What your personal practice demonstrates—and what it doesn’t tell us about your ability to teach.

Yoga teachers, can we talk about something that’s been kinda bugging me for years?

Why are we so determined to show people the most physically impressive things we can do in our yoga practice?

Handstands. Deep backbends. Complicated arm balances. Postures that may have taken years of dedicated practice to develop.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of those things. I enjoy challenging postures myself, and after 27 years of practicing yoga, there are plenty of things I can do today that took considerable time and effort to develop.

But I think we need to ask ourselves an important question.

What are we communicating to the people who are looking at yoga from the outside?

Because while we’re thinking, Look what’s possible!

Someone else might be thinking, Well, that’s clearly not for me.

And that person may never become our student.

Prefer to Watch?

This week’s video explores why your personal yoga practice and your teaching qualifications are two very different things—and how the way we represent yoga can influence who feels welcome to participate.

Watch: Your Yoga Practice Is Not Your Teaching Qualification →

The Students You Never Meet

Imagine someone who’s curious about yoga.

Maybe they’re interested in improving their balance, developing strength, moving more comfortably, or simply trying something new.

They’ve never attended a class, so they start looking at yoga teachers online.

And what do they find?

Photographs and videos of teachers performing extraordinary physical feats.

Now, some people will find those images inspiring. They’ll see possibilities they hadn’t considered before.

But others may reach a very different conclusion.

They may assume that yoga requires a level of physical ability they don’t currently possess.

They may believe they need to become stronger, more flexible, or more physically capable before they can even begin.

And here’s the problem.

You may never know those people were interested in the first place.

They won’t necessarily contact you to ask whether your classes are appropriate for them.

They may simply decide yoga isn’t something they can do.

Not because they couldn’t participate in a meaningful practice.

But because nothing they saw helped them imagine themselves participating.

Your Personal Practice and Your Teaching Are Different Responsibilities

Your personal yoga practice belongs to you.

You can explore challenging postures, develop advanced skills, and pursue whatever aspects of the practice interest you.

But when you’re teaching, the assignment changes.

Now you’re responsible for creating a meaningful experience for the people in front of you.

And your ability to perform a posture doesn’t automatically demonstrate your ability to teach it.

Consider what effective teaching actually requires.

Can you recognize the demands of a movement?

Can you observe how different students respond to those demands?

Can you distinguish between something that needs attention and a perfectly reasonable variation in how someone moves?

Can you adjust the challenge without automatically making everything easier?

Can you create opportunities for students to participate without suggesting they’re performing an inferior version of the practice?

Those are teaching skills.

And they’re not demonstrated by how far you can bend or how long you can balance on your hands.

Demonstrations certainly have a place in teaching. Sometimes showing a movement is the clearest way to communicate an idea.

But demonstrating a posture is a teaching tool.

It isn’t proof of teaching competence.

Meaningful Practice Doesn’t Have to Look Impressive

Think about standing balance.

One student might explore balance while standing near a wall.

Another might practice standing on one leg without additional support.

Someone else might be working toward an advanced arm balance.

These are different movement experiences with different demands.

And the value of each experience isn’t determined by how impressive it looks.

A thoughtful teacher considers what the student is trying to develop, what the movement requires, and how to provide an appropriate challenge.

The person standing near a wall isn’t necessarily doing a lesser practice.

They’re working with the demands that are meaningful for them.

This is also why I think we need to reconsider how we talk about accessibility.

Accessibility isn’t the absence of challenge. It’s creating meaningful opportunities to participate.

Sometimes that means changing the position.

Sometimes it means adjusting the amount of support.

Sometimes it means increasing the challenge because the student is ready for something more demanding.

The goal isn’t to make every movement easy.

The goal is to make participation meaningful.

And those experiences deserve to be represented, too.

Show People How You Think as a Teacher

Here’s something I’d encourage every yoga teacher to consider the next time they’re planning content for their website or social media.

Think about what you’re NOT showing people.

What about the familiar standing postures you teach?

The balance work?

The different ways you help students explore a movement?

The thoughtful adjustments you make when someone responds differently than you expected?

What about the movements that don’t look particularly impressive on camera but offer tremendous opportunities for learning?

Show some of THAT.

And don’t stop at showing the movement.

Explain your thinking.

What are you observing?

What demands are you asking someone to work with?

Why might you offer a different approach?

What makes that experience meaningful?

When you share those things, you’re demonstrating something much more valuable than your ability to perform an advanced posture.

You’re showing people how you think as a teacher.

You’re communicating your ability to observe, reason, make decisions, and respond to the people you’re teaching.

And you’re helping potential students understand that yoga can offer something meaningful for them, too.

Better Teaching Begins With Better Questions

One of the most important skills we can develop as yoga teachers is the ability to look at a teaching situation without immediately jumping to conclusions.

A student approaches a movement differently than we expected.

What actually happened?

What did we observe?

What are we assuming?

And what might be worth exploring next?

Those questions are far more useful than immediately deciding that something needs to be corrected.

They’re also central to the work I do with teachers.

Meet The Yoga Teacher Companion

I created The Yoga Teacher Companion to help yoga teachers develop their observation, reasoning, and decision-making skills.

One of its tools, What Happened?, helps you work through real teaching situations.

Maybe a student responded unexpectedly to a movement.

Maybe you noticed something you weren’t sure how to interpret.

Or maybe you want to think more carefully about what happened in class before deciding what to do next.

The tool helps you separate observations from assumptions and consider meaningful next steps.

Because becoming a better teacher isn’t about collecting more impressive postures.

It’s about developing the skills to understand and respond to the people you’re teaching.

Explore The Yoga Teacher Companion →

Show More of What’s Possible for Them

I’m not suggesting yoga teachers stop sharing their advanced personal practices.

I’m suggesting we broaden what we show.

Your personal practice can be as elaborate, challenging, or physically demanding as you want it to be.

That’s yours.

But your students don’t need to be able to do what you do.

And they don’t need to want to.

Your ability to perform an impressive posture tells me something about your practice.

Your ability to make the practice meaningful for the person in front of you tells me something about your teaching.

Those are two very different things.

And the next person looking at your content might be someone who has never imagined themselves practicing yoga.

What could you show them that would help change that?

Not simply what’s possible for you.

What’s possible for them.