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Yoga cueing and voice are the tools that separate a good teacher from an unforgettable one, and Paul Teodo joins to share the "need-to-knows" from his 10 years in the industry.
Whether you’re a new teacher or you already have gained some teaching experience, these tips will help refine your craft and improve your style of teaching.
From simple teaching techniques, to voice improvement strategies, to challenging your students in a healthy way, these suggestions can provide you with a more well-rounded skill set with your career as a teacher, or with the development of your career.
The IN Movement Podcast was formerly the Going Pro Yoga Podcast — and before that, the Yoga Teacher Evolution Podcast and the Rat Race Rebellion Podcast. Same mission, evolved name.
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Hey there, Before we get started on this week's episode, I would love to ask for your support by reviewing this podcast. We want to share yoga with as many people as possible and this free resource. This podcast is one of the ways that we can do that. And the best way that you can help support us is by giving us a review.
So if you go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever podcast platform you use, Scroll down until you find that star review and then give us some love. Thank you so much, and let's get started with this week's episode. If somebody comes up to me and they've had a deep emotional experience, I will and they'll want to talk to me else and they say, do you have a few minutes to talk?
I'll say yes. I have I have AI have 5 minutes or I have a few minutes and a lot of times I will set a boundary and say like then and then I have to go. I have to go be with my family or just something and and it just allows the person. A few minutes to share their experience, but you as the teacher are not obligated to sit with this person for 30 or 40 minutes and hold space for them for an indefinite period of time.
Welcome to the Going Pro Yoga podcast. If you love yoga as much as I do, then this podcast is for you. We talk all things yoga related for teachers in order to supplement and complement and even support after a 200 hour yoga teacher training.
Or if you've never done a training before, this podcast is all about just learning more about yoga in an authentic way. Together with Paul Tioto and Byron De Marseille, we put together this podcast to provide you with a free resource to learn more about yoga. Whether you want to share yoga or teach yoga or just practice yoga, this podcast is talking all things yoga related. And we're trying to talk from the teacher's perspective and also the student's perspective
to make sure we get a full 360 degree angle on what yoga is all about and how it's evolved in the modern world. Welcome to our podcast. All right. Welcome back to the Going Pro Yoga podcasts, Michael here. And we have Paul with us as well.
Hello, Paul. Hello. Hello and today's episode we're gonna talk about Need to Knows for yoga teachers. So we did a part one, I don't know, several weeks ago. I don't know exactly which episode it was with Byron Need to Knows for yoga teachers.
So, you know, a lot of listeners who listen to this podcast are usually graduates of a 200 hour teacher training. They're debating on teaching. They are teaching and they're still kind of playing in that world or thinking about going in that world. So yeah, we thought we'd give a few pointers on some need to knows from Paul Toyoto's perspective on what would be helpful for, yeah, yoga teachers who want to teach. Yeah.
But also topics that Byron already didn't already cover, Yeah. So we made sure to go through that list. So this will be new related. So this is Part 2. Yes, Part 2. Awesome. So we have a little list, but welcome Paul, to the podcast I always love.
Having you here. Thanks man. Which one would you like to start with? I think we could start with simple cues, so just simplicity in general. So one thing that that we talk about all the time with our the queuing system that we've created, you mostly created with Byron, but I I've helped on it is just the the need to be simple.
And a lot of times as a new teacher, we might want to show we might be insecure as a new teacher, which I know I was, and most of my students that graduate, they share with me. Like as a new teacher we're insecure, and that's fine.
As a new teacher. And one of the ways where we feel like we might show arts our students that we know are shit is to over cue and over expand. Look at how much I know about the alignment of low lunge. Look at how much I know about the alignment of down dog versus the The statement that I love from Einstein is if you don't, if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
So I have found that one of the best lessons for me as a yoga teacher was moving from Los Angeles and moving here to Bali and teaching at the yoga barn. Because my classes were have always been in English, but in Los Angeles, every class was spoken to somebody who was fluent in English, like English was their first language, maybe second language, but they spoke it fluently. Whereas here half my students speak English as a second language and I would say 10% of
my students don't speak English fluently. They understand basic basic English. So I recognized after coming here that I needed to be able to explain complicated things in a very simple way. So could you explain it to a 5 year old or year?
Old and it made me a much much much better teacher. So one thing that I would I would say to a new teacher is learn how to explain poses or to cue poses 2 to 3 sentences. Keep it simple and in our sequencing template and in in our manual we have an in the going pro platform we have those basically like level 1 cues is a movement right, Level 2 cues is an action. So squeeze the inner thighs together, draw the tailbone down, lift your lower abdomen.
Something like that, an action which is activating the body. And then the Level 3 key would be a finishing touch, right? Which is like just to to to finish out the pose. So learning how to cue poses with two or three sentences and then pause, leave some space, look around the room.
Do the students look good? Like do they look energetically good? Physically, Anatomically, do they look good? And if they do, shut up. If they don't, then give more cues but learning to talk less, to use silence and then trust. That confidence comes from people a lot of times who talk less.
And I like to say that the the most confident person in a room is usually not the person who talks the most, it's usually the person who talks less. I wouldn't necessarily say the least, but less and that person's a good listener.
Confident person is a good listener and you don't listen to your students, but you you watch. Them to read the room, which is one of the things that Byron talked about in the first episode of this of this podcast. So simple cues, keep it simple. And why don't you riff on that?
Yeah, yeah, I mean you. Teach that just as much as yeah I agree and and what I it's it's the idea of being too creative I think when you first start teaching and like you like you said like wanting people to know. Like I know I know what I'm talking about.
Like I'm a yoga teacher I did a training like hear all the cues that I've learned versus just being like just keep it real simple like action and then like whatever body part is doing that action. Like almost as simple as that and not trying to get too creative with like you know using I don't know imaginative cues too much and you know the fingertips reaching to the sky and expanding into the atmosphere. You know whatever language like that. Like that's all great and
beautiful but you know the structure of the simplicity first and then you can color code it afterwards with some with some creativity. And I I I see that all the time in, in a lot of the teacher trainings that I'm leading without you or not leading But like a part of without you is that students just start to say a lot of stuff and then I'm just like how can you say that? What what's the essence of what you're saying and just cut out everything else.
And obviously it takes practice and stuff like that. And when you're nervous and you're teaching, you know you, you riff and you talk a little bit too much and that's that's totally normal. But the idea is the simpler the better. You say you say it succinctly and then like you said, just see how it lands and then you go from there. I'll never forget, you know, I used to be in Byron and I both used to live in Los Angeles, and we both pursued acting for a while.
And this reminds me of a really cool story. I remember hearing an interview with a director that I think maybe was a director of later in Present danger or one of the Jack Ryan movies with Harrison Ford. And the director talked about a lesson that he learned from Harrison Ford. So there was the scene where it was a really tense scene and Harrison Ford had like, like a paragraph long monologue. And he came to set and he goes to the director and he crossed out the entire monologue and he
goes, I can do all of that with just a look. And the director's like what he goes everything that you want to accomplish with this entire paragraph, I can do it with a look. And the director was super skeptical, but he he's like, all right, this guy's a movie star.
He's been doing this for 30 years. He's one of the most famous people on the planet. He's a star. I'm, I'm going to listen to him. Sure enough, he put the camera on him. Called action, Harrison Ford turns faces like, you know, 10:00 to camera facial expression, expressed everything that was going on in the scene and accomplished it all without any talking at all. I can do all of that with a look. So that kind of reminds me of, like, not as teachers that you can do all of that with a look.
But simple is better. There's nothing more sophisticated than simplicity. That's Leonardo da Vinci. I love that quote. It just kind of reminds me of that story. That's cool. Cool story. Yeah, awesome. All right, let's go on to the next one.
Yes, the next one is projecting your voice. So learning how to speak in a way that allows your students to hear you, but in a way that also doesn't seem like you're shouting, which takes time and practice, especially if you're teaching in bigger rooms. Or especially if you're teaching an indoor outdoor environments where there's a lot of outside noise and this is another thing that comes with practice, but also learning how to be receptive to feedback.
So what I would say is, you know, get a friend of yours to take your class and just say, hey, I want you to sit in the back of the room and just after class I want you to tell me whether or not you can hear me. So a lot of times a new teacher will be very excited about their playlist or be very excited about teaching. Or they might be shy and maybe they'll play the music too loud because they're super excited about the energy that what they want to create with the music.
But then the students won't be able to hear them. Or they are a new teacher and they're shy and they haven't quite found their voice yet. So learning, learning how to gauge the room. That's another thing, too, is like if your cues are simple and specific and your students aren't any, but you're confident in your cues.
If your students aren't doing what you're telling them to do, it might be because you're not talking loud enough, might be because they can't hear you. It might it might not be that your cues aren't good. It might be that they can't hear you 'cause maybe the music's too loud or you're not projecting your voice so truly learning how to read.
And push the energy. I wouldn't even call it the air, but the energy of your voice from your solar plexus area and your your heart area as well. But it originates from that solar plexus. So learning how to breathe into the belly, learning how to keep the neck and shoulders relaxed so you can see like it's a right now.
Like I'm going to talk in a way, like my voice. I have my shoulders kind of hunched. And I'm kind of, I'm leaning forward. You can see my voice is becoming a little bit more high pitched and nasal. Can you hear that? Yeah, Yeah, it's short. It's short, it's short and it lacks power and doesn't have like a a long resonance where it kind of like lingers. It's like you're saying something and it just. Ends, Yes.
Which means it's also not interesting, right? So this is less interesting and less powerful versus now I'm going to sit up and I'm going to relax my shoulders and I'm going to breathe into the belly and you can just hear.
How my voice is more resonant lower. And also when we're in our lower voice, it also allows us to be more accessible to the vulnerability. So vulnerability comes from the body, it comes from the lower tones. When we're in the head, very difficult to express emotions, Emotions come from the body, Our in our voice comes from the body.
So learning how to do that, learning how to be consistent with it. It takes time. It takes practice. You might even want to work with a coach, a yoga teacher who. Do a couple privates with a teacher who, whose? Voice is really solid.
Or even do a couple privates with a voice coach or an Alexander technique. There's something called Alexander techniques which teaches you how to relax the shoulders and breathe into the belly. Would be a great idea for a new teacher.
Yeah, cool. Awesome. Oh, do you have to add to that? Yeah. I mean, I was definitely going to comment on the feedback part because sometimes you just don't know. Yeah, loud enough. You're too loud. You know, whatever it is. And the only way you do know is by getting that feedback. So I think being open to feedback is the big thing. And then obviously finding room to, to get it, whether it be asking a friend or, you know, maybe asking. I'm thinking, like, in a
classroom, if you're teaching already, you know, asking someone that might be in the back of the room, you know, just pulling him aside, like, hey, do you mind if I ask you a question? Like, were you able to hear me? You know, it was it loud enough? And they might say, like, oh, yeah, I heard most of it. Or, you know, yeah, it was good.
You know, whatever. Just getting that feedback is always helpful for you to adjust. That was one thing, but you already spoke to that. The other thing that I was going to say was at least what I try to think about sometimes is I always try to make sure that I'm talking to the person that's furthest away from me.
Yes. So who? So wherever I am in the room is it might vary. You know, if I'm at the front of the room, then they'll be in the back of the room. But if I move around the room, then, you know, it'll depend. So if I'm conscious of where I am and where the furthest person is for me, and I'm pretending as though I'm talking to the furthest person and I'm cueing to them and speaking to them, yet my voice will naturally project a little bit more. At least it's a trick for, you
know, your your intuition to kind of just do it now. Absolutely. And I find it works pretty well. Yeah, that's that. That's a great, that great tip. Absolutely. I think another thing too to mention that we haven't really talked about too is if your students are. May sometimes they might be able to hear you, but your your voice might not be the right voice for that period of class. Because we talked about like if it's the opening of class, you want your voice to be soothing
and soft and relaxing and chill. But if you're going through sun B, your voice needs to shift. It needs to shift more fire, more intensity, more driving. I would say more masculine. Because you're you're getting, you're saying like you're doing what I want you to do right now. So that also helps you stay interesting because a lot of times they might be able to hear you. But if you're talking in the same tone the entire time, eventually your students are
going to start to you know, it's it's. So that's why it's It's also important to vary your tone, vary your intention, tell jokes. Say something vulnerable. Say something inspiring so it's not just cueing the pose. Yeah, mixing it up. Relaxed Stay because we don't want our students to be completely relaxed and comfortable the entire class. There are moments in class where I want you to be uncomfortable. Like I'm going to hold you in plank. It's going to be uncomfortable,
but there's a purpose for it to hold this pose. And you can just see how my tone changed. Like, yes, I know this. This is intense. You want that? You. You. You came to this class to be pushed, so I'm going to push you. And my voice shifts, my energy shifts.
I'm less soft. Yeah, perfect. And I'll just add one more thought on that. Yeah, you know, the carrot and the stick analogy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a Buddhist thing. Yeah. If you're not familiar with it very quickly. Carrot perspective is like you're kind of luring people with a carrot.
I think it's for like horse racing or something like you put a carrot in front of a horse and it'll follow you or you can use a stick and hit the the horse on the button and it'll, you know, it also move forward. So to me, I don't know if this is true, but the beginning of the class you're using a little bit more carrot to try to like get people on board with you know what you're going to share, what you're going to say and all that stuff. And you probably want to be
using less. Stick at the beginning I would imagine. And the end. And then at the end as well. But during the middle. Now you know people are going to be a little bit more like, OK, cool, this is fun, but also going to be challenged.
Stick a little bit. Absolutely. Yeah. Cool. Then the next one. Next one is protection request. The next one is you are not a therapist. OK, so a lot of times this is another great thing to to remember at the beginning of your teaching career is you will get students that will come to you.
And you might guide them through an experience where they release a lot of tears or they're they're brought up us, it brought it brings up a certain sense of trauma or something from the past. And they might come to you and ask you questions that you might not be qualified to answer.
And you might feel uncomfortable saying, I'm not qualified to answer this question. I'm not a therapist, so you might want to pretend to know the answer more to give somebody advice. That you're not qualified for. So just learning to know your boundaries as a yoga teacher.
That you're not necessarily a healer or a therapist. Unless you've studied those modalities and you can teach them that, then you can. But what I do is is I share from my experience so if somebody comes up to you. And they really loved your class.
And it brought up some tears or some sadness. And it's something that I've dealt with in my own life. I'll say, hey, this is what when I was going through that, when I had really bad anxiety, this is what I did. And this is the environment that I, you know, and this really worked for me. I, you know, I hope that it resonates with you. Maybe you should try this, but not coming from a place of I know what to do.
I know the answers. I'm qualified. I'm a healer. I'm an enlightened person, you know, I have everything figured out. So that's, you know, and having those boundaries too. Like if somebody comes up to me and they've had a deep emotional experience, I will. And they'll want to talk to me and they'll say, do you have a few minutes to talk?
I'll say yes. I have. I have. I have 5 minutes or I have a few minutes. And a lot of times I will set a boundary and say like then and then I have to go, I have to go be with my family or just something and and it just allows the person a few minutes to share their experience.
But you as the teacher are not obligated to sit with this person for 30 or 40 minutes and hold space for them for an indefinite period of time. That's not being not compassionate. You can be compassionate. Set a boundary around your time and energy at the same time, Yeah? Great.
And I mean, I'm you're a lot. This is one of the first things I talk about in a teacher training when I come on as my, the anatomy person. Like, OK, so just so you guys know, I'm going to teach you about injuries and you know, how to protect your body and how to protect other people's bodies.
But you're not here to fix people's problems. You're not here to fix people's injuries. It's not your goal. Your goal is to provide an experience as a yoga teacher and there's, you know, a bunch of tools and things around that. That being said, you know if you have injuries like you said, so you use it in a different language or a different way with like anxiety was your example.
But like I say, you had a a shoulder injury and someone's asking you about a shoulder injury, then you might be able to speak to your experience about that shoulder injury. Oh, I've had something like that before. This is what I've done. You can maybe try that, but don't try to. And what you said was like fake it or pretend. Because the reality is, is if you don't know that stuff, it's OK to say that you don't know it. People actually will respect
that a lot more than if you try to pretend like you do. Yeah, exactly. And what you can also say is, hey, next I'm going to look into this. Come back to class next time or when I see you tomorrow. Let's see if I can get an answer for you or, or I'm going to try and and connect you with the person who would be able to help you Totally. You know, that's that's a good thing. And as teachers, I think it's always a good idea to have a few like a life coach, a therapist,
a healer, a physiotherapist. Have those people kind of in your Rolodex so you can refer them, you can refer them business and they can refer you business at the at the same time. Because if you're not qualified to to talk about something, not talking about it is the best thing and and it comes from actually a place of confidence to say you know what, I don't know the answer to that.
However this person might, or however I will, I will talk, I will go find it out and then come back and and I might be able to point you in the right direction that that actually comes off as confident. Yeah, great. And I think well before we move on to the next one, I think a lot of this comes from people asking questions, cause a lot of people don't really understand what yoga teachers are and they just assume that yoga teachers know everything.
Yeah, right. You become a yoga teacher, you get your certification and all of a sudden people are like, oh, you're a yoga teacher. That means you must know everything about the body. You must know everything about emotions, everything about spirituality, you know, and all this stuff. And your light is perfect.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, you're vegan and you're enlightened. And it's like, we all know that that's not true. Yeah, right. So it's very. It's very understandable why people ask these questions is because they just don't know. Yeah.
And we don't need to play into that. We can just like a, like you said, stay in the lane or just express that we don't know. Yeah. Or possibly extend further to help them out by looking into it, if that's what you want to do.
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. And. The last one is. So there's a famous Sarah, a very popular saying for yoga teachers. You need to meet people where they're at. And I actually don't like that saying. I know, I know the intention behind it, but I think as a teacher, you need to meet people slightly above where they're at or slightly beyond where they're at. And and the more you start to teach, the more you can start to have discernment and engage where that is. But if if you meet people where
they're at, they're going to be completely comfortable and they're not going to grow and learn from you, you need to meet them slightly above where they're at, both in terms of physically, mentally and emotionally. So teaching them to really breathe and to go into states of gratitude. Challenging them to be more still in meditation. Challenging them to.
Keep their phones away. If you see a student and you get to know a student and that student is is practicing with a certain level of apathy or mediocrity, I would never meet them where they're at. I would challenge them to hold themselves up to a higher standard.
So if somebody comes to my class all the time and they're regular and they're constantly late, I will confront that person. And say like, is there a reason why you can't make it to class on time? I think I need to, I have a responsibility to that student to hold them up to a higher standard if their standard is not acceptable.
And if that student says, oh, I just, I just have such a hard time being on time and just, you know, you know, and I'll be like, well, you start coming on time because it's not respectful to me. And my job as a teacher is to hold you up to a higher standard.
That's what we do here. So if you can't come to class on time, then then try to find somebody else's class. Because it it's not how I like to run my class. And they almost always appreciate it, because if they're late for my yoga class, they're probably late for other important meetings or meetings with loved ones or, you know, just just not being punctual effects people or.
Every once in a while, it'll be a mom who's like, I drop my son off from school and I try to get to class as soon as I can, but I'm usually going to be a little bit late. And then the answer to that is, OK, fine, you know, like that's a real excuse. But if there's no excuse, if there's no real reason to be late, it's my job to hold you up to a higher standard, you know? And it's also my job to to read the room of the class and in my class my especially my power
yoga classes. There are, I want there to be a few moments where you're really challenged physically and because that's how you grow. If the if you're comfortable throughout my entire class, you're not going to grow. So I don't like to meet with them where they're at.
You got to meet them slightly above where they're at. Not too far. Not too far, yeah. And I think the statement, at least the way that I'm interpreting the statement is, you know, if you're thinking of an entire yoga class, you don't need to push someone for 90 minutes. No.
Right. You can meet them where they are to some level, especially the beginning. You know, of course, that that introduction kind of like welcoming people in and building that that field of trust or building that environment of feeling safe and, you know, community. But then there's moments, like you're saying to K come out of that meeting where we are, let's, let's step it up a notch. Let's build it up a little bit more. Let's hold this a bit a little
bit longer. Let's do a few more of these. You know, plank Fest type things or whatever It is physically challenging. Yeah, I mean that that's really like you know I'm I'm about to start this Yin Yang training and and I think the yin, the yin energy is meet people where they're at. And the Yang energy is me saying to you like it's my job to make you slightly uncomfortable so that you grow and get stronger. Do you want that?
If you don't, you can take Child's Pose. You can take a break. That's fine. But right now, what we're doing right now is we are holding Warrior two, and you are uncomfortable, but it's going to make you stronger, you know? And if I, and if you're if you're only holding Warrior 2 to a place of comfort, probably not getting stronger. Yeah.
Mentally either. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I love it. Yeah. Building resilience. You always have to tow the line to some level, even in yen, you know, absolutely. You've got to go a little bit past that comfort level. Otherwise you're in restorative zone. Yeah, exactly.
So there's still that element of meeting a little bit past where you're at in order to get that if you want the the physical stretch have some benefit. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Great. Is that it? That's it. Beautiful, short and sweet. Yeah, 25 minutes.
Perfect. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate that. Hopefully this episode lands well for all those out there who are looking for some tips as a new teacher. Maybe it'll be a part three if we come up with some other ones.
Otherwise, hope you enjoyed this episode. Any final words, Paul, before we let them go? Nope. All right, have a beautiful day and we'll speak to you next week. Bye, guys. All right, before you go, let me just tell you about the going proyoga.com platform.
So right now you can go to goingproyoga.com and check it out for free for seven days where you can actually learn more about yoga in the ways of alignment, queuing, sequencing, yoga, anatomy. So that if you've done a 200 hour teacher training and you want to continue to learn, practice and grow, this platform is definitely for you.
So I definitely suggest checking it outgoingproyoga.com right now. You can try it out for free for seven days.
