When we talk about teaching yoga, we often focus on what we’re offering: the sequence, the directions, the music, the theme. But what I have seen over my many years of teaching is that what really makes a class has very little to do with what we say.
It has everything to do with it how we appear.
Students may come for flexibility, strength, or stress relief, but what they respond to most, often without knowing why, is presence. A teacher who is grounded and settled creates a different kind of space. People become softer. The breath becomes deeper. Nervous systems begin to calm down. Something unspoken becomes available.
Presence is contagious.
Teaching beyond technology
Early in my teaching journey, after completing my first teacher training and stepping into the role of teacher, I realized something important: yoga isn’t really about the poses. It’s not about saying more or doing more.
Yoga is about listening.
Listening to our own body. Listen to the room. Listening to what is actually needed at that moment. When a teacher is truly present, teaching becomes responsive rather than performative. Less effort is required and yet the impact is often deeper.
Technology is of course important. But technology is the container. Presence is what fills it.
The energy of the room
Most of us have experienced it: walking into a class and immediately feeling at ease, or the opposite: walking into a room that feels rushed or tense.
Teachers set the tone long before the first pose is taken.
When a teacher relaxes within himself, the students feel it immediately. Even before the instructions begin, the body feels safety. Breathing slows down. The system becomes more responsive. This is not something we manufacture. It is something we embody.
Presence communicates, whether we mean it to or not.
Less instruction, more experience
Many students today are less interested in what to do and more interested in how something should be done feels. People are overloaded with information and constant stimulation. They are tired of striving, fixing and improving themselves.
What they are hungry for is direct experience.
This is where presence becomes the teaching. When we slow down, talk less, and trust the space, students often go deeper. Not because they do more, but because they are allowed to feel more.
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