Afraid to teach yoga online? Do it anyway.
Are you a yoga teacher who wants to reach wider audience (maybe even make a passive income), but you feel afraid to teach yoga online? Maybe you’ve convinced yourself you’re not expert enough yet? Or perhaps all the tech you need just overwhelms you.
Instead of putting ‘teaching yoga online’ in the too hard basket, I want to encourage you to take it one step at a time. (I’ll be here with you along the way too).
When I first started teaching yoga online my videos were TERRIBLE. (If you don’t believe me go and watch the video below where I take a look at one of my very first videos.)
How to stop being afraid to teach yoga online
Just start
Stop waiting until you know everything and let yourself be a beginner. Just like we preach to our students in our yoga classes. It’s okay to not know everything. It’s okay to not feel like you know what you’re doing. You need to apply the same attitude to your teaching and business. It’s okay if you don’t know the perfect tech set up – you’ll learn as you go.
Just grab your phone and start filming yourself teaching classes. The process of doing will teach you everything you need to know. Through watching yourself teach, you’ll learn what you need to work on. And little by little you can tackle one aspect at the time to make your videos better. Whether that’s by fixing lighting, or sound or even how you frame yourself in the video. Don’t let trying to make your videos perfect stop you from even starting.
Don’t compare yourself to others
When you’re just getting started don’t compare your videos to others who have been teaching yoga online for a long time. Or if you are going to compare yourself, go back to the very start of your favourite teachers’ channels.
Youtube has a handy feature on the videos tab where you can sort by the date added and see the very first video uploaded. Of course, there are some unicorns who have been professionally produced from the start, but most (like me) started with humble (dark and full of static) beginnings.
Embrace it as an opportunity for learning (it’s all svadhyaya/ self study right?)
What has improved my yoga teaching above all else? Filming myself teaching and editing those classes week after week. Teaching yoga online helped me learn about how I present myself as a teacher and how I hold my body when I’m teaching. It also helped me to notice where my alignment has been off.
Yes you will likely cringe watching your first videos. Yes you will have to get over all your insecurities about your body. But I honestly believe that process in itself is so valuable for you as a person, as a teacher and as an online content creator.
Rather than feeling afraid to teach yoga online, focus on filming and editing your classes as a way to grow as a teacher.
Be compassionate towards yourself as a beginner
I feel like you are being too hard on yourself. Stop doubting that you can teach yoga online and bring some of that compassion that you talk about in your classes to your teaching. Be compassionate towards your first videos. Let yourself not know it all right now. Show up to film with heart and service in the same way that you do to teach your in-person classes.
Let go of imposter syndrome
Do you feel like you still have so much to learn before you can start teaching, or sharing online? Maybe you have half a dozen half finished courses (hopefully not one of mine) and still find yourself looking for more to enrol in? A lot of the women I work with in a coaching space talk about feeling like an imposter or a fraud. They tell me they want to finish just one more course and then they’ll start teaching online. Sound familiar?
What if you let yourself start now? What if you let yourself show up online and learn as you go? What if you showed up as the vulnerable, perfectly imperfect human that you are? Your audience will connect with you more in that way than if you wait until you were perfect.
So what are you waiting for? (Make sure you tag me in your first class when you upload it. I can’t wait to be your biggest cheerleader!).