82. Studenthood Is the Bedrock of Your Teaching

The best yoga teachers never stop being students—but the longer you teach, the harder that becomes. In this episode, Sage Rountree shares how selling her yoga studio after fifteen years unexpectedly gave her back something she'd been missing: the freedom to simply be a student again.

Sage explores the difference between continuing education and true studenthood—the kind where you sit in the seat of not knowing and let someone else lead. She gets honest about why studio ownership, local reputation, and a teacher's analytical brain can all make genuine studenthood complicated, and how online classes and complementary modalities like Pilates helped her reconnect with beginner's mind.

You'll hear practical strategies for protecting your studenthood: taking other yoga teachers' classes regularly (even with your camera off), exploring complementary movement practices, budgeting time and money for being a student, and learning to say "this is just for me" when the business brain kicks in.

Whether you're a brand-new yoga teacher or you've been at the front of the room for decades, this episode is a reminder that your studenthood isn't a luxury—it's the foundation your teaching stands on.

Mentioned in this episode: The Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook by Sage Rountree, the Prep Station Movement Library at https://www.comfortzoneyoga.com/prep, and the free Zone community at https://www.comfortzoneyoga.com.

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Transcript

0:00

Can I tell you something? At the end of 2025, I sold my half of the yoga studio I had co-owned for 15 years to my business partner, and something happened that I didn't fully expect. I became a student again. Not in the, I signed up for another training sense, although we'll talk about continuing education in a minute. I mean, I became a student. Student. I could walk into a yoga class, roll out my mat and just be there. No one looking at me sideways, wondering if the boss was evaluating them. No complicated dynamics, just me and the practice, and it is so good. I'm still discovering what that freedom means. Today I want to talk about why Studenthood is the absolute bedrock of your yoga teaching and how to protect it even when your teaching life makes it complicated. I'm Sage Rountree, and this is Yoga Teacher. Confidential Secrets of Becoming a great Yoga teacher. In the Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook, I write about continuing education as one of the cornerstones of a professional yoga teaching career. Your 200 hour training was a beginning, not an ending. The best yoga teachers never stop learning, but I want to go deeper than take more workshops. I want to talk about what it means to be a student, not just a credentialed professional collecting hours, but someone who regularly sits in the seat of not knowing. There's a concept in Zen Buddhism called shoshin, beginner's mind. It means approaching everything with openness, eagerness, and a lack of preconceptions the way a beginner would for experienced yoga teachers. Cultivating beginner's mind is essential, and honestly, it gets harder the longer you teach. The more you teach, the more you might think you know, and thinking, you know, can close you off to new learning. You might dismiss a workshop because you already know that you might stop taking other people's yoga classes because you're too busy teaching your own. You might forget what it feels like to be confused by a cue to struggle with a transition to wonder whether you're doing it right. That forgetting is dangerous because when you forget what it's like to be a student, you lose empathy for the people on the mats in front of you. Let me use a cooking analogy because y'all know I love my food metaphors. When you're learning to cook, you need recipes. You follow them exactly because you don't yet understand how flavors work together. But as you get more experienced, you start to understand the principles behind the recipes. You know when you can substitute ingredients, when you can adjust cooking times, or even completely improvise. Teaching yoga works the same way. You start with the recipes, the sequences and cues you learned in training, but as you gain experience, you need to understand the principles behind them so you can adapt for the real humans in front of you. And the way you develop that understanding, you keep studying, you keep being a student. Here's where it gets personal. I co-owned Carrboro Yoga Company for 15 years, three locations at our peak, a team of wonderful teachers, a thriving community, and for those 15 years, I couldn't really be a yoga student. I practiced at my own studio, of course. But here's the thing. Every teacher on our schedule knew that I was effectively their boss. Now, technically, I was their client as they were independent contractors, so I wasn't legally supposed to tell them how to do the work, even if I was just there to take class. Even when I had zero intention of giving feedback, my presence in the room created a weird dynamic. Teachers would wonder, is she evaluating me? Does she like what I'm doing? Is this some kind of review? I never wanted that, but I couldn't erase it either. When you own the studio, you are never just another student. And it went beyond my own studio. I never felt like I could walk into other studios in my area as the owner of a competing business. That would have felt awkward at best, or like corporate espionage at worst. So I never went. And the result for a decade and a half, my yoga Studenthood was basically limited to the classes I could take anonymously while traveling. I would be at a conference or on vacation, and I would slip into a class where nobody knew me. Those were some of the most nourishing practices I had precisely because nobody was thinking about me at all. I could just be a body in the room, following instructions, making mistakes, connecting with my own experience. But those moments were rare. And looking back, I can see how that limitation hamstrung my teaching in ways I didn't fully recognize at the time. I didn't get enough of an infusion of fresh ideas as I could have. Now, luckily, we live in an era of online yoga teaching, and that has been a revelation even before I sold the studio, because online you can be a student without being seen. There's something about knowing that other people in the room recognize you as a yoga teacher or a studio owner. That makes it very difficult to have that sense of anonymity that contributes so beautifully to Studenthood. Online, your camera can be off in a live class. You can take asynchronous classes. Nobody knows who you are. You can just practice. But here's where things got really interesting for me. During those years when Yoga Studenthood was complicated, I found renewed Studenthood in other modalities. I started taking equipment Pilates classes. Yes, after 20 years of being a Mat Pilates teacher, and the reformer was a genuine revelation. Those first few classes, I was a complete beginner fumbling with the springs, trying to understand the carriage feeling. Muscles I had forgotten I had. So my teacher says, we're gonna find the muscles that are in the fitness protection program. We did. It was humbling and it was exhilarating. And then my business brain kicked in within about three classes. I was thinking, oh, I could learn to teach this. I could open a reformer studio. The business model is really interesting because. I had to stop myself. I literally had to say. Rountree, this is just for you. You get to just be a student. That moment was a gift because it showed me something. As yoga teachers, as people who are wired to teach and share and build, we can have a really hard time letting ourselves just receive. We want to turn everything into a lesson plan or a business opportunity, or a thing we can give to others. And while that generosity is beautiful, it can rob us of the very nourishment that makes us good teachers in the first place. Before we get to the practical steps I have for you, let me address continuing education specifically because Studenthood and continuing education are related, but they're not identical. If you're registered with Yoga Alliance and you want to keep your credential up to date, the Yoga Alliance requires 30 hours of continuing education every three years, plus 45 hours of teaching. That's the minimum. And I want to reframe how you think about it. This is not a burden, it's a reminder to keep up your professionalism and your dedication to the craft. Continuing education comes in many forums, workshops, and intensives on specific topics, online courses you can take from teachers like me around the world without leaving home books, podcasts like this one, mentorship programs where you get feedback on your actual teaching. Be strategic about your continuing education. Notice the gaps in your teaching and seek education to fill them. Struggling with sequencing, study that students asking questions about anatomy you can't answer. Dig into it. I recommend my friend Jenny Rawlings for that. Your continuing education is most valuable when it addresses real needs, not just when it's another line on your resume. And here's something I suggest in the Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook, budget. Budget for learning the way you budget for other professional expenses. Your growth is an investment in your students and your classes and in your career. But, and this is the deeper point of this episode, continuing education hours alone won't give you what regular Studenthood gives you. You can wrap up 300 CE hours and still lose your beginner's mind if you're never actually sitting in the student's seat feeling what it's like to follow someone else's lead. So how do you stay a student? Here's some concrete ways. First, take yoga classes from other yoga teachers regularly. This might sound patently obvious, but I talk to yoga teachers all the time who haven't taken someone else's class in months or even years. They're too busy teaching. They practice on their own. And solo practice is extremely valuable, absolutely, but it is not the same as being led. When someone else is making the decisions about what you might do next, you get to experience what your students experience, the surrender, the surprise, the occasional frustration, the unexpected joy. And if going to a studio feels complicated for any of the reasons I described, you are the owner. You're a well-known teacher in your community. You feel weird about it. Online classes are a genuine gift. Camera off, mat out, beginner's mind on. This is actually one of the reasons I built the Yoga Class Prep Station. The movement library there has over 150 follow along sequences, and they exist specifically so that yoga teachers can be students. You follow along, you let someone else lead. You practice the practice instead of planning it. It's your chance to scratch that itch for novelty and exploration in your own practice so that you are not channeling it into constantly reinventing your class plans. If that sounds like what you need, I would love to serve you as your teacher. Visit comfort zone yoga.com/prep. A second tip, explore complimentary modalities, Pilates, tai Chi, Qigong, dance, seated meditation, other spiritual practices. All of these will make you a way better yoga teacher, not because you'll teach them directly to your yoga students, but because being a beginner in something new reconnects you with what it feels like to not know every time you are the person in the room who doesn't know what's coming next, who can't quite coordinate the movement with the breath, who feels a little lost, who are building empathy. You are remembering what your newer yoga students feel every single class. And something else happens. When you study complimentary modalities, you start to see the through lines. The principles that show up in yoga also show up in Tai Chi. The breath work in Qigong deepens your understanding of pranayama. Dance teaches you about rhythm and transitions in ways that directly improve your sequencing. It all feeds the well. A third tip practice saying, "this is just for me." When the analytical business brain kicks in, and it will because you're a teacher and that's how your mind works. Practice noticing it and gently setting it aside. You don't have to monetize every experience. You don't have to turn every class you take into a lesson you teach. Some learning is just for you, and paradoxically, the learning you do purely for yourself often ends up being the most transformative for your teaching. A fourth tip, budget, time and money for being a student. This is a professional expense and a professional commitment. Put classes on your calendar the way you put teaching on your calendar. Protect that time. If your schedule is so packed with teaching that you never take a class friend, something needs to shift. In the Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook, I talk about creating a sustainable schedule, and part of that sustainability is leaving room to be a student. If you're pouring out constantly and never filling up, your teaching will eventually show it. The yoga teachers who last, the ones who are still excited about teaching after 10, 15, 20 years, we are the ones who never stopped being students. These teachers stay curious. They stay humble, and they keep showing up with fresh eyes. Your students need you to be a student, not because you need more credentials or more training hours on your resume, but because the quality of your teaching is directly connected to the quality of your own practice and learning. When you are actively being taught, you remember what it feels like, and that remembering makes you kinder, it makes you more patient, it makes you more creative, and it makes you more present at the front of the room. Here's what I want you to remember from today. Your studenthood is not a luxury. It is not something you'll get back to when things slow down. It is the foundation of your teaching. Protect it. If you want support in staying a student, the Prep Station at Comfort Zone Yoga gives you over 150 follow along sequences so you can practice being led by me for hours on end. And if you want to go deeper into the professional side of your teaching career, including how to build sustainable systems for your own growth, pick up a coffee of my book, the Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook. If you want community with other yoga teachers who are figuring all of this out together, come see us at the Zone. It's free at comfortzoneyoga.com. If you found this episode helpful, I would love it if you would rate and review the show. Tell your friends from yoga teacher training it exists. That all helps other yoga teachers find us. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for listening. This is Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree, and I'll see you next time.