Yoga Myths - What are some Myths about Teaching Yoga?

This video is brought to you today by my new book, How I Made a Million Dollars Teaching Yoga. Grab your copy today at yogabusinessbook.com. 5 romantic ideas people have about teaching yoga. Welcome everyone. It has been a while since I've done a really good video like this where I just talk to you about being a yoga teacher and yoga certification. I have had an incredible year. It has been very trying, to say the least, full of a lot of ups and downs, mostly downs. And I really didn't spend a lot of time on my YouTube channel. And I'm sorry that I haven't been around, but I'm grateful that you're here and I'm glad to be back. So let's get to the topic today. So we're going to talk about 5 romantic ideas that people have about teaching yoga. Number 1, I'm going to be able to quit my job. No, friend, you probably won't be able to quit your job. The reality is that most people who teach yoga teach yoga on the side. They're teaching it as a supplemental to their main income, or they're teaching because they have a partner who does most of the supporting and pays most of the bills. Most people will not make a sufficient living from teaching yoga. You're gonna have to really branch out in order to make yoga your full-time income. That requires a lot of creativity and a lot of experience. Just like anything in life, there is no quick fix. And I know that we think in this internet age that we can just do things really quickly and we see people creating apps or coming up with ideas or, you know, creating new social networks and becoming rich overnight or having a product that goes viral. That is still a statistical outlier. It's not something that happens to most people. It does require work to become good at something. You're not going to graduate yoga teacher training and be such an incredible teacher that so many people are going to come to you and want you to teach them yoga and just hand over a bunch of their money. That's just not the reality of how it works. So when you're going into it, know that you're changing your careers. And not only is it not a steady paycheck, but you're going to have to be an independent contractor who comes up with all your own ideas of how to generate income. And it's going to be like this. Right? Because it's really pure entrepreneurship, and people think that it's all spiritual and that, you know, spirit, God, universe connected is going to help them blow up and be this amazing, well-respected yoga teacher with billions of followers on Instagram. Even Kino McGregor didn't start with a million followers. She had to work her way up, and it took years. I've known Kino for 16 years. And she didn't used to be that famous. So everybody has to start somewhere and know that you're not gonna be able to just graduate teacher training and immediately become rich and famous and making all your money. You're gonna have to supplement your income. And for me, it was about 4 years. Number 2, I actually just heard this the other day. The yoga market is not that competitive. Oh friend, the yoga teacher market is the most competitive. I saw this article that said that one of the top 10 best paid jobs was being a yoga teacher, and I was like, who, who, who, who, who? Like, even the best paid yoga teachers aren't making that much money. Most people are going to make less than $100 a week, you know. And, and if you can live on that, where are you living? I want to come live with you. But the yoga market is incredibly competitive. There are so many people that want to teach yoga. There are so many people that are getting certified to teach yoga that are going out there and teaching. There's also a lot of places for everybody to teach, so don't feel like 'Oh, I shouldn't get certified to teach yoga because it's competitive.' Everything's competitive now. Everything you want to do is competitive. You are special and amazing, and I have certified well over 1,000 people to teach yoga. I've worked with thousands of people to become better yoga teachers, and I'll tell you that some of them come out and they still need a lot of work, and some of them come out and they're incredible, like, straight away. And they just have to learn other skills. So everybody's got something that they have to learn, like, be it the business skills, or be it the niche idea, or be it actual technical things with how to teach yoga, but they're great on the business side. Everybody's got something. Just like bodies are different, just like, you know, my arm twists so, so far, and you might be able to get your thumb to go further. Everybody's body is totally different, and just like everybody's learning curve is totally different when it comes to be— being a yoga teacher. So don't feel like, oh, this is competitive, so I can't do it. Well, you know what, being a bank teller is competitive, and as I understand, that's a pretty good job. So, um, everything is competitive. Do follow your dreams, but know that it's— don't, don't become a yoga teacher because you think it's going to be not a competitive market. It's stupid competitive. Number 3: Teaching yoga means I have to be really good at yoga. No, No, I'm gonna just tell you straight away, like, having worked with so many people, most people that are really good at yoga asana, the physical practice, are not good teachers. They are two different skill sets. People who know how to do are different than people who know how to teach. It is not my responsibility to be able to get into Marichyasana. Like, I don't need to be able to do that. I need to be able to teach it. To my students. And a lot of people who have really great practices, what happens is they want everyone else to be able to do what they can do. And I had someone say to me really early on in, in when I first started teaching yoga teacher training— I think actually it was my first yoga teacher training— someone graduated and she was like, uh, nobody in class can do the, um sequence that I made. Nobody can do it. Like, and I was like, well, they're not gonna— they're not gonna be able to do that. The reality is, is that even if you like aren't really great at yoga, because I've had people take yoga teacher training after they only had been, um, in doing yoga for like a month, once you start getting into yoga teacher training, you start to get skill sets, you start to learn new things, you start to learn things about alignment, you start to learn things about awareness of the body. And most people don't know that. For years I did Surya Namaskar Kriya and never understood that it was a specific sequence. I didn't really know that until I took yoga teacher training. And you'd think like, that's just intuitive, you should know that, but it's not for most people. Most people don't know that. And it's true of anything. Like, think of what it is that you do right now. Like, if you wait tables— oh my gosh, if you wait tables, there are so many people that do not know that tipping is how you make your money. I was waiting tables in Texas for $2 an hour and people would not tip, and I would just want to cry because I'm working for $2 an hour. And, you know, we can have this whole argument about how the tipping, it shouldn't be set up that way, and employers should pay for people and give them a living wage, but that's not how it's set up. At the end of the day, that is not how it's set up. You know, like, people have to, um, people have to tip in order for you to make money. So there's— you— the thing is, once you start getting training on how to be a good waitress, you know, or once you start getting training on how to teach yoga, you're gonna know a lot more than your students just right away, just because you've got that learning. You're going to learn about the Yoga Sutras, you might learn about the Bhagavad Gita, you might, you know, learn about Iyengar and the difference between Iyengar and Ashtanga, you know, like, you're going to learn all these new things. So when you get out, you're automatically going to know more than your students, for the most part, like 99.9% of the time. So don't feel like you have to be really great at yoga because you already are, or you wouldn't have been called to be a yoga teacher. Like, I truly believe that. And I've seen that. I've I've never, I mean, never is a really long time. I saw one student out of thousands of people that I worked with, I had one student by the time they graduated could not tell me what Virabhadrasana I was. And at that point, I decided to start making a quiz at the end that you had to submit to tell me that you knew that, like a long test. But that was one person. Come on, you guys. Everybody knows the basics. Everybody— when you graduate at the end, if you've gone with a reputable teacher training, you know more than your students 99% of the time. So don't feel intimidated by that. And just know that there's actually a much harder learning curve for people who are really good at yoga. Like, it's harder for them because they can't understand why it's hard for their students. And if you had— if you were born with natural flexibility, like a lot of people were, and a bunch of Instagram people with their contortionists They were, they were born with a lot of flexibility and they do not understand what it's like to not be able to touch their toes. As a marathoner, I do understand. And so you probably, if you aren't great at doing the asana, if it's not your natural-born flexibility or you're not doing the Instagram contortion, you probably can understand and empathize with your students better, and that will make you a better teacher. Number 4, the harsh truth. Yoga clients are always nice. No, they're not. They're not. In fact, a lot, a lot of them are not nice. And they're not nice so much so that for me, I no longer wanted to own a yoga studio anymore. It was just so difficult dealing with troubled people. And I'm not saying that there weren't more nice people. There really, there really were. There were more wonderful human beings that I met teaching yoga at my studio than I ever encountered the, the people who were suffering. But the suffering people, the people who have experienced trauma in their life, or they're have— they're expecting yoga to be something that it's not, um, or expecting you to be something that you're not. Those people are loud and they are difficult, and we are not prepared for them. There is no section in yoga teacher training— and I, I think that there should be— um, there is no section that talks about dealing with people who have experienced trauma and how to correctly mirror and how to correctly help these people get help. And there's a lot of people who are teaching yoga who think that they can help people and that people shouldn't go to counseling. And I think that's incredibly dangerous. I do not like that. I once partnered with someone on a big project that felt that way. She felt like she could heal people from their ailments through the practice of yoga and not through professional talk therapy, and she wasn't even healed herself. And there were a lot of boundary issues and problems with the clients. And so I had to end that relationship because it's really important that you don't— as a yoga teacher, that we don't over-tout our abilities. You know, I actually am trained to counsel people. One of my first jobs was working with people who had schizophrenia, bipolar, and personality disorder, and helping them transition from work— being in the hospital to being in a home, in their own home, and living independently. But I still don't see myself as an expert in that. And I listen, I never give advice, and, um, I suggest resources. And so I have partnered with a lot of therapists, and I give out their phone number. And if you need one, send me a message, and I'll connect you with an incredible therapist that I know who actually took my yoga teacher training. So there's going to be really difficult clients and it's just going to be as stressful. I mean, they're maybe not as stressful. Teaching yoga is definitely on the higher end of wonderfulness compared to my corporate job where I managed like 22 stores and thousands of people for a retail company. But, um, it's still, it's still hard. Like, don't think that you're going to teach yoga and you're not going to have any days where you go home and a client has yelled at you for 45 minutes. That definitely happened to me more than once, more than I would like it to happen. And, you know, I've received a lot of apologies years later, but honestly, like, it was so hard to go through all that, that, um, I wasn't prepared for it. So I hope that by hearing this you are prepared that there are going to be people that are angry, and it's okay. It's not your fault. They're suffering, that they've gone through trauma like every one of us. And they need empathy and understanding, because that's what we needed when we went through trauma. And that's probably why you're called to teach yoga. And if you get more challenging students, it's probably because you had challenges, and that's how it shows up for us as human beings. So don't feel bad, it's okay. Number 5, the final romantic myth that people have about teaching yoga is that yoga— teaching yoga will make me happy. It will not make you happy, friend. If you are not happy, you're not going to get there by anything that you do. You're not going to get there by changing your location. You're not going to get there by living in a different situation. You're not going to get there by having a different lover, having different friends, getting a different job. None of those things are going to work. Happiness comes from here, and if you can't find it in here to bring it to here you're going to struggle your whole life. And it doesn't matter— teaching yoga isn't going to bring you some special enlightenment. You've got to allow it and know that it is a daily practice. You got to wake up every morning and make a commitment to happiness. Thank you so much for watching today. I appreciate you, and I'm grateful that you're here, and I'm grateful for your time. I hope that what I've offered you today is helpful, and if it is, I'd I'd like to ask you to do me a huge favor. Number one, go down below and make a comment or like this video or share it with a friend. Really, that is the best way. You don't have to give me any money, just share, and so that other people are into it and they're learning about yoga and yoga teaching and how to get certified and just how to live an overall better life. Also, I do have a free group that I run that helps people who want to become yoga teachers or people who already are yoga teachers, and it's the Yogis in a Circle. You'll see the link below in the description. Please join that, that group. I would love to support you and get knowledge from you and share knowledge with you and just be part of a bigger collective that really supports each other. Thank you again for watching, and I will see you in the next video. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]