you're watching, you're holding the space. Their eyes are closed. Yours are not. Six rules, quick, mild, eyes on students, eyes open, face the room, lean on the wall when they're supine, stay low Print them out, keep them inside your bag, whatever you need. And here's the thing about all of these six rules. They will get easier the more you teach the same sequence. They get easier the more you repeat because repetition reduces the demo load. The fewer poses you have to show, the easier it is to follow these rules. The more your students know the shapes, then the more time you have to actually watch them and help them in the shapes. This is exactly what we work on inside the Prep Station. Prep Station is my $39 a month lesson planning membership for yoga teachers. I think of it as a lunch counter, the quick bites version of my mentorship program. The everyday place where teachers grab a sequence, a follow-along practice video, a check-in with colleagues. The sequences there are built on the 6-4-2 framework. So you can teach the same one for a month with small intentional variations and then watch your students and watch your own teaching get visibly better as the weeks go. The movement library in the Prep Station has more than 180 follow-along videos, so you can practice the sequence in your own body before you teach it. You can do that with your eyes closed lying down on the mat, which means you've already had your practice. You don't need to take it again in class. If that sounds like the kind of structure that would help you turn demo into a tool instead of a crutch, pull up a stool, visit comfortzoneyoga.com/prep to learn more or visit the link in the show notes. Here's what I want you to walk away with. Demo is a tool. You are allowed to use it. I'll even say that studios that shame teachers out of demoing entirely are wrong about it, and I don't want you wedging yourself into a model that doesn't serve the actual students in your actual room. Permission first. And your goal over time is to need demo less, not because demo is bad, but because watching is better. The more you can keep your eyes on your students, the more responsive your teaching gets. The more responsive your teaching gets, the more your students trust the room. When you do demo, do it quickly, do it mildly, do it with your eyes open. Don't close them. Don't turn your back. Remember, lean on the wall. Stay lower when your students are lying down. And remember the line I have to repeat to myself even now, this is not your practice, this is theirs. Remember, repetition is the thing that makes all of this possible. Teach the same sequence over weeks. Let your students learn the shapes. Let your demo load fall away on its own week after week until you are walking the room with your eyes up and your students knowing exactly where they are. If you want the system for that, a repeatable structure, a library of sequences you can rotate, follow along videos so you have already had your practice, the prep station is built exactly for that. Now, I would love to hear from you. What is a pose you find yourself defaulting to demo on? Let me know on Instagram, drop a note in the zone at comfortzoneyoga.com or leave a review and tell me. Reviews also help other teachers find this show. For today, thank you for joining me. This is Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree, and I'll see you next time.