Many yoga teachers are secretly terrified of teaching meditation.
You can cue a vinyasa in your sleep. You can adjust a warrior two without thinking. But that moment when you ask students to close their eyes, sit still, and turn inward? That’s when the panic sets in.
Who am I to guide someone’s meditation practice? What if I say the wrong thing? What if they think I’m not qualified? What if I can’t even quiet my own mind?
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. And you don’t need to feel this way.
I recently talked with Gabrielle Harris—author of Lessons in Meditation, The Language of Yin, and The Inspired Yoga Teacher—about why imposter syndrome hits so hard around meditation and what to actually do about it. What she shared changed my perspective on how simple getting started can be.
Start So Simply It Feels Almost Too Easy
When I asked Gabrielle where yoga teachers should start with teaching meditation, her answer surprised me with its simplicity.
“Maybe a good starting suggestion for a new teacher would just be to concentrate on using the breath as an anchor. Very simple. Maybe five or ten breaths, really. And then go into a little bit of silence. I don’t think it has to be anything more complicated than that if you’re beginning.”
That’s it. Five breaths. A little silence. You’re already teaching meditation.
The key is what Gabrielle calls “giving it a container”—formalizing what you’re already doing as a practice. You’re probably already guiding students to notice their breath. You’re probably already creating moments of stillness. The difference is naming it, acknowledging it, letting students know that this is meditation.
Busting the Biggest Myth
The number one myth about meditation? “I can’t meditate because I have a busy mind.”
Gabrielle’s response was direct: “You need a busy mind. You need a mind to live and exist in society. If your mind wasn’t busy, you would be dead.”
We’re not trying to get rid of monkey mind. We’re trying to make friends with the monkey.
In her new book, Gabrielle describes a meditation that moves through different animal minds: monkey mind (jumping from branch to branch), butterfly mind (landing when it feels safe), elephant mind (steady and slow), and finally stillness. We live in a forest of animals in our minds. The work isn’t eliminating them—it’s befriending them.
When you bring this perspective into your teaching, you normalize the experience for your students. You can say: “Your mind will wander. That’s not failure—that’s the practice. Notice it, and gently return.”
The Difference Between Mindfulness and Meditation
Here’s something yoga teachers should understand: mindfulness and meditation are related but different.
Gabrielle explained it this way: “Mindfulness is more to do with the activity—being present to the activity, the thing that you’re doing. Meditation is more of a visit to what your mind is doing. And I think it has to be done in a kind of stillness because if you are moving, you’ve got a lot of things distracting you from what’s happening in your mind.”
So when a student says “My vinyasa practice is my meditation,” they might be describing something meditative—but it’s not quite the same as a formal meditation practice. Both have value. But understanding the distinction helps you teach with more clarity.
You Already Have What You Need
Imposter syndrome often comes from looking outside ourselves for answers. We think we need another certification, another training, another teacher to tell us we’re qualified.
Gabrielle offered a beautiful reframe through etymology: “The Latin word sincere means to not cover with wax. In the olden days, dishonest sculptors would cover their sculptures’ cracks with wax. So to be authentic means to remove the wax, to remove the layers that you are covering yourself over with.”
To teach meditation authentically, you don’t need to add more credentials. You need to remove the layers—the stories you’re telling yourself about not being ready, not knowing enough, not having the right experience.
“I want teachers to remember that they have everything they already need within them,” Gabrielle said. “Stop looking outside for the teachers and the gurus and the answers, and move from the inside out.”
Seven Minutes Is Enough
Here’s something that might surprise you: according to research with Navy Seals, a short amount, maybe even seven minutes, of daily meditation is enough to get the benefits.
Seven minutes.
When Gabrielle shared this, my first thought was relief. That feels doable. That feels like something any of us can commit to.
But she emphasized something more important than the number: “It’s not about the amount of time. It’s the consistency. If you love something, whatever it is, you should touch upon it every day in some way. Like just put your hand in. If it’s cooking, you should look at some recipes. If it’s gardening, you should pull out a weed. We just keep doing the work every day, a little bit or a lot.”
Before you can teach meditation confidently, you need to be meditating yourself. Not for hours. Not perfectly. Just consistently—touching your practice every day.
Keep It Spacious
When you do start teaching meditation, Gabrielle offered this practical advice: keep your words spacious.
“If you as a teacher say something, then that needs to be absorbed. So keep your words spacious. You’re dropping oil into the class, and you just need to let those words land.”
Meditation isn’t about filling every moment with guidance. It’s about offering instruction, then creating space for the experience. New teachers often talk too much during meditation because silence feels uncomfortable. But that silence is where the practice happens.
A Simple Arc for Your First Meditation
Gabrielle’s book offers a simple structure for meditation that works beautifully for beginners:
- Arrival: Get students into the room, onto the mat, into their body—connection to the space and the practice
- Centering: Connection to their core, their heart, their inner self, maybe through some breath work
- Deepening: Explore your theme a little more
- Ending: Exit with care, taking time to integrate them back into themselves, their body, their world
Think of it as telling a story. There’s a beginning, middle, and end. Your students finish in a different state than where they started, and your job is to guide them through that transition with care.
Your Students Need This
Here’s what I keep coming back to: your students came for the movement. They’re staying for the stillness.
They might not know that’s what they came for. But once you start creating these quiet, still spaces—once you give them a container for meditation practice—you’ll find they start to crave it. And once they crave it, you can take it further.
You don’t need to be perfect to teach meditation. You don’t need years of silent retreat experience. You don’t need to have a completely still mind. You just need to start simply, stay consistent, and remember that your students are looking for a guide—not a guru on a pedestal.
Want to hear the full conversation? Listen to my interview with Gabrielle Harris on this week’s episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential.
