Yoga Teaching Methodology: Synchronous Learning

Creating Connection in the Online Yoga Classroom
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Part of a teacher’s job in any classroom is to create a community of learning. When I did my yoga teacher training, I was very aware that a large part of my learning happened in the daily milieu of being with my training cohort. It wasn’t just about content.  I learned from the content, for sure, but I also learned about yoga through the sense of community we created and from our connections.  I learned from seeing how my teacher’s responded to other students, how they addressed issues or explored, in real-time, the physical learnings and the questions that arose for other trainees. 

So how do we create a felt sense of what it means to learn yoga together when we are teaching online? How do we foster community among our yoga students if they are not in a shared physical space?

The goal with online yoga teaching is still to create a field of learning, where we, as the teacher, can sense each student, and our students can experience safety and co-learning. We want to share students’ transformational moments so they can be a catalyst for other transformational moments. 

In this video, I discuss specific tactics I use in my teaching to create this sense of community and connection in my yoga classes and yoga teacher trainings. 


Practicing Mindfulness in Our Own Teaching

Even yoga teachers can get caught up in the stress of expectation that has become a part of our culture. We have high expectations of ourselves, and we feel stress around what we perceive our students expect from us. The shift to teaching online has made many yoga teachers feel even more pressure to "perform" or "stand out from the crowd." But when we focus on performance or meeting others' expectations, we do our students a disservice.

That is why I developed Getting in the GAP, a 3-step mindfulness practice to use before teaching yoga. Click the button to learn more and download your free copy: ​

Getting the GAP