If you’re a busy yoga teacher who teachers a number of classes per week, it can be really challenging to keep things new, inspired, and purposeful. Theming is something we discuss in our 200hr Yoga Teacher Trainings, go deeper into during our 300hr Yoga Teacher Training Program, and spend a lot of time in during our 200hr Yoga Teacher Training Refresher Program.
One of the most common questions we get is: How to theme a great yoga class?
There are so many ways to do it, but one of the fool-proof questions to ask yourself is: What do I need to hear?
This is a trick I use when I get anxiety before leading a workshop, training or retreat. I’ll say the exact words I need to hear in my opening. This helps to calm me down, and I always figure that if I need to hear it, surely someone else in the room needs to hear it as well. Things I’ll say:
No where else to be, nothing else to prove.
The fact that you showed up is half the battle.
Be here now.
Let go of whatever happened earlier today, and just allow yourself to be fully present in each moment.
Exhale, and feel what that exhale physically does to your body.
Exhale, and feel yourself grounded, firmly rooted, supported and loved.
The trick is that whatever you’re saying has to be totally authentic to you, and something you truly would want to hear, because otherwise it feels forced or comes across as cliché.
For example, I’m not super flowery in my yoga language when I teach, so if I asked people to sit up tall and “shine their heart,” it would come across as blatantly inauthentic because that is just not something I would normally say. It’s not what I imagine in my own practice, so it’s not something I teach. So, say anything you want or need to hear, but just make sure it is truly coming from you. Authenticity speaks to people and touches people on a different level than if you’re simply repeating what you heard another teacher say, or saying what you think they want to hear. When we teach from what we know, and what we practice ourselves, it’s received as confident and true.
So those phrases I’ve listed above are things I might say at the beginning of a centering when I’m dealing with a bit of anxiety. But let’s say there’s no anxiety, but I want to go a little deeper than just putting people through an asana class, and I don’t have anything planned or I’m tapped out of ideas.
Again, my suggestion would be to say exactly what you need to hear. Think about what struggles you’re dealing with in your own life, and then weave together a theme around that. For example, for a while I was stuck in a place of fear, thinking that there wasn’t enough money coming in. Fear was dominating my life, and I was making fear-based decisions that didn’t feel right to me, but I was too scared to do anything else. If I were to come up with a themed yoga class for this, I might do a heart opening class leading up to wheel pose, and talk about the idea of surrendering when we try try try and things don’t seem to be happening for us. I would talk about the idea of not only surrendering, but trusting the world around me, knowing that whatever I want is on its way to me, and what I need to do is to have an open heart and be ready and willing to receive it with open arms. I would talk about what physically needs to be done in order to safely come into a back bend, which is to activate the back muscles - and I would draw the comparison between the physical yoga practice where we literally need to have our own backs in order to open our hearts to receiving the good, and how we can apply that same yogic lesson to our lives off the mat as well. And I’d do it all without even mentioning that I was dealing with fear around a lack of money. You can keep the themes more high level, still applicable to and influenced by you and your current struggles, but also malleable enough to be adapted by others practicing in your class.
Ultimately, my advice for theming is to to take the pressure off yourself, be as authentic as possible, and say exactly what you need to hear. Every time I’ve done that, I’ve had someone come up to me after class thanking me, saying that was exactly what they needed to hear. And honestly, it’s such a relief to get those messages sometimes. I think it’s very easy to put pressure on ourselves to have it all figured out, but beauty and transformation come from being authentic and honest in our vulnerabilities.
If you’re struggling with themes, or have an idea about a message you want to share, feel free to start a conversation in the comments or join me March 21-22 for a Namaslay® YTT Refresher workshop to connect with your authentic teaching voice.