If you have been hanging out with me here for a while, you know I have been teaching 25 to 30 private yoga sessions a week for many years {and I have waiting lists at every time slot}. Most of my clients have been with me for years, and I have even created a teacher training program focused entirely on learning the skills that are required to teach one on one in a way that is sustainable and fun for you the teacher, and facilitates deep and meaningful change for your students.
I am honored and excited to be the closing act here on this blog tour. There has been so much great advice given, important shadow topics brought into the light, and inspirational stories shared.
The topics of money, marketing, and finding ideal clients have some up several times, and I am glad for it! These are issues that yoga teachers don’t talk about enough.
But now…you and I…we are going to talk about something different.
You can have the most perfect ideal client in mind. You can scour all the right places to reach and connect with them. You can have the most beautiful website, and the most clear, authentic branding. And none of it will matter.
None of that matters if your clients are not having meaningful experiences in their sessions with you, and are able to translate those experiences into serious change in their lives off the mat.
That is what will keep your clients coming back to you once or twice a week for many many years, even when their lives and their schedules get crazy.
Oh, so…just life altering, mind blowing experiences in every single session, you say??? How the hell do you do that? It doesn’t help that no one actually taught you how to teach private lessons!
If I could take all 25 hours of my teacher training program and distill it down to one teaching, it would be this::
You have to meet your students where they are.
Which means to have to distill yoga down to its most essential teachings, and do whatever you have to get those teachings across to your students.
First that requires that you know what you think are the most important teachings of yoga.
I’ll share mine with you for a frame of reference.
I think the aim of a yoga practice is to cultivate the ability to maintain sustained attention.
It is my job as the teacher to create a framework within which students can observe their experience, and teach them tools to be able to recreate the experience of deep presence for themselves.
And more simply:: I want to teach them how to get their mind and their body in the same place via the guidance of their breath.
And I will do anything, and I really mean anything, to make that happen.
This requires you let go of your agenda, and even open up your ideas about what yoga should look like.
It asks you to be creative about how you start class and flexible about how you end class.
Want some specific ideas about how to do this? You’ll have to join us here!
Share with us! What do you think are the most important teachings of yoga?
