How to Teach Yoga in a Gym Environment with Byron and Michael

0:00 The reward, the risk/reward is, it's higher. Like, if you value introducing somebody to yoga and being their first impression of what yoga is, you can really change the the course of somebody's life. Welcome to the going pro.

0:14 Yoga podcast, nugget series. My name is Michael Henry, and I'm Byron de Marseille and he's short 15 minute episodes. We're going to be answering some of the most common questions in the yoga industry so you can walk away with the answers in a short period of time. That's right.

0:29 Michael with each Each topic that we choose will be discussing it from two different perspectives, the teacher, and the student. I'll be approaching these questions as a physiotherapist or physical therapist with over 10 years experience, treating some of the most common and complex injuries. And my guidance will be from the perspective of having taught 7,000 classes, roughly 10,000 hours over 10 years, Welcome to our podcast.

0:51 What's up everybody? Welcome back to the going pro yoga podcast, the Nugget series, we've called it, and today's Back, we're going to be talking about teaching yoga with, in a gym environment and ultimately, what to consider, what to think about with regards to that. Why is it different?

1:08 And how do we need to approach this as teachers? So the first thing that comes to mind Bayern in something that you mentioned, before we started recording, this episode is just like that. It's very different in the audience in which is going to be attending.

1:20 The classes is something that needs to be considered. So why don't we start with that? Yeah. So let's just dive into a gym environment. Aunt, yoga teaching. And I just first want to point out that let's talk about how not to compromise the actual yoga of the class just to appease the audience, which is probably there for just a good stretch, quote-unquote or a workout quote, unquote. So you're a new yoga teacher.

1:51 You want to get a job, you know, that you need the experience. You've been told that many times. You know, that that's how you're going to develop into a better. Juror with better leadership, qualities essentially getting more jobs, more opportunities at the studios that you've always dreamed of teaching. I think a lot of us have been there. You take a job at a gym.

2:11 Okay, you walk in day one and you have six students and three of them have their shoes on. And you quickly realize that this is not exactly what you thought it was going to be. That you dreamed about the night before when you put together your sick playlist and yada, yada yada, so How are you gonna guide this group of students? Well, first of all, and a gym environment, you're probably going to be expected to demonstrate the class. Probably expected to demonstrate

2:42 the whole class. You're also going to be expected to be very, let's say, have the, the give them the opportunity to have a workout to get or a to have a deep stretch. You're going to have a lot of distracted energy. There's that there's I'm just thinking of I taught it to Jimmy. When Ox, in North America in California, it's one of the top tier gems and it has a nice student base for yoga. So, this isn't every gem, but I'm talking about like, YMCAs and and even Equinox to an

3:13 extent brought that kind of energy. So I so yeah, these are the things that come up right away. The expectations of what yoga is might be a bit more disconnected. You're not going to have a lot of Savvy yoga. Owners that have developed in practice for many years, that are going to know, right?

3:34 Where to go, when you say, warrior two, but just gonna using Sanskrit, is going to be intimidating for them. There may be mirrors in the room, the probably going to be obsessed with that. So these are the issues that you might have to think about, and I'm going to go back to the compromising part. So we don't want to compromise who we are. Yeah, we I believe in this is this is relevant for most. Shins about this stuff, but especially in the gym environment, you're going to

4:03 need to meet your students halfway. Okay, you have a certain idea of what you want to be as a teacher and maybe that's not fully realized in the gym environment, but it needs to be realized to some extent. Why? Because you're not going to want to do it for very long. If not, you're not going to sustain the job. You're going to quit.

4:22 You're going to feel frustrated. You're not going to feel heard or seen and most gyms are going to pay you what you deserve to be. I paid and then you also just need to remember that these these people don't know what yoga is going to be. You are their introduction.

4:42 We talked about this Michael earlier, the reward the risk reward is it's higher. Like if you value introducing somebody to yoga and being their first impression of what yoga is, you can really change the the course of somebody's life.

4:57 Not only that but you can eventually In help and effect enough people, you can shift the world, you know, we're getting into some bigger picture stuff now, but it's totally possible in. This is the kind of thing you need to think about. So if you decide like I don't really want to demonstrate. But I have to demonstrate because everybody needs me to demonstrate everybody's looking at me the whole time. Hi, everybody.

5:19 My name is Byron. Welcome to class. So I'm going to really encourage you guys not to watch me the whole class today. In fact, I'm not going to demonstrate the Whole class, they'll be times when I do in times when I don't. So see if you can follow along, just using your ears by listening, you know, and you could crack a joke joke, if you don't speak English, you know, of course you can you know, look around we're building trust, you know, and the gym environment building trust is going to be

5:51 slightly different than building trust from somebody who already loves yoga. So those are things initially come up, maybe Michael, you can jump in from there and see, see what comes up now. Yeah, sounds good. Perfect timing, actually, because the lot one of the last things you said was what to it will.

6:10 Actually don't know if you said this, but this is what I heard. Was making sure it's very clear. What to expect at the beginning of class of kind of setting the stage building trust, like you mentioned, because, you know, you might have someone walk into the, into the, to the yoga studio, or to the whatever the extra rec room that they have at the gym.

6:27 And have no idea what's going on, or maybe they signed up because, you know, their girlfriends, bringing them in and they're completely raw from it. So they're just, they're just, it's like a blank slate. So, setting the stage, the beginning, I think is really, really important for them to just understand and I liked how you use the language. Like, you know, this is how it's going to go, like I'm going to be demonstrating things.

6:47 So you're going to want to follow along. But other times, try to just listen to my voice, try to follow along. There's a lot of mirrors in the room and you're going to be tempted to kind of look at other people. But try as much.

6:56 As you can to focus on either watching me or just listening to the words that I'm saying. If you need to look to your neighbor to see how to do the pose and I recommend it but try to stay focused on your mat as much as possible that will really help to enhance the experience that type of conversation or that language is really valuable for someone who's never done yoga before. So to me, I think that's really important to set the stage even more.

7:19 So because like Byron said, and like, we talked about before this episode, this is the stage An introduction to yoga for people that have never done yoga before. So it's a fantastic opportunity to have so much reward to introduce someone, to the yoga World, ultimately through Asana, through the physical practice. But then also it eventually develops into curiosity, learning a little bit more about yoga. Maybe the philosophies, the lifestyles, the emotional intelligence that can come along

7:49 with It ultimately changing their life and that's super super valuable. So I think it's a great responsibility. Ability. And it's also probably a little challenging to do this, but with a little bit of these probably tips and tricks of being able to set yourself up. It's a super rewarding in anything that's rewarding is always usually quite challenging to go through. So, I think this is basically what this conversation is about. Yeah.

8:14 Absolutely. Michael. Do you like me? I do. Okay. I like you, too. Why do we all have this? Need to be liked. Now? This is a whole nother conversation for a longer podcast. However, in the gym and Fireman, you need to understand that you're going to have a little less receptivity because of the same reason you have the same opportunity for intro to yoga to introduce somebody to yoga. Their expectations are going to be all over the place. Okay.

8:41 So let's not forget you're in a gym environment. You're going to hear weights, slamming around, possibly the environment could be less controlled. It may not be set up for for that intimate yoga experience. Where your voice Scary's. So this is why demonstrating also becomes a little more typical, but back to not being liked. This is something that the comes up, no matter who you are, as a yoga teacher.

9:06 Is anybody in who's lived in a one of these Earth suits, which is our human body. We all have experience with with this, you know, like we want to be accepted. So in the gym environment, you need to be very prepared to set your boundaries. If you want this to be an experience of yoga set your boundaries and be okay with those. People who don't want the boundaries that you've set, they want to be on their phone.

9:31 They want to take this not seriously. They just want to stretch. Okay. Go to Lucy's to p.m. Class. It's great for stretching. But know this class is a, it's a yoga class and we're going to turn our phones off. We're going to take it. Seriously.

9:42 We're going to try to focus and you're going to say, little nuggets of wisdom. The that are going to be seeds that are planted to hopefully let them and Inspire them to tap into a deeper part of themselves that they never knew existed.

9:58 Amazing. I like you too. And I say that I know you didn't, but I'm assuming that we're having this conversation and many other conversations that there must be something here. So now that's really great. In the thing that came up for me is a bit of the expectation that we would have as yoga teachers or as the teacher in the room of the instructor with regards to, what kind of reward are we going to get, who we going to impact?

10:23 And like, how is the overall result going to turn out? So I ultimately the Chance that we would have on ourselves and our performance. If you will knowing that because there are a lot of people that are walking through the door blank, slated raw, if you will, you may not speak to everyone.

10:37 You may only speak to one person out of 10 or you may, you know, maybe two or three will be receptive. Maybe you won't get a lot of people returning. Maybe some people won't actually enjoy the class, just remember, and I'm sure by now and you can speak to this.

10:49 Is that it's not your fault. If someone doesn't necessarily have that receptivity to the class. Maybe they don't have a good experience because they had a bad day, or maybe they're just You know, there was someone in the class or maybe you remind them of someone that they don't like whatever the story is at the end of the day.

11:03 It's really important to recognize that there's probably a higher chance of people not necessarily loving yoga within this environment, which ultimately means that there's going to be more reward. Because if in when you do land, someone that comes back and maybe they say, I love yoga classes. I really want to take more so on and so forth. Boom.

11:22 Now, you've got that reward but within that environment, I think it's more challenging and ultimately going to be challenging for yourself to not necessarily be too hard on you. If you have a class of 10-15 people and then maybe next week you only have five and the other ones, you know, maybe they say I didn't really like the class. It wasn't for me or whatever, whatever, not taking it personally and recognizing that just the general environment is going to be more challenging in

11:46 order to capture people's attention to be interested in yoga further. Yes, sir. And how do we do that? And how do we meet them to where they are? So that maybe they do come back and we can still build something at the gym, right?

12:02 So there is that part of a two part of its doing, what's right for you to sustain where you are and feeling emotionally that you can keep showing up. But I also, you know, we're all motivated by the Numbers increasing in that class.

12:14 It's a immediate validation of what we're doing is working and more people want it. So, how do we do? That let's say you want to be more spiritual and it's difficult to do that because of the audience. Well, oming is something you really love in your own practice, oming. I love owning.

12:32 I do it in my classes. I've gotten to the point where I am radically radically accepted myself, and it will be myself, and I will do it in nearly every class. However, I would didn't always used to do that. So, what I used to do was take a deep breath in everyone, where I would normally ohm, And open the mouth.

12:51 Let it go. We won't do that again to the end of class. Usually. And then again, thank you, you know, right before I say, namaste. Thank you for showing up its deep breath in and let it go Namaste. Thank you for showing up everybody.

13:05 So that's just one example. All means a little out of their comfort zone but deep breaths are not. Okay. The workout aspect. Let's say they want to work out, you know, it, you know, that you're going to build your classes if you make this a strong work out. Well, Engage The Lady aspects of postures, hold them in postures a little bit longer, you know, not always, but, you know, give them the opportunity to hold, don't always just run them through poses.

13:29 Like they're not important break them down. Let them engage muscles, talk about muscles. These are the things that can can kind of keep them there longer and keep them interested, because if you go into chakras, if you go into, I don't know, spirals of energy, anything that might be out of the realm of their comfort zone.

13:46 They're just going to tune out the receptivity, which is already low. Oh, is going to get any even lower? So maybe you start to enhance your knowledge of anatomy and you know things that you're more tapped into with regards of Western communication and talking about the body more, the actual muscles, the the skin, the structure, the knee, the 90° and yeah, I think that's a great way to meet people halfway and to keep building your classes.

14:16 Yeah, perfect. And and what I heard from you just to wrap up because we're almost at our 15-minute. Mark is the choice of language that we use with regards to the audience. And we mentioned this at the beginning that, you know, you got to know your audience and speak little bit differently. So, you know talking about chakras and talking about oming and the spiritual stuff might not necessarily be meeting them where they're at.

14:35 So if we start to use more the language of, you know, strength endurance, muscles, you know, I don't know, flexibility science sulcus, all of these. Like things motivation, whatever. That's that's very much Jim language. So if you can kind of either shift your language to meet that, that in itself is a simple way to meet them where they're at, because they're going to be receptive to that. Because now you're speaking their language. You just might not be able to

15:00 manipulate the language a little bit to introduce them to yoga, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. Notice this Lucy. Bend your right knee. 90 degrees, reach your arms up. Doesn't that feel good? Simple. They like simple language. A lot of people who work out. They want simple language.

15:18 Okay, Lucy. Bend your right knee, press your right foot down. Make your back leg. A little stronger reach up through your arms, to the sides of your waist left, and then pull your navel and draw your chin down a little bit. It's just too much information sometimes. Yeah, you just keep it simple.

15:31 Positive reinforcement. Good job, people. Just want to, you know, hear that sometimes in the gym. Amazing. Perfect. I love it. Good job. Michael. Super helpful. Super healthy. All right. Thank you so much for listening. This is another episode of 15-minute nugget series answering the question.

15:49 How do we teach yoga in a gym environment? Thank you so much, Byron, and thank you so much. Everyone else for listening and have a beautiful day.