Do you have big ideas to teach a yoga workshop in 2024? It’s a great way to help your yoga students—and your career.
Here are the five steps to teaching a yoga workshop.
Step 1. Design the Workshop
The first step is to find an idea that clearly solves a problem that students have.
You’re the best teacher for the students you once were. That’s because you’ve had to find ways to get around the very obstacles that are currently standing in their way.
Think about a problem you’ve overcome with yoga. This could be anything at all! It could be:
- learning to relax
- coping with specific stressors (racing, caregiving, taking exams)
- building strength in your feet
- developing better focus and presence
- finding tools to calm down when you’re anxiously awake in the night
Then consider who else suffers from this problem, and how you can relieve their suffering using the tools you’ve learned.
Step 2. Place the Workshop
Finding the right venue for your workshop is key to its success. Perhaps that is your local studio.
But not everything belongs at a yoga studio. If you’re offering a workshop on yoga for gardeners, for example, you could lead it at your local garden center—or outside at a community garden. A workshop on yoga for schoolteachers would be great in a classroom or the school gym. A workshop on yoga for parents could take place at a park with a playground. Be creative and think outside the studio.
Step 3. Promote the Workshop
You can’t help the students who don’t know about your offering! Think through where your students spend their time, both in person and online, and promote your workshop there.
Don’t discount word of mouth. Ask the students who are registered to tell their friends—and better yet, to sign up a friend to come with them.
Step 4. Teach the Workshop
Teaching the workshop should be the easy part: you have a room full of eager students, and you know how to help them solve their shared problem, because it was once your problem. But the more time you invest in planning, the better the payoff for your students.
Spend time honing your message. Plan ways to expand and contract your offering to stay on track. Your students will benefit most when you’ve thought through every moment of the workshop, from a clear opening to a take-home message.
Step 5. Refine the Workshop
Rinse, repeat, replicate, and refine.
Right after the workshop, make some notes for yourself about what worked. Ask your students for feedback, both in real time and again a week or two later. Listen carefully to their comments. Then go back to step 1 and do it all again! Maybe there was some interesting question raised in your workshop that deserves a workshop of its own. Maybe the workshop could be tweaked for a slightly different audience, or a different time of year.
When you follow these five steps, you won’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you plan a workshop. And you’ll be helping your students by relieving their suffering, removing obstacles and problems they have. What better calling is there?
Work through these steps in the Workshop Workbook, my online workbook course that walks you through how to plan and teach a yoga workshop of your own! Read all about it here.