3 Ways to Differentiate Yourself in Your Community
WE GET IT! There are a lot of yoga teachers in the world.
Initially, I wrote a long introduction to explain the staggering amount of people who both practice and teach yoga. But you’re not here for the numbers you want to know how you can stand out as a teacher in your local community.
1. Start with intention
It’s easy to jump straight to your list of yoga teaching goals without having a strong foundation to support your vision.
I want to…
teach at all the best yoga studios in town.
sell out all of the workshops I offer.
make a living being a yoga teacher.
But what’s your INTENTION for teaching yoga?
A strong intention behind your teaching will carry you through all of the highs and lows of the profession.
For me, I have an overarching intention to share movement medicine with others. This stems from being stricken with the disease ulcerative colitis in my early twenties. Yoga was one of the main catalysts that offered me healing. I want to share the radical transformation in the health of my mind-body-spirit with others.
While this central intention informs all of my teachings, I also have individual intentions for every class I teach. When teaching a beginner Slow Flow class, my intention may be to create a safe space to explore how to release tension in the body.
TWO powerful questions to ask yourself:
1) What life experience made yoga a pivotal part of your life?
2) List 3 reasons why you believe yoga is an important practice to share with others.
2. Own your teaching style
The rise of Instagram has created the Yogi Rock Star. Even before I write this sentence, you can probably rattle off your top 5 favourite teachers.
It’s inevitable with a community of yogis at your fingertips through the portal of an app that you’re going to compare yourself to other yoga teachers.
“I want to be able to handstand like Dylan Werner and flow with ease like Meghan Currie,” you might tell yourself.
But you will never be exactly like these teachers. You can take inspiration from their practice and teaching. But they have their own set of life experiences that have brought them to where they are and so do you.
If you were a construction worker who had a back injury and yoga helped you to recovery, use this as your inspiration. You could create a class or workshop focused on helping tradesmen to prevent injury in the workplace.
When your teaching comes across as an authentic expression of yourself, your students, other teachers, and studio owners will recognise this. They will see there’s a strong purpose behind why you teach, and more opportunities will come your way.
TWO powerful questions to ask yourself:
1) List 3 things that make your yoga teaching unique.
2) What is one unique class or workshop you could offer in your community?
3. Find your yoga community
Where I live, each yoga studio has a specific niche of yogis they’re trying to cater too. Your city is probably similar. Some studios offer purely Vinyasa. Others a mixture of Hatha and Yin. While others may have a mix of movement modalities like Barre and Pilates mixed in with yoga.
Each studio has a different community of yogis who attend, and this creates the vibe or feel of the studio. It’s inevitable you will feel more at home at certain studios more than others.
As a teacher, it’s important to teach to your ideal audience. Yoga teaching is a business, and you want to make sure to find and sell yourself to the tribe of people who will most resonate with your offering.
If you’re still in the process of discovering what your yoga style is and which studio will align with your life and teaching, I recommend going on a yoga spree. Try out all of the yoga studios in your community. Most studios have a low priced intro week where you can try out as many classes as you like. For that week immerse yourself into the community - chat with the teachers and other members, try a variety of classes from beginner to advanced. After you’ve gone to five studios or more take some time to reflect on the top two to three which resonated most. And then dedicate your time and energy to these communities.
TWO powerful questions to ask yourself:
1) What are the top 3 yoga styles you enjoy practicing and teaching? I.e., Vinyasa, Restorative, Ashtanga, etc.
2) List 5 yoga studios in your community you can try out for a week.
It’s true there are a lot of yoga teachers, but there’s no reason you can’t carve out your own unique space within the yogiverse. Comment below with the unique strategies you’ve used to stand out as a yoga teacher.
This article was written for us by our Brand Warrior, the awesome Michael Toru, for more about Michael, click here
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