How To Teach Private Yoga Lessons As A Personal Yoga Instructor
Most yoga instructors would love to teach more private lessons if they could just figure out how. As a personal yoga instructor, you get to create your own hours, build close meaningful relationships with your students, and earn way more income than you can teaching groups
As yoga at large becomes more popular and mainstream across the nation, the demand for private yoga instruction also grows exponentially. There are likely hundreds of people in your vicinity who would love to receive private yoga instruction.
Most yoga instructors don’t niche in personal yoga, so if you choose to build a private yoga business, you could have very little competition and an easy time filling up with high-paying students.
Unfortunately, private yoga tends to be the least covered topic in teacher training, leaving teachers feeling completely unprepared and confused about how to teach private yoga lessons.
Know Your Student
The more we get to know our students, the more we can tailor and personalize their sessions so that they get a more valuable experience than they would in a group class.
On the introductory session always bring an intake form with some questions about their health and lifestyle. Study the form to understand my new student, but even more importantly spend some time at the beginning of the session engaging in conversation with them. Ask them open-ended questions like “How much yoga experience do you have?” and “What motivated you to seek private lessons?” and listen closely to not just hear but understand their replies.
YOGA HAPPENS BEYOND THE MAT ANYTHING YOU DO WITH ATTENTION TO HOW YOU FEEL IS DOING YOGA.
As you get to know your student, you can learn how to best serve them with your teaching. You may discover that they are seeking more of a restorative yoga experience than an active one. You may learn that they have a history of back pain and choose to offer poses that are helpful for that issue. Sometimes we learn that the student has issues we do not feel prepared to address. You can then refer them to a more experienced teacher, or a medical professional if necessary. Always be a professional and practice Ahimsa (Non-harming).
Getting to know your personal yoga students will help them feel seen, heard, and understood, and set them up for feeling safe as they explore their bodies and try new things in your care.
Bring Your Best Self To Every Session
When you teach a private lesson, you are working up close and personal with your student. They will notice if you are tired, hungry, bored, or distracted, and it will affect the way you teach and the way they feel. Show up to teaching a personal lesson as your very best self. Be rested, fed, focused, and enthusiastic.
Teaching personal yoga is not just about the way you teach — it’s about the way you are. If you are doing an introductory session with a prospective regular student, they are most interested to see how comfortable they feel working with you.
This is especially true if they will be inviting you into their home or office to work with them. Show up feeling great, looking great, with an open heart and a smile. The student needs to fall in love with working with you, not just with doing yoga.
This means you need to be confident! While there is always more to learn and room to improve as a personal yoga instructor, you need to trust that you are an expert and have a ton of value to bring to private sessions with your students. If you are still developing confidence as an instructor, you may want to consider teaching private lessons to beginners. If you have been through at least a 200-hour teacher training, you are definitely way more of an expert in yoga than someone just beginning their practice.
To Sequence or Not To Sequence? That Is The Question!
Instructors often ask about approaches to sequencing for personal lessons. Every instructor has their own unique approach to creating yoga sequences, and we believe that should be no different when it comes to teaching personal lessons. Our approach to sequencing for personal lessons is just one model of possibility and we encourage you to discover what feels best to you.
Approach sequencing for a personal lesson is similar to how to sequence for a group class. The major difference is that creating a sequence with the specific student and everything you need to know about them in mind. Consider their physical needs as well as their emotional and spiritual needs. So these are the things you should know before becoming a personal yoga instruction, hopefully, it will be useful for you.
EDUCATION GIVES YOU NEITHER EXPERIENCE NOR WISDOM.
CLICK HERE For More Course Inclusions and Our June Main Event
