For years, I was the phone police. I recorded my classes for an online platform back then, and I taught with a wireless mic so sensitive that a single text message could glitch the whole take. So I asked everyone to power all the way down, and I told myself I was protecting the practice. What I was really doing was making a rule that suited me and calling it sacred.
My thinking has changed a lot since. These days I teach with a much lighter hand around technology, and I think my classes are more relaxed for it. Phones, watches, timers, and the steady hum of notifications are part of teaching yoga now, and pretending otherwise doesn’t make us better teachers. It just makes us tense. Here’s where I’ve landed, including the one moment that rearranged how I see all of it, and six practical moves you can use in your very next class.
The story I was writing about my students
Here’s a reflex a lot of us share. A phone goes off in class, and something in us tightens. We read it as rudeness, as proof the student isn’t really committed. So we make a rule: phones off, no exceptions.
For some students, that rule is a genuine gift. An hour with no notifications and no pull toward the inbox is exactly the break they came for. For others, it’s a real imposition—think of the doctor who’s on call, the parent who left a new baby with a first-time sitter, or the person waiting on news that could reshape their week. When you require every device off, you ask some people to choose between your class and their actual lives.
I learned this at a workshop I was teaching inside an REI, back in my touring days. One student kept fidgeting with a small device, glancing at it, adjusting it, and I caught myself thinking how disrespectful it was that she couldn’t put her pager down for a single hour. Then I realized it wasn’t a pager. It was her insulin monitor. She was managing her health while showing up to learn, and the whole story I had built about her said far more about me than it did about her.
The two things I will never bend on
If I sound relaxed about devices, let me be just as clear about where I don’t soften at all. Two things are non-negotiable, and they both come down to one word: consent.
First, you, the teacher: stay off your phone in any way that pulls you out of the room. Your attention is what your students came for, and it’s the one thing no app can replace. Second, you never photograph your students without their explicit yes, and you never photograph someone resting in Savasana. Those resting bodies trusted you enough to close their eyes in a room full of strangers, and a photo posted without permission breaks that trust even when your intentions are sweet. If you want a class photo, ask first, and frame it so no one is identifiable unless they’ve told you yes.
When you’re easy about the small stuff, students trust you on the big stuff. The ease is what makes the firmness land, and reading the room this way is its own teaching skill that sits right alongside the rest of your classroom management.
Six ways to handle technology in your class
Start by meeting students in the middle with Do Not Disturb. Most of us think the only options are phone off or phone on, but Focus and Do Not Disturb modes let a student silence the group chat while keeping an emergency line open. Mention it at the top of class, something like, if you need to stay reachable, Do Not Disturb is your friend, and you’ve solved the problem without making anyone choose.
Remember, too, that the phone might be the accommodation. The device you’re tempted to judge could be a continuous glucose monitor, a captioning app for a student who’s hard of hearing, a translation app for someone practicing in a second language, or a medication timer. Sometimes the phone isn’t a distraction from the practice; it’s the thing that makes the practice possible.
Narrate your own use of technology. When you reach for your phone, say why out loud: I’m using this as a timer. I’ll often add that I promise I’m not texting while I teach. A little honesty and a little humor, and nobody is left wondering.
Let your notes point you back toward repeating your class. If you’re buried in a phone full of fresh sequences, you’re not really with your students. Teach a class you know well enough to look up from. That doesn’t mean memorizing something brand-new every week; it means trusting repetition over novelty. Run the same sequence week over week and you need fewer notes, you’re more present, and your teaching sharpens every time.
Record yourself, on purpose, to get better. This might be the single most valuable use of technology in your whole teaching life. Recording a class lets you hear your cues, catch your filler words, and feel your pacing from the back of the room, and it’s the very first assignment I give the teachers in my mentorship. Just explain to your students what’s happening and why, and position the camera so anyone who would rather stay off film is out of frame. If you want help getting set up, here’s what I learned about teaching and recording on video the hard way.
Finally, honor the house rules. If you teach in a studio with its own phone policy, that’s theirs to set, and your warmth can live inside their container.
What to carry into your next class
You don’t have to police the devices in your room. Everyone in front of you is a capable adult living a life you can’t fully see, and your job is to build a space where they can practice in the way that serves them. Stay relaxed about the phones, stay firm about your presence and their consent, and put technology to work for your own growth, especially that habit of recording yourself.
If a phone does buzz mid-class, you’re allowed to smile and keep teaching. Laugh with the room, never at the person, because you never know if that sound was the babysitter, the doctor’s office, or an insulin monitor.
If you want a community of teachers thinking about this alongside you, come join The Zone, my free community for yoga teachers. And when you’re ready to build classes you can teach with confidence and presence, my six-month mentorship, Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing, is where we do that work together.
Want to go deeper? Listen to the full episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential, Technology in Class.
