Mentoring

When I began my yoga teacher training, I had no idea who or what I was going to teach. As time went on, I developed a secret dream to teach yoga to people of all shapes and sizes. I was pretty sure that dream was crazy, though, so I didn’t tell a soul.

But even though I didn’t tell anyone, this dream kept growing in my heart. Over time, I began slowly teaching curious friends here and there. And then in April 2009, I started this blog. I’m pretty sure my only readers for months were my husband, sister and parents (if I was lucky).

Grow Your Dream

As my dream continued to bloom, I grew bolder. Since that time, I have gone from teaching a handful of friends in their homes and writing for an audience I could count on one hand to packing out classes of 45+ students and being featured in publications around the world. In 2011, I also:

  • Grew my Facebook page members by 1171%
  • Increased my Twitter followers by 1921%
  • Boosted my mailing list subscribers by 1230%
  • Had 30,000+ unique visitors check out my site
  • Left my full-time job to work with Curvy Yoga exclusively (something I never thought would be possible)

Find Your Voice

Even more shocking than the tremendous growth of my outreach, though, is how I did it — by becoming truer and truer to myself. Yep; that’s right. The more I stepped into who I am and plumbed my personal experience, the more I realized how I can best be of service — by sharing from a place of truth and developing a niche that speaks to people.

As a yoga teacher, I know how hard it can be to stand out and get your classes and workshops noticed. But what I also know is that the more you get connected to your own body and practice, the more you can share in a way that makes people feel connected to you. And the more people feel that, the more your student base grows. And the more your student base grows, the more studio owners are willing to consider your classes, the more people fill your workshops and — even more importantly — the more you can create a transformative experience for your students.

And that’s really what you want, right? I mean, Triangle pose is awesome, but I’m betting you didn’t become a yoga teacher just to teach poses.  Isn’t what you love about it what it did for your life? Thought so.

Here’s the awesome news: sharing that love, especially how it personally affected your life, is what’s going to fulfill your unique teaching dream.

Develop Your Niche

I’ve told you about my dream. Now I want to hear about yours. Maybe it’s teaching former workaholics how to relax, or small business owners in finding passion on and off their yoga mat, or folks with a specific injury or illness that is close to your heart or (more likely) some gem that you’ve dismissed as completely unfeasible — but that really holds the root of both who you are and how you can best serve your students.

Figuring this out is a two-step strategy: embodiment + logistics. Here are some steps along the journey of our work together:

  • Exploring your experience and passion to find what message you are meant to be sharing
  • Going through an inquiry process to do the internal work necessary to find and share your voice
  • Honing your voice through the development of marketing materials, including a mission and vision for your work, class descriptions, workshop blurbs, website content, social media missives and more
  • Getting the word out and building your student base while honoring your voice — and thus avoiding that all too common yoga teaching trap: burnout

Format

I’ve designed this mentoring experience to help us both go deep and get practical. This is a 3-month program; we spend the first six weeks focused on drawing out your vision and voice. The second six weeks we integrate that information into blog posts, marketing materials, class/workshop descriptions and more.

During the course of our time together, we will talk biweekly for 45-60 minutes via phone or Skype (for a total of 6 calls). In between calls, I’m available for email debriefing. And once we get into crafting materials, I’ll be giving feedback on what you create over email, going back-and-forth with you to get it to where it feels like a big “this is it!” when you read it. Earlier in my career, I was a college English teacher and editor, so it gives me endless delight to tap into those skills and help you craft this aspect of your offering. Throughout the three months, we’ll use tailor-made worksheets and journal prompts that I’ve created to guide you through the process and get you where you want to be.

Want to learn more? Contact me to set up a free 45-minute info session. I’d love to hear more about how I could be of service to you in your vision. We’ll figure out together if we’re a good fit to work together. If we are, we’ll schedule our first session and get rolling right away!