Should Yoga Teachers Only Instruct Poses They Can Do?

Let's Talk Yoga

Arundhati Baitmangalkar

Business, Health & Fitness, Alternative Health, Entrepreneurship

4.9 • 567 Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Some yoga teachers believe they should only teach the poses they can personally execute, while others argue that teaching is about more than just demonstration. Where do you stand on this? In this episode, I unpack this common debate and explore five key considerations to help you decide what’s best for your teaching journey. Episode Highlights: Teaching from direct experience: Why new teachers should focus on what they know well.Aligning with yoga ethics: How Satya (truth), Ahimsa (non-harm...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the Let's Talk Yoga podcast. As always, I hope you are doing
0:06.8	great. It's a lovely spring morning here at the Let's Talk Yoga headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
0:13.7	I love this time of the year. The yard is starting to bloom with some cherry blossoms and Munch and I spent a lovely day outside.
0:24.1	Munch is my eight-year-old German Shepherd.
0:26.6	If you follow me on Instagram, you would have seen me share videos and pictures of him and his antics.
0:32.7	He is the sweetest boy.
0:34.5	And we have some amazing sunshine here in Redmond today. And if you've ever been to
0:40.1	the Seattle area, you know that sunshine is not something we wake up with every day. So when we
0:45.5	have sunny days like this, it is just an absolute treat. And we spent the morning playing in the
0:52.4	yard, we cut some blooms for the office and just spent time soaking up the sunshine. We also got to see a woodpecker using its very strong neck to go at a log in the yard. And that's always fascinating. So wherever you are in the globe, as you're tuning in, I hope that you get to have some wonderful
1:12.1	moments in your day. I make a conscious effort to notice these things during my day because
1:18.7	it just makes me feel so much more connected to myself. On the show today, we're going to be
1:24.3	getting into a question that comes up so often in the yoga world,
1:29.1	and that is, should you only teach those yoga poses that you can do?
1:35.2	This is a question that has come up in yoga teacher trainings.
1:38.2	It's a question I have asked back in my days in teacher trainings.
1:42.0	And I believe that there is a slightly nuanced answer to this one.
1:46.4	It's not a simple yes or no. It's actually more in the It Depends category. And I love questions
1:53.4	where we end up with the It Depends. And then we got to unpack the layers and the angles within it.
1:59.8	So that's what we are doing on the show today.
2:02.5	I hope you find this episode valuable. A couple of housekeeping things before we jump into today's show.
2:09.2	Please make sure that you are on my monthly mailing list. This is extremely important because once my
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