Whether you have recently completed your yoga teacher training, or have been teaching for years, you have undoubtedly heard those well-intentioned, albeit effectively directionless phrases such as “find your authentic voice” or “you should always teach from the heart.” And indeed, it is remarkably distracting to enter a class where the teacher clearly is not confident in what they are saying, or they are putting too much effort into spiritual flare and not enough attention on effective cueing.
However, the real truth is that your voice as a teacher is fluid – it will grow and evolve as you do over time.
Finding your authentic voice is a yoga in and of itself
It is a practice that will require you to know who you are in the here and now, and to own what you know as an offering to your students as one possible path towards their true self.
As a full time yoga teacher, this topic is on my mind almost everyday. Through my own research and from teaching for over eight years through thousands of classes in studios, private coaching, and at large events, I have put together what I believe are the most useful pieces of advice for crafting an authentic voice as a yoga teacher.
The hard truth of this: no one can tell you what your voice should be, nor can they map out the route to take to find it. The following seven points are here as gentle reminders for your journey as a teacher.
1. Teach What You Practice
This may sound obvious, but it is one of the most important points in this article. Your ability to guide another human through any yogic practice will always be limited to the scope of your own personal practice. This is not to say that it is impossible to teach something that isn’t a part of your normal routine. However, your students will know the difference between your guidance on the practices you know deeply and those that you only know theoretically.
The very first time I attempted to teach handstands in a public class, I was not ready. At the time, in my personal practice I could pop my legs up for just a few seconds, but I was far from understanding all the nuances that go into meaningfully holding this asana.
I queued the pose as an option and gave only a few instructions. I watched my students slam their legs into the wall behind, fall dramatically to the side, and shake their heads with frustration. The sense of flow in the room was quickly lost.
I knew immediately they needed more instruction than I was able to give, and then the itty, bitty, shitty, committee in my head started telling me all the ways I was a failure as a teacher. I struggled to get through the rest of class for fear that I was still misleading everyone.
Nevertheless, about a year later, after daily practice and guidance from my own teachers, I taught it again in a public class. Did legs still slam into the wall? For sure. Did students fall? Sure did. But I had been in their shoes and had found solutions to the challenges. This time I
was able to quickly jump in with more instruction, and instead of being left with frustration from this practice, students felt they could see the path towards holding a handstand with confidence.
In 2021, DoYou Yoga conducted a global yoga study with over 10,000 participants to gain a better understanding of why people practice yoga around the world. The following statistic is not meant to scare you, but rather to show the importance of teaching what you know and are practicing yourself. 65.9% of respondents said that the reason they choose to attend a particular yoga class is for the teacher, and 30.2% of respondents who said they had quit a yoga class did so because of perceived incompetence of the teacher.
If that was a little triggering, take a deep breath. You do not have to be a master of every aspect of yoga to teach an incredible class. Teach what you know, teach what you practice, and never stop practicing. This will make your content authentically yours, and that is what people will come back for again and again.
2. Speak as Though You are Talking to a Friend
Have you ever been to a class where you interact with the teacher at the front desk and they have a normal speaking voice, then the teacher comes into the studio and suddenly they have dropped an octave or two and they start elongating the vowels in their words (“inhaaale…exhaaale”)? This is often referred to as a “yogi voice,” or “teacher voice,” or, dare I say, a “god voice”.
In reality, I think this comes from our desire to be great teachers – perhaps emulating our Guru in Mysore, but who knows, maybe we are actually channeling some divine yogi from another dimension. Regardless of the reason, this is also one of the most distracting qualities a teacher could bring to their class. It can come off disingenuous and makes it hard for students to focus on the content and their own introspection.
If you find that the urge to modify your voice while teaching is strong, try this: instead of seeing your students as an audience you need to perform for, imagine your students as your friends. Not only will this will help you to create quicker connections with them, but you will also show up more authentically and be less inclined to change the way you speak.
3. Never Stop Learning
When I signed up for my teacher training, I assumed that by the end of it I would essentially be a master of yoga in all regards. I, of course, was not; nor am I today. Have we mastered certain asanas and aspects of yoga? Most certainly.
But yoga is a never ending journey whether you teach it or not. Finding your voice as a yoga teacher is partly a product of this. Our voice grows in authority and authenticity while we as individuals continue to learn and grow.
If you choose to stop learning in yoga, you will quickly find that teaching becomes a tedious, monotonous task. Think of your continued education in yoga as your insurance policy against burnout.
4. Trust Yourself, and Trust Silence
Trusting yourself can be one of the hardest parts for a new teacher. Trust begins with teaching what you practice, and then is strengthened through repetition.
In other words, you have to teach more to learn how to trust yourself. So if you are new to teaching, know that this part does get easier with time. Think about yourself today compared to the very first class you taught? I bet you are crushing it.
When we lack trust in ourselves as teachers we often feel that we need to speak more; as if by saying more, we will somehow increase our authority. I am certain that almost every teacher at some point has felt the urge to fill what would normally be an appropriate silence with some kind of flowery speech.
Sure, in the middle of a vinyasa flow while cueing breath-to-movement, it can be difficult to stay quiet for long. However, yoga is foremost an introspective practice, and as teachers we are obligated to give our students the space to seek inward.
In other words, we need to intentionally create silence to give our students minds the opportunity to arrive in the present. Silence allows our students the time to process what is happening in their body at that moment. This will help them to create better muscle memory for asanas, it will allow their mind to actually slow down (which is the entire purpose of asana), and will lead to a more meaningful practice overall.
As you begin to trust yourself more, you will also find it easier to trust yourself to stop talking from time to time.
5. Connect with Your Students
As humans we are hardwired for connection. No matter what format you are teaching in, it will ALWAYS be worth your time and energy to take a few moments to check in with your students before class.
Ask them how their day was, if they’re struggling with anything in particular, or even simply find out where they are from and what brings them to yoga.
The more connections you make with your students before class, the easier it will be for you to guide them in a way that honors the present moment.
6. Embrace Your Mistakes
You are NOT a robot.
Let me say that again, YOU ARE NOT A ROBOT.
You will make mistakes. You will confuse your lefts and rights. You will forget parts of your sequence and you will mix up the names of asanas. You will likely even say something that will offend someone at some point.
Your job is to accept that this will happen, and then own it when it does. This will allow you to grow as a teacher and it actually allows your students the opportunity to see you as a human and not just a service provider.
7. Your Teaching is a Yoga
Yoga is a practice that guides us to the present moment with our whole self, and this practice is a never ending journey. As teachers, we have the honor to help guide others into their own unique journey, but in order for us to do this effectively we must first know who we are. In this digital age of social media and post-modern capitalism, knowing who you are is an exceptionally difficult thing to do.
We are relentlessly bombarded with complex marketing strategies that make us feel like we are not enough as we are. This of course is a fallacy, but it is nearly impossible to see unless we create the time and space to allow ourselves to meditate – to recenter our mind in our physicality; to breathe and bear witness to all that we already possess… to arrive.
When we truly arrive in the present, the question of who we are becomes irrelevant because we simply are and that is enough. It is from this place that we can begin to guide our students into radical transformation. This is a yoga.
This is your journey dear one, and it is beautiful if you let it be so.
