Teaching yoga is an incredibly rewarding way to earn a living. It's also much more demanding and stressful than people imagine. If you're often feeling overwhelmed or stressed as a yoga teacher, you're not alone. Even after you've become a yoga teacher, you'll still be susceptible to the ups and downs of everyday life.
You will experience loss and sadness, anger, depression, and negativity. And you'll experience it with the added pressure that everyone around you expects you to maintain your balance. As you learn in yoga asanas, you have to find the balance between sthria and sukham. So while the job of being a yoga instructor can be hard and you have to work really hard, it's worth it.
If you're afraid you won't be able to teach yoga because you're shy, you should know that shyness represents a challenge, but it's not insurmountable. According to the Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance, the number of yoga teachers in the United States has doubled in the past six years. Taking the time to expand your own knowledge about yoga will benefit your students and allow them to excel in their teaching techniques. In your mind, these are the students who betray you by studying with your rival, who abandon you as you move forward, who “disappoint you for improving” and not recognizing what you consider to be your profound influence on their yoga.
The whole yoga scene, which felt like she had lost her way, depressed her and she no longer wanted to be part of it. A decade and a half later, he and his wife Donna Fone have a thriving business with part-time employees, under whose aegis are the Piedmont Yoga Studio and Yee's videos, retreats and workshops. When JoAnn Lyons decided to settle in the Bay Area, she began volunteering her time and skills to teach yoga to people with cerebral palsy. You could impersonate a traveling bard or maniac as you travel from the office to the gym or yoga studio, carrying mats, straps and foam bricks in the trunk, replacing everywhere in an effort to build a solid foundation and income.
Yoga and Ayurveda experts also recommend practicing yoga nidra (a guided visualization of yoga) in the late afternoon to prepare the body and mind for later sleep, and having a glass of warm milk (or almond milk) before bed with green cardamom, honey and ghee. So accept that position as a substitute for Saturday's basic yoga class at 6 in the morning, even if you want to teach advanced Vinyasa and aren't an early riser. We may not consider teaching yoga to “work” in the same sense as having a normal job for 9 to 5 years, and because of its ancient roots, yoga and, by association, yoga teachers can seem divorced from mundane concerns, such as money. If you think you shouldn't be a yoga teacher because you're too old, fat, clumsy, or stiff, think again.
It also allows new teachers to form lasting friendships and establish strong links with the local yoga community, which can be a big help when it comes to teaching full time. Yoga was a gateway to experiencing my body in ways that I had only vaguely felt before, both kinesthetically and intuitively. So how do you cope with fatigue but still maintain a yoga practice? I think the key is to focus less on the practice of asanas and more on the practices of relaxation, pranayama and meditation.
