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, owning and running a studio, mentoring yoga teachers, and directing yoga teacher trainings 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. Yoga Off the Mat is coming out in July 2026. 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.
Episodes
84 episodes
83. Stop Reinventing Your Yoga Class Every Week: What Exercise Physiology Tells Us About Sequencing
If you've ever spent hours creating a brand-new yoga sequence every week, only to wonder if your students even noticed the difference, this episode is for you.I spent over a decade coaching endurance athletes to age group world champions...
82. Studenthood Is the Bedrock of Your Teaching
The best yoga teachers never stop being students—but the longer you teach, the harder that becomes. In this episode, Sage Rountree shares how selling her yoga studio after fifteen years unexpectedly gave her back something she'd been missing: t...
81. Inside the Comfort Zone Yoga 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training: A Guided Tour of Everything You Need to Know
"Will I fit in?" In over a decade of personal conversations with prospective students, that question came up nearly every time. In this episode, I answer it honestly—along with everything else you'd want to know before enrolling in a 200-hour y...
80. Why I Named It Comfort Zone Yoga
"Get out of your comfort zone." It's practically a bumper sticker. But here's the definition I keep coming back to: the place where you can operate without fear of failure. That's not a limitation. That's a superpower.In this ep...
79. Theming Your Yoga Classes without Overthinking
Think about the last time you sat down to plan a themed yoga class. Did you freeze—staring at your notebook, wondering whether to use a Sanskrit concept, a seasonal metaphor, or a quote from a book you half-remember? You're not alone, and you'r...
78. Yoga Nidra, the Koshas, and You
I was teaching my regular Monday night balance class when I realized something: the centering I've been guiding for years—body, breath, mind, intention—is a walkthrough of the koshas. I just never called it that.In this episode, I break ...
77. Storytelling for Yoga Teachers with Sara Joelle
Website copywriter Sara Joelle joins me to talk about something every yoga teacher needs—storytelling. Whether you're theming a class, writing a newsletter, or trying to tell people about your workshop without cringing, Sara has practical metho...
76. Why Every Yoga Teacher Needs a Newsletter (And How to Start One)
Have you ever noticed how even your most loyal yoga students eventually drift away? Life happens—schedules change, people move—and without a way to stay in touch between classes, those connections fade.In this episode of Yoga Teacher Con...
75. Why Teaching Yoga Is Not Like Teaching Other Subjects
A vivid dream about teaching Spinning brought me face to face with something I've known for years but never quite articulated: teaching yoga is fundamentally different from every other kind of teaching I've done.In this episode, I'm draw...
74. When It's NOT Your Choice: Losing a Class You Didn't Choose to Leave
Classes end in a variety of ways. Last episode, we talked about choosing to drop a class on your own terms. But what happens when the decision isn't yours?Maybe the studio cut your class. Maybe an illness or injury forced you to step awa...
73. When to Drop a Class: How to Know It's Time to Walk Away
I recently dropped a class I'd been teaching for nearly 23 years. Monday nights at 6 p.m.—since the literal day when the studio opened in 2004. Walking away from that class was one of the most bittersweet decisions I've ever made.In this...
72. You Get Who You Get: Teaching Yoga to Unpredictable Audiences
I was teaching a free yoga class at an outdoor gear store in Edmonton when a woman walked in with a toddler and an infant. Not a sleeping infant in a carrier: these children were alert, wandering, making noise. And if you've ever taught yoga, y...
71. What Yoga Teacher Sponsorships Really Look Like
I once sat next to the drummer from Loverboy on a plane, and we realized our lives were almost identical: city to city, same performance, different crowd, trying to find a salad somewhere. Except he was an actual rock star, and I was coming bac...
70. The Planning-Confidence Cycle: Finding the Middle Path Between Overplanning and Winging It
If you've ever spent three hours planning a sixty-minute yoga class—or shown up with nothing but vibes and hoped for the best—this episode is for you. I'm unpacking what I call the Planning-Confidence Cycle: the exhausting trap that keeps yoga ...
69. Applying the Service Mindset to Social Media (Minimalist Instagram for Yoga Teachers)
Instagram can feel like a second job-especially when you became a yoga teacher to teach, not to perform online.In this episode, I share a simple reframe that takes the pressure down fast: your job on social media is not to entertain the ...
68. Teaching at Gyms and YMCAs: The Best Training Ground for New Yoga Teachers
When I started teaching yoga at the UNC Wellness Center, I had to complete hospital safety training about bloodborne pathogens and biohazard spills. I was teaching yoga in a gym. The odds of encountering a biohazard during downward-facing dog w...
67. How to Approach a Yoga Studio for Your First Teaching Job
Most new yoga teachers approach studios completely wrong. They send generic emails, mention how much they need the work, and haven't taken a single class at the studio they're asking to teach at. Some even copy-paste so carelessly that they men...
66. How We Can Work Together in 2026: Programs for Every Stage of Your Teaching Journey
I've spent twenty years watching yoga teachers struggle with the same pattern. They finish their training, start teaching, and then something happens. They're standing in front of three students wondering what they're doing wrong. They're scram...
65. Teaching Meditation with Confidence—Gabrielle Harris on Authenticity and Finding Your Voice
Most yoga teachers feel secretly terrified about teaching meditation. You know how to cue a vinyasa, but when it comes to that moment where you ask students to sit still and turn inward, the panic sets in. Who am I to guide someone's meditation...
64. From Set Sequences to Lead Teacher: Lana Boone on Finding Confidence Through Framework
When Lana Boone first started teaching formats beyond her familiar Baptiste sequence, she was terrified. Today, she's the lead teacher at Yoga Six in Potomac, Maryland, confidently teaching everything from power to restorative to sound bath—and...
63. How I Chose My 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training (And Why I'm Building a Better One)
Most 200-hour yoga teacher trainings teach you how to do yoga—but they don't teach you how to teach yoga. If you've been through a training yourself, you know exactly what I mean. You spent weeks learning Sanskrit names, memorizing muscles, and...
62. Your Teaching Year in Review: Reflection and Intention Setting for 2026
Most yoga teachers end the year measuring what they didn't accomplish. The workshops they didn't lead, the certifications they didn't finish, the Instagram following that didn't grow. But here's what I've learned after two decades of teaching: ...
61. Teaching Yoga When Friends and Family Show Up to Class
The most awkward yoga class I ever taught? When my husband raised his hand mid-class like a third grader to ask if he was doing it right. If you're teaching through the holidays, you're probably about to experience your own version of this—frie...
60. Teaching Yoga on Video—What I Learned the Hard Way
I've been creating yoga video content since the DVD era—and I've made just about every mistake you can make along the way. From losing the rights to my own videos to stress-recording live classes while trying to serve paying students, my journe...
59. Evolve Your Voice: The Power of Self-Assessment for Yoga Teachers
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 di...