Teaching Yoga - Niching

In ‘the business of yoga teaching’, there is always much discussion about ‘niching down’ and ‘creating a brand’.  This vocation (because that is what it is) is shifting ever faster and further from the preserve of the weird, lucky, or weirdly lucky, into an actual valid career path, deeply woven in to the fibre of the ‘wellness entrepreneur’ fabric.

And let us have no doubt that as cool as that sounds, through the lens of western capitalism in which most of us live, it is a gig economy job.

If you decide that the vocation of being a yoga teacher is what you want as your sole source of income - your niche does not fucking matter for the first few years.  At least.

Because a) you do not know what you are good at yet and b) if someone offers you cash to teach you are most likely going to say yes, even if it is something weird like puppies (hopefully you will get over that).

I am not saying that you have to do it this way, and I am definitely not saying you have to do it the way I did it.  But it is in my experience that you are constantly practicing being the new teacher and being the hungry student.

The hungry student goes to class with one eye on the mat and one eye on the sequence, banking transitions or track titles.

They sit on YouTube looking for ‘creative vinyasa’, ‘yin for hips’ and ‘yoga for sciatica’, because someone will have told you, diagnosed or not, that they have it in the first 15minutes of you teaching and will expect for you to know how to manage it.

The new teacher realises they know nothing about anatomy (aside from their own injuries, which will become their superpower).  A woman will whisper to them that she is in her first trimester and new to the class, while another heavily pregnant woman who ‘knows what she is doing’ will wonder in and the teacher will spend an hour freaking the fuck out that they will accidentally break the baby and that nobody suddenly goes in to labour. (unless you have been pregnant, in which case this could be your superpower).

The hungry student says yes to everything - kids, seniors, corporate, teens, rugby club - because they really believe they can teach it (and money).

The new teacher looks on in horror that the corporate class won’t sing their mantra, that the kids started eating their own shoes when they turned to put the music on and that the over 70s class cannot do a knee-down chaturanga or a downward do which is supposed to be a resting pose ffs!

Now, their is no shade if you have already decided exactly who and what you want to teach.  This is amazing news.  And also, you may decide to change it along the way.

Regardless of what you choose to teach, you will mess up.  You will.  You are going to make a weird adjustment, teach only one side, say the wrong thing etc.  You will have a room full of people stare at you like your face is on fire and it is inconvenient to them.

You are going to fuck up and never want to teach again.  You are also going end up teaching so much that it completely sucks the fun out of it, wondering why you didn’t just say yes to the admin job because at 6.15pm you would be at happy hour rather than getting 2nd gear-based foot cramp sitting in rush hour traffic to Cheadle where you may or may not make £25.

Writing this has in fact bought a wry smile and a chuckle to me this afternoon.  I share this because I see teacher posts peppered with ‘humbled, blessed, forever a student’ and often only in relation to a spanking hard practice or a handstand.

As a teacher of yoga, this is implicitly applicable to the art of teaching.  I have only recently begun to teach other teachers on trainings, and the main through line of questions asked is basically ‘how do you remember everything/be authentic/not be shit?’.  And the answer, in my humble opinion, is to practice.  No, not another inversion.  Practice teaching.  Say yes to teaching in gyms especially because of the range of people in class.  Try different age groups.  Go business casual in an office.  Put on your own class and have nobody turn up/a beginner and a gymnast.  In the words of a wonderful teacher of mine; ‘your sessions are your lessons’ and ‘fall upward’.

By staying open to opportunities and not niching down early, you open yourself to so many different experiences.  Wanting to come out the gate as expert in a certain area can feel disingenuous.  Having amassed over 6000 teaching hours in 8 years, I have loved and loathed and loved again various styles and groups.  Only now, however, am I really starting to see the through line, and I am super excited to take that further.

Maybe you will find yours quicker than me, maybe you won’t.

Stay open to the possibilities and the potential inspiration that comes from teaching.

A practice it.

Any questions or thoughts?  Would love to hear them, especially from teacher friends or if you have been here from the beginning xoxo