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I’ve been humbled persistently in my 15-year teaching profession. There have been times when nobody showed as much as class or I’ve forgotten my sequence, and people experiences knocked the ego right out of me. But probably the most humbling situation that I’ve faced has been repeatedly watching a category’s attendance plummet to single digits once I became the teacher.

Not long after I graduated from my first yoga teacher training, I started subbing on the studio where I practiced. It was a donation-based studio and the most well-liked teachers on the schedule repeatedly guided upward of 100 bodies through each class. There could be lines of chatty students across the block waiting to be jammed into the old, musty studio like sweaty sardines. I loved taking those mat-to-mat classes, but I loved teaching them much more. It was exhilarating attending to hold space for that many individuals.

I didn’t should wait long before I used to be lucky enough to take over as teacher of a category that had fairly decent attendance. The primary several times I taught, the category drew strong numbers. After which attendance abruptly dwindled.

It didn’t make sense. People looked as if it would enjoy it once I subbed for the more popular teachers. Students would tell me how “great” the category was and ask once I was going to be placed on the schedule. I had naïvely assumed that my latest, everlasting class would draw the same size.

But when it got here to my weekly classes, the feedback was very different. Students wanted something different than what I used to be teaching. I do know this because they told me. One person explained that she had come hoping for Thai food but left feeling like she’d been served pizza.

It took me the higher a part of a 12 months to know why. After I subbed, especially once I was straight out of teacher training, I might attempt to sequence my classes just like the person I used to be filling in for. But once I led my very own classes, I explored teaching in the way in which that I had recently learned at my yoga school. Not only was my teaching style different than what was popular at this studio, my entire ethos was, too.

For instance, on the studio where I practiced and had begun teaching, it was common to take students quickly through a sequence of poses on one leg before addressing the opposite side. Sequences would also include balancing transitions between poses of various standing leg rotation, comparable to going from the Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose) to Virabhadrasana 3 (Warrior 3). But I had learned the potential risks of a few of these decisions in my training, and once I began excluding these transitions from my very own practice, my lower back pain subsided and I could sustain poses for longer and with more focus.

I wasn’t being critical of other styles or teachers. My body and heart simply wanted me to show in a different way than what was “popular” at that studio. When I noticed this, I discovered myself in something of an identity crisis.

I’m not one to quit easily, so at the same time as the years went by and I gained more confidence in my teaching style, I kept my classes on the studio. At first, I doubted myself and even modified how I taught to make my classes more like everyone else’s within the hope of pleasing students. But I couldn’t unsee or ignore the poor alignment that looked as if it would occur in consequence. And the end result was at all times the identical: I might find myself resentful of the situation and the category still wouldn’t grow.

Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

After I became more established at other studios and drew an everyday following of scholars teaching the style that was authentic to me, I finally let go of that class. Although for years afterward, an element of me at all times felt like I had failed myself, my students, and my studio managers for not having the ability to make it work.

After I relocated from Los Angeles to San Francisco, I had to start out over and felt catapulted back to those early days as a latest teacher. Popular time slots fell apart in a matter of weeks after I took them over and I needed to consciously decide to proceed with my kind of teaching or mold myself into what appeared to be the popular kind of yoga on this latest city.

Like in my early years of teaching, anytime I modified my teaching style to please people and draw a bigger crowd, I felt like a fraud. My energy felt drained, my mood was sad, and my enthusiasm for teaching lost its luster.

Then my teacher, Maty Ezraty, got here to town to steer a workshop. As she discussed the business of yoga, someone asked in the event that they needed to play music in a category to draw more students despite the fact that that teacher preferred silence. Ezraty responded by asking us all, “Do you must be popular or do you must teach yoga?” I swear she was looking right at me.

It wasn’t until that moment that I noticed every time I taught in a way that I assumed would make people comfortable, I had been sacrificing my authenticity for desired acceptance. That single inquiry blew my mind open and completely modified the way in which I approach those situations.

I don’t think Maty meant this within the sense that it must be one or the opposite. I do know quite a number of individuals who have great attendance and are authentic teachers. I feel what she meant (or at the least how I interpreted it) was “Are you willing to sell your soul to usher in more students”? And irrespective of how much I wanted the fuller classes, deep inside my body, the reply got here hollering out of me: “Heck, no!”

 How It’s Going

It will possibly be disheartening when the alternatives you make appear to work against you. It will possibly even be financially devastating for yoga teachers who rent an area to show or receive pay based on the number of scholars in school. There is usually a survival element to wanting your classes to be popular. It’s not at all times ego.

When I finished trying to provide students what they wanted and as an alternative focused on teaching authentically, my classes began drawing stronger numbers. There’s still not a line outside the studio before my class and there probably never shall be. But once I committed to showing up as myself, I used to be in a position to consistently draw those students who desired to learn in the way in which that I desired to teach. I also finished my classes feeling energized and inspired moderately than drained and deflated.

Today, I’m very clear on the teacher I need to be, and my style continues to evolve after having two kids and entering my fourth decade on this planet. Do I still yearn for full classes and dozens of Zoom participants? After all. I’m human. But I might much moderately teach the yoga that feels true to me.

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About Our Contributor

Sarah Ezrin is a mama, a world-renowned yoga educator, a well-liked Instagram influencer, and the writer of The Yoga of Parenting. Her willingness to be unabashedly honest and vulnerable along together with her innate wisdom make her writing, yoga classes, and social media great sources of healing and inner peace for many individuals.  Based within the San Francisco Bay Area, Sarah is changing the world, teaching self-love one person at a time. You possibly can follow her on Instagram at @sarahezrinyoga and TikTok at @sarahezrin.