How to find purpose in your teaching

Thousands of new yoga teachers are certified every year and sent out into the world with a taste for how yoga uplifts and transforms, armed with newly acquired knowledge of yoga and a desire to change the world, one yogi at a time.  It is a beautiful sight to behold.  And every year, thousands of yoga teachers burn themselves out teaching class after class, trying to create ever more challenging and complicated sequences, searching for that feeling they first found when they began their yoga journey, constantly striving to do more and be more while first losing their practice and then losing their way.

A feature that stands out in the above circumstances is a lack of purpose, or a purpose that is ill-defined and neither embodied nor understood.  It is very easy to lose your way when you don’t know where you’re going or why you’re going there.  And yet, that describes the journey trodden by many new (and experienced) yoga teachers.  Many teachers simply taste the beauty and magic of yoga, get a glimpse of its transformative power and then blindly (but beautifully) head off on their teaching journey.

Almost inevitably, what follows is the building of a teaching career (through experience and further training) on a foundation that is shaky at best, unviable at worst.  You can get lost in the world of wellness, meditation, coaching, fitness and retreats - spreading yourself too thin, trying to run online yoga classes and online yoga retreats while compromising your own health and lifestyle.  That is why, for new teachers looking to turn their practice into their work, and for experienced teachers looking to re-find motivation, inspiration and creativity, the most important thing to do is go back to the foundation of your practice and your teaching and discover and identify your purpose for teaching.  This can and should be done many times throughout your life and teaching career, not so as to continually change, but so as to check in and notice if anything has changed and to ensure that everything you do is in alignment with your purpose.

To teach authentically, sustainably and beautifully, teachers should follow the 3 Step process we teach in our Yoga Teacher Trainings:

1. Identify your purpose.
2. Identify a set of principles for your teaching that gives life to your purpose.
3. Create a practice methodology for your teaching that is based on and embodies your purpose and practice principles.

The first and most important step should be done before you do your first Yoga Teacher Training, and then again and again at regular intervals throughout your life.

Step 1: Identify purpose

This starts with first asking yourself “Why do I practice?” and then moving to “Why do I teach?” or ‘Why do I feel called to teach?”.  In order to properly reflect on these questions, you should take some time, close your eyes, watch your breath and then ask yourself these questions while watching the responses that automatically arise in your head.  Watch especially for the responses that come in narrative form, like they would be suited for an Instagram caption - the self consciously, overly stylised without the underlying substance - “I want to change the world”.  Smile at yourself when these come up, as they do for all of us, and put them to the side as you keep asking yourself the questions.  Equally, watch out for the more superficial responses - “I want to learn to do the splits”.  It may be that these answers (the big and the small) keep coming up, in which case they may be true for you and it’s worth investigating this further, but don’t get stuck in the superficial when more might be available.  

Next, open your eyes and write down everything that came up - crossing out, underlining as required.  Write it down verbatim, not edited for style or with a future reader in mind: completely unselfconsciously.  You might write down: “teach all level yoga online”, “guide people to do yoga from home or yoga anywhere”, “help people to live their best life every day”, “coach people to become more healthy and happy”, “develop new programs that help people reach their training goals” - whatever is there, write it down.  Keep asking yourself these questions until you start to get an initial understanding of your purpose.  It may be clearly apparent to you or it may take days and weeks of contemplation, but you will be able to answer these questions eventually.  

Finally, turn the answers into a statement of purpose or a mission statement.  It can be a word, a sentence, a paragraph or some dot points but it should capture your true intention and purpose. 

Your purpose is wholly your own and you don’t need to justify it to anyone.  It can be as grand as “I want to change the world” or as pragmatic as “I want to live a lifestyle that involves yoga and allows me to support myself”, or something more specific like “I want to help people learn yoga at home”.  But be honest with yourself and know that this will inform everything that comes after.

Check in with yourself again about a week after first doing this practice.  Notice if it still resonates or if any changes are required.  And then do that again after another two weeks - by this time you should feel comfortable and settled in your purpose.

Step 2 and Step 3 involve a much deeper dive into teaching practice and methodology but are surprisingly easy, intuitive and fun once your purpose has been identified.