Updated December 23, 2025 04:19AM
It’s easy to assume that teaching yoga comes down to hip-hugging Spandex, the ultimate playlist, and mastering a flawless Headstand.
When I began teaching yoga three years ago, though, I quickly learned that one of the most challenging aspects of leading class wasn’t anything that could be bought at a store or even taught in 200-hour yoga teacher training (YTT). It wasn’t even leading students through Warrior 2 and Extended Side Angle. It was disregarding any internalized expectations of how I should show up as a yoga teacher and finding my own teaching style—allowing for my process to evolve and change, just like my experience as a student had over the years.
But this realization came after a lot of trial and error, and leading my first yoga classes felt like being thrown into the deep end. To feel less alone in the process, I tapped into my community. Eventually, I asked several yoga teachers in my circle how they navigated that hurdle. Turns out the challenge of developing a teaching style that works for you is a lot more universal than is talked about in YTTs or training manuals. What they shared made a tremendous difference in how I approached myself and my classes.
How to Find Your Unique Yoga Teaching Style
Although trying out different approaches is a normal part of learning anything, eventually you’ll want to identify your own authentic teaching style. Following is the advice that helped me become familiar with my style.
1. Release Expectations
Audra Carmine recalls some of her early teaching experiences in Portland, Oregon, as “trying to emulate some idea of what a yoga teacher is, rather than just being a yoga teacher.” It’s a challenge that’s familiar to most new yoga teachers.
Carmine explains that when she started teaching a little more than 16 years ago, it was less common for people with kids to be yoga teachers. Many people asked her how she was going to balance being a mother and teaching. She remembers thinking the question was rather ridiculous. Yet it still prompted her to think she needed to fit some sort of yoga teacher ideal. She began to feel that perhaps yoga teaching wasn’t right for her.
Everything changed when she had what she now calls her “teacup moment”—a moment of clarity during her early teaching days while washing a teacup after class. She realized that trying to be anything other than herself as a teacher simply wasn’t working, and instead committed to showing up as herself. She started weaving personal stories into her dharma talks. She also started explaining ancient aspects of yoga and drawing parallels with current issues.
After she was no longer trying to live up to her expectations of what it meant to be a yoga teacher, her experience started to feel more like channeling rather than performing. Within a couple of months, her classes were consistently full.
“People are longing for connection. And connection doesn’t happen when there’s this shiny veneer,” says Carmine, describing the shift that happened when she started teaching from a more authentic place. “Connection happens when one person is vulnerable, and that frees the other person to be vulnerable.”
2. Avoid Overpreparing
Many yoga teacher trainings will tell you to be yourself and allow your classes to evolve. However, finding your natural style as a new yoga teacher is often easier said than done—especially when you’re still getting used to reading a room full of students and memorizing cues for poses.
Teaching yoga and showing up comfortably comes with a learning curve, even if you’re used to public speaking in other settings. Gary Appel, a yoga teacher in Denver, Colorado, had been practicing law for 36 years and teaching it at the college level for 20 years when he took his 200-hour yoga teacher training. He quickly learned teaching yoga was far different than lecturing in a university.
Like many new yoga teachers, Appel initially planned his sequences in detail. “I’d go into a class with this great plan and then I would see from the class…that what I had planned wasn’t going to work,” he recalls, noting unpredictable factors like the size of a class and the general vibe of the room. He remembers designing involved, energetic flows, for instance, only to observe that his students’ movements and energy on their mats before class was quite low.
Appel found teaching yoga to be a much more intuitive endeavor than delivering lectures and that tuning into his students was preferable to pushing through a planned flow. Still, it took years of practice for him to be able to let go and let a class unfold. He notes that planning can be useful when you’re initially finding your style as a teacher, although he eventually became comfortable with showing up for class without worrying “about what the next move was going to be.” Today, he doesn’t plan his classes at all.
He notes that meditating before class and connecting to the breath helps him remember his intention, release his ego, and connect to what students need.
3. Remain Committed to Your Practice
It can be challenging to maintain your own practice. But prioritizing it not only provides inspiration for what you teach, it helps you teach from a more grounded space on days when you face complicated emotions or fatigue.
Julia Deltzer, who also teaches yoga in Denver, Colorado, emphasizes the importance of staying connected to your own ever-evolving practice—even when you’re beginning, juggling jobs, or teaching multiple classes a week or day. She explains it’s essential to teaching in a way that’s true to you even when your schedule is chaotic. Deltzer also finds that it also supports her familiarity with what it feels like to be a student, which in turn helps her relate to those in her classes.
“What really helps me find my voice is saying the things that sometimes I needed to hear,” she says, noting that staying connected to herself and her journey with yoga better equips her to share relatable, universal insights during classes, such as reminders of strength and worthiness.
4. Let Yourself Be a Beginner
Teaching yoga, like practicing it, is a process. Your teaching style becomes more authentic the moment you let go of any perceived need to perform or attachment to specific outcomes, including validation after class.
The first year of teaching, I focused less on creating different sequences and more on becoming comfortable with other essential aspects of leading a class, such as cueing, observing students, and, eventually, improvising. That allowed me space to eventually share yoga in a way that feels authentic to me.
It takes a while to find your teaching preferences—including how, where, and why you teach. Maybe you prefer teaching slower hatha flows and restorative practices even though you like to take vinyasa classes. Or you might want to teach yoga in the park to small groups rather than packed classes at a yoga studio. Maybe you find that you don’t want to teach yoga weekly as much as you want to lead spontaneous yoga classes for friends on beach vacations. It takes time. Beginner’s mind.
