32. How to teach yoga workshops

How to teach yoga workshops

Before we dive in to the ‘how’ of teaching yoga workshops, let’s look at the ‘why’. In the interests of full disclosure here, I absolutely LOVE teaching, and attending, yoga workshops, so expect a healthy dose of shameless passion here!

 
 The benefits of teaching yoga workshops: 

• Workshops are one off, so there's no ongoing commitment. So you can deliver workshops without having to be free every week- like you'd have to be for a weekly class. 
• A fabulous way to dive deep into a subject or a topic that you're passionate about. 
• Test the water on something with a workshop, to find out whether it go down well with your yogis
• Earnings from workshops generally have the potential to be higher than for a class
• Team up with people who have similar or completely different skill sets.
• Once your workshop's planned, you can then teach it again and again, and again

This episode is a step-by-step guide to how to teach yoga workshops; right from the conception, through the hosting, to the review afterwards. And yes - there’s a super duper guide to have to hand as you start to create and plan your yoga workshops, you can get yours here. 

 Enjoy!
 
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Useful links:
 
 Episode 8 - Renting a space for yoga listen here

Episode 12 - Staying in touch with your yogis listen here

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📚 Training for yoga teachers

Yoga for resilience, March 26

Teaching yoga for anxiety & stress, June 26

Myofascial Release, Energetic Anatomy and Yoga, Apr 26

Yoga and The Neurobiology of Stress, July 26

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Chapters

• 2:13 Step one. Define your yoga workshop theme or intention
• 2:56 Step two. Set clear goals
• 3:46 Step three. Plan the workshop structure
• 4:48 Step four. Choose your venue
• 5:19 Step five. Choose your day, date and time
• 6:26 Step six. Promote your workshop
• 7:31 Step seven. Host the workshop
• 8:58 Step eight. Reflect and to gather feedback

Transcript

[00:00:00] hello. And welcome to the For Yoga Teachers podcast. This podcast has been created to help yoga teachers teach with passion, avoid burnout, and earn a fair living. 

I'm pretty excited about this episode, like really, really excited. Because I am really, really passionate about yoga workshops. I think that they are pretty limitless really in terms of potential for you as a yoga teacher, but also for your yogis as well. 

And here's why. 

Workshops are one off. There's no ongoing commitment. So you can deliver workshops without having to be free every week- like you'd have to be for a weekly class. 

Workshops can be a fabulous way to dive deep into a subject or a topic that you're passionate about. 

[00:01:00] You can test the water on something with a workshop, to find out whether it go down well with your yogis, perhaps teaching in a new style or introducing a new layer onto your classes, like anatomical knowledge or philosophical knowledge, or, teaching a different style of yoga completely. 

Earnings from workshops generally have the potential to be higher than for a class. 

You can team up with people who have similar or completely different skill sets. 

And once your workshop's planned, you can then teach it again and again, and again, repeating it in a different place or maybe repeating it once a month or once a quarter or annually. 

Whether you're a seasoned yoga instructor or you're just starting out in the world of teaching yoga, this complete guide will walk you through the process of planning and executing, [00:02:00] engaging and transformative yoga workshops that leave a lasting impact on your yogis. 

Let's run through the steps to creating successful yoga workshops. 

Step one. Define your yoga workshop theme or intention. 

The first step is to start with the intention. Consider your area of expertise, your passions, and what your students might be interested in exploring within the world of yoga, but also within your background as well. Whether it's a specific asana practice or a meditation technique. Exploring the chakras and yes, it's chakras with a 'ch', not a 'sh'. You can choose a theme that aligns with your expertise and resonates with your audience.

Set clear goals.

[00:03:00] Outline the specific goals that you want to achieve with your workshop. Do you want your yogis to deepen their practice? Do you want them to gain a deeper understanding of specific alignment? Do you want them to explore restoration and relaxation? Do you want to see how it feels for you teaching a new style of yoga? Maybe you've just graduated in a training in nidra or restorative training, and you want to try it out. 

Maybe your goal is to earn a certain amount of money that you need to pay a tax bill or something like that. 

Whatever your goals are, it will help you plan, promote and execute the workshop to achieve those goals. 

stEp three plan, the workshop structure. It's so hard to say.

Taking time to define the structure for your workshop will make sure that you [00:04:00] cover everything you want to. As a side note here, I have personally found that every workshop that I've taught has gone as quick as a flash. 90 minutes, two hours sounds like a long time, but it seems to disappear really, really quickly. So structuring the workshop will make sure that you've given ample time to everything that you want to cover. 

Consider the duration of the workshop, the flow and the balance between theory and practice, if necessary. And you could, if you like include things like icebreaker activities, I know that they're cringe. But it's so nice for people to get to know one another that within something that's a little bit longer or a little bit more indulgent, and you might include an opportunity for people to share at the end of the workshop as well.

Step four. Choose your venue. 

We've not shied away in the past from talking about how hard it can be to find a perfect [00:05:00] venue for your yoga offerings; for classes, workshops, courses, retreats. If you're looking for a venue for your yoga offerings, check out episode eight, renting a space for yoga, it's got a checklist in there of everything that you need to think about when offering yoga within a space. 

Step five. Choose your day, date and time.

Think about when you are available. So if you have a really busy time in February, you might want to swerve February, you might not want to give yourself any extra work there. But if March is looking pretty clear, Great. 

Think about the days that yogis will be available; do you tend to work with office workers who work nine till five, Monday to Friday? In which case you're obviously going to look at weekday evenings or weekends. Choosing your day, date and time needs to be a [00:06:00] sweet spot overlap between your availability and when it will work for your yogis as well. 

If in doubt, you can run something like a survey monkey quiz or a Google form quiz, or even an Instagram poll, or Tik Tok poll you can say, I'm thinking about running a yoga nidra workshop, when would work best for you Friday night, Sunday night, or Tuesday morning, and just see what the results say. 

Step six, promote your workshop. I know that this can feel like an absolute mine field. On the face of it, I agree, this can be really, really tough. Hopefully, you already have a little bit of a following that you can tap into here on social media or on an email newsletter list. Episode 12 is going to be a really great resource for you here. But my overriding advice here is don't worry about over promoting. Often I'll [00:07:00] speak to yoga teachers where they'll say, well, I promoted my workshop on Instagram last week. I don't want to talk about it this week as well. But, well, first of all, whether the algorithm shows it to anyone is, is up for discussion. But even if people see it, no offense, they might've forgotten or they might just need, you know, a bit of a reminder. Oh, I really liked the look of that. Yeah. That reminds me, I need to book on. So I don't think you can over promote your upcoming workshops.

Step seven is to host the workshop. From experience, I would say that yoga teachers really really care about everything that they do and get very. Um, What's the word. focussed on whether it will be good enough or not, which leads to stress and feeling stressed about something leads to forgetting and making odd [00:08:00] decisions. 

So please make this part, the hosting of your workshop as easy for your future self as possible. Think about when, what time, when you'll need to arrive at the venue, think about how you are going to get there. 

If your workshop's at 10 30 on a Saturday morning, you don't want to be trying to find the best train or the best route, on Saturday morning when you wake up. You want to make it really organised and make it really easy for your future self.

Think about what do you need to take and imagine that you are feeling so stupid on the morning of your workshop, so maybe you make a list. You need to take your class plan, right, your workshop plan. You need to take your yoga mat and any other equipment that you have promised people . So imagine you are feeling completely stupid on the morning of your workshop and write down every single thing that it is that you will need to take with you.

And step [00:09:00] eight is to reflect and to gather feedback 

I'd say that once the workshop has concluded, there's a, there's a feeling of a real high, as long as it's gone well, you know, it feels, it feels lovely. People come in and they're kind of stressed and you can tell that they're frazzled, and then as they're leaving your workshop they're calm and they're moving slower and they're smiling. And that's really lovely and it can put you on a bit of a yoga teachers high, which is just wonderful, and rightly so it really should. Um, but during, in amongst that yoga teachers high, my biggest piece of advice to you would be to just sit down with a notebook and a pen and reflect, how did it go? What did you forget? What bit of the workshop where you dreading. What do you feel like you need a better explanation for. Absolute total mind dump. Just free write everything that you can remember about the [00:10:00] workshop. And then next time you run the workshop, you'll have your own feedback that to integrate into that workshop plan. 

Within step eight, reviewing and gathering feedback, please, yoga teacher collect testimonials. Have something in place where you email out or text message or phone call out whatever it is, everybody who came, to say "how did you find it? What can we do to improve? And can I use your words to promote my future offerings?" 

From experience, I would say the sooner you ask for feedback, the more likely you are to get feedback and to get testimonials. 

There's nothing better than people's words to validate your offerings.



So yoga teachers that is your complete guide to planning successful yoga workshops. Let's just have a little [00:11:00] recap on that now. So step one, defining yoga workshop theme, or intention. Step two is setting clear goals for your yogis or for you, or for both. Step three will be to plan the workshop. Can't say it. Step three will be to plan the workshop structure. 

We do have a work book available for you, which has in basically everything that you could possibly teach in a workshop so that you can delete as appropriate, just go to the show notes to get yours. Step four. Choose your venue. Step five. Choose the day, date and time. Step six. Promote your workshop. And don't worry about over promoting. Step seven is to host the workshop and step eight is to review and gather feedback, gather testimonials. 

I really hope that that has [00:12:00] inspired you to start planning and executing yoga workshops. I think that they are such a lovely way to share your passions, to share your knowledge without it being an ongoing commitment. In my view, so many yoga teachers are over committed. 

If we can share yoga in a way that's refreshing and passionate and full of knowledge, and fruitful financially as well. I just think it's an absolute, no brainer. 

I wish you the very, very best of luck with planning your workshops. Please, if you have any questions at all don't hesitate to shout. I absolutely love helping people with This..

And don't forget to let us know how you get on.

We'd love to know how your finding these episodes. And if they're helpful, please do let us know by sending a DM to for yoga teachers. And as [00:13:00] always. Happy teaching.