Teaching yoga in 1x1 settings is such a wonderful way to inspire and support meaningful change in our student’s lives. But the possibilities for what and how you could teach a private lesson are endless and as a teacher that can feel overwhelming! How do you decide what to focus on?? 

As yoga teachers most of us are legally and financially out on our own; we are small business owners and independent contractors cobbling together enough work to make a living. There is much that needs to change about our systems, but today I want to start small and offer this free training on legal protections for yoga teachers and I’m so happy to introduce you to Cory Sterling (he/him)!

The yoga world has changed so much since I started teaching 16 years ago. Back then I didn’t have a website, use social media or have any fancy tech equipment, and I didn’t know many (any?) yoga teachers who did! 

It has been just over one year since I shifted from teaching yoga full time in-person, to teaching full time online. It has been a huge change (obviously) in my approach to teaching and my day to day schedule. In this episode I share some updates with you about how it’s going in general (well!) how my students are doing (so much beautiful growth and adaptation) and what my teaching plans look like for the future (I don’t know!).

Do you know Tori Lunden (she/her)? She is known as Bad At Yoga on social media and if you haven’t come across her work yet I’m SO excited I get to introduce you to her today. If you do know Tori’s work, you won’t be surprised at all to know that I jumped at the chance to connect with her, (and we had a blast!) because there are many similarities in our work! 

Trauma-informed practice is a popular topic in the yoga world, and with good reason. Most people have experienced some kind of trauma and if yoga is to be a healing practice, as teachers and practitioners we must take into account what could make a practice unsafe or triggering for folks, including ourselves.

There are two things I’m really passionate about in my teaching: One is dismantling the notion of linear, hierarchical, universal progress, especially when it comes to movement. The other is teaching in a way that students feel 100% agency to make autonomous, empowered, educated decisions about their own movement practice. 

The Trans* Yoga Project is doing incredibly important work in the yoga and wellness spaces and I’m honored to introduce you to two of the founding members, River Redwood (they/them) and M Camellia (they/them).

Pranayama is incredibly rich practice because breath is a powerful vehicle to explore our most intimate relationship, the one we have with ourselves. I’m really excited to introduce you to my friend Mirabelle, because studying and teaching the intricacies of pranayama is a great passion and expertise of hers!

The Connective is a virtual movement studio that is cooperatively owned and powered by teachers. They provide a sustainable livelihood for yoga and movement professionals and raise industry standards for quality, diversity, anti-racism, and accessibility.

You don’t need me to tell you that The Year of Our Lord 2020 was (and this is the official designation, I’m pretty sure) A Hot Steaming Pile of Garbage. So much of what made last year difficult is unchanged at the moment and so I wanted to record an episode that is a little different from what we usually do here at The Mentor Sessions. 

The differences between the way yoga is taught and practiced in India and the West are significant, and important for western yoga teachers to be aware of! Lucky for us, today on the podcast we have my friend Arundhati Baitmangalkar to break it down for us! 

The human body is a beautiful and complex system, and people who teach movement always have more to learn! When the scientific concepts of motor control, proprioception and the science of learning itself are integrated into the way we teach movement, they can have significant impacts on mental health, chronic pain and the processing of trauma. 

My friend Susanna Barkataki has written a book called Embrace Yoga’s Roots: Courageous Ways to Deepen Your Yoga Practice and it is excellent. It is inspiring, galvanizing, a rallying cry. In this episode we talk all about what it really means to embrace yoga’s roots and how to integrate our values into our teaching and respect the tradition and culture that yoga comes from.

If you’re a yoga teacher who’s had to teach while working with an injury, this podcast episode is for you! Or if you see the same injuries over and over again in your students, there are tons of nuggets of wisdom here for you too.  Monica Bright is a master yoga teacher in the areas of anatomy, self massage, injuries and recovery strategies.

I think many of us would agree that a strict, dogmatic focus on alignment in asana doesn’t really serve our students, but the question you may be asking next is... what do I teach then? If I’m not telling students the right or wrong way to move their body, what am I teaching them?

I am so excited to announce that my virtual yoga studio Stillness + Movement is officially open! This episode will take a deep dive into how I ended up creating a virtual yoga studio (it was kind of accidental!), what is so different about the way we teach, and how I recommend teachers listening set up something similar much more cheaply than the custom registration platform I had built! 

The Where Do We Go From Here? series here on The Mentor Sessions has been such a great excuse to get some of my favorite yoga teacher colleagues on Zoom to process together, and out loud, where you can all listen in!! 

This is the fourth episode in the Where Do We Go From Here? series here on the podcast and in this episode my guests and I acknowledge some of the particular challenges American yoga teachers are facing in the midst of COVID-19 and our country’s semi-shutdown.

It is now September of this unprecedented year, and there is so much that is unknown about our future and our world. When I asked my friends Jules Mitchell and Arundhati Baitmangalkar to join me for this conversation about what happens next, particularly in the yoga world