Julie McKay didn’t take a sabbatical to learn to teach yin. She didn’t wait for a slower season, and she didn’t clear her calendar. She’s a working yoga teacher who squeezed Teaching Yin Yoga into a full roster of classes and used what she learned the same week she learned it—which turns out to be exactly how the course is built to work.
A Working Teacher, Not a Beginner
Continuing education is how experienced teachers keep their classes alive, and Julie is proof of that. In her own words, from her course feedback: “I enjoy Sage’s offerings to keep my teaching fresh, and I have for years!” She wasn’t a new teacher looking for permission to start. She was an established one who knew her craft still needed feeding, the same instinct behind hybrid learning that blends online lessons with in-person training.
The Learn-Apply Loop
Here’s the reality for most working teachers: the schedule doesn’t stop so you can retrain. Julie didn’t wait for a free month that was never coming. What she valued, in her words, was the self-paced structure and “Sage’s friendly and comprehensive videos”—and how directly she could put the material to use: “It is great squeezing the lessons in where I can, and being able to incorporate the ideas right into classes.”
No pause button. No grand reopening. Just a steady drip of learning flowing straight into the classes she was already teaching. Short videos with closed captions and searchable transcripts, a private podcast feed for the commute (not unlike catching an episode of my own podcast between classes), and a workbook to hold her notes—continuing education built to respect a working teacher’s calendar tends to actually get finished.
Three Ways to Borrow the Loop This Week
Julie’s sentence describes a learn-apply loop, and it’s exactly how the course is built to be used: one idea from one lesson, served the same week. These three starting points are my suggestions, not things Julie specifically did, but they’re a fair test of the loop before you ever enroll:
- End a slow class with a single three-minute yin shape, taught with the three-part process: find the appropriate degree of stress, settle in, stay a while. If you want the full picture of how yin fits alongside gentle and restorative styles, that’s worth a read first.
- Borrow yin’s edge language in any long hold you already teach: “You should be only mildly aware of the target area at first—the time will turn the volume up for you.”
- After your deepest stretch of class, add a one-minute rebound pause and invite students to notice the sensation echo and fade.
Where Curious Teachers Go Next
My favorite detail from Julie’s feedback: she finished the course wanting more. She’s curious about meridians and Chinese medicine next. That’s what a good training does. It leaves a teacher with more open doors than she started with, the same open-ended curiosity that eventually leads some teachers toward a 300-hour certification.
Try the Loop Before You Enroll
Your classes don’t need you to disappear and come back transformed. They need one new idea, served this week. If Julie’s path sounds like yours, Fundamentals of Teaching Yin Yoga is self-paced, built for a real teaching schedule, and worth twenty Yoga Alliance CEUs. And if you’d rather taste it first, my free 20-Minute Yin Sequence is a complete class plan you can teach this week.
