Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher

For years, I refused to build an Instagram account for Comfort Zone Yoga. I could see exactly how the treadmill goes: post the same thing twice with a different caption, fall behind on both accounts, and eventually one goes dark. So I built @comfortzoneyoga to be finished in one afternoon instead. It still is.

In this episode, I'm previewing the September Comfort Zone Conversation, where we're spending an hour finishing your Instagr...

Every yoga room has a smell before you say a word of your opening—the space itself, the scent you add on purpose, and the students who walk through the door. In this episode, I’m working through all three: how to get a room ready before class, what to do with your own products and oils, and the real difference between a student who arrives already smelling strong and one who gets that way forty minutes into a good worko...

One hundred Tuesdays, and I have opened every single episode with the same five words. I never planned it that way, and I never mentioned it out loud until now, which is a little funny given that I have spent two years telling yoga teachers that repeating yourself is a professional skill rather than a failure of imagination.

In this episode I look back at what actually changed over ninety-nine weeks. I got the register of the show w...

The second class I ever taught went off the rails before I said a word—and then I spent an hour making it worse by apologizing for not being the regular teacher. Two students set me straight the next day, and I still teach from that lesson two decades later.

In this episode, I’m separating the two things yoga teachers mean when they say a class went off the rails: the logistics problem that happens in the room, and the p...

My husband took his first yin class with me at Kripalu and told me afterward that I should rename the practice. He wasn’t entirely wrong: a room built on stillness produced an enormous reaction in his body, and that’s yin working exactly as designed.

In this episode, I break down the three mistakes I see yoga teachers make most often when they teach yin: treating it as a slower version of a flow class instead of its own ...

All yoga pants are see-through. Your expensive pair, the clearance-bin pair, all of them—under the right light, in a deep enough fold, the fabric gives away a little more than you bargained for. That isn't a flaw in you or your students. It's fabric and physics, plain and simple.

In this lighthearted episode, I walk through the 2013 Lululemon recall that erased roughly two billion dollars in market value, then tell the story o...

For years, I was the phone police. I taught with a sensitive wireless mic that glitched every time a phone buzzed, so I asked everyone to power down—and told myself I was protecting the practice.

Then I watched a student at a workshop keep fidgeting with a little device. I caught myself judging her for it, until I realized it was her insulin monitor. That moment changed how I think about technology in class, and I want to shar...

Most yoga teachers have heard some version of don't demo. Get off your mat. Cue with your words. Be a real teacher. The advice is reaching for something true—but the rule, as it usually gets delivered, hurts newer teachers and doesn't actually capture what experienced teachers are doing differently.

In this episode, Sage walks through when demonstration genuinely serves your students (and when it doesn't), why studios that ban...

This week is a little different. Sage is joined by her co-author and friend Alexandra DeSiato to read from their new book, Yoga Off the Mat—the book that takes what yoga builds on the mat and lets it shape the rest of your life.

Alexandra reads from the chapter on abhinivesha, the fear of the unknown: why we grip so hard for control, what a Stephen Colbert bit has to do with death, and a few practical ways to loosen our hold o...

In this episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential, I sit down with my dear friend and longtime writing partner, Alexandra DeSiato, for a conversation about our new book, Yoga Off the Mat, out July 14. It is the fourth book Alexandra and I have written together, and it grew from a simple question: what happens when you take the attention you practice on the mat and let it shape the rest of your life?

We start where Alexandra likes to star...

A few weeks ago, I posted a simple carousel on Instagram in my “Here’s the Tea” series for yoga teachers: not every pose needs you to call out a Sanskrit name. The comments rolled in—some grateful, some furious, most somewhere in the thoughtful middle. This episode is the longer answer that didn’t fit on eight slides.

I walk through what I was actually trying to say in the post, where the conversation s...

Ninety seconds of Instagram scrolling. Five distinct forces firing inside you, so fast you experience them as a single feeling: “I’m not good enough.” But it’s not one feeling—it’s five. Yoga philosophy named them twenty-five hundred years ago.

In this episode, I’m walking through the five kleshas from Book Two of the Yoga Sutras: avidya (wrong-seeing), asmita (ego), raga (craving), dvesha (...

The first time I felt true parasympathetic rest, I was ten minutes into legs up the wall during a restorative workshop, and the entire outline for my book The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery dropped into my head, fully formed. I had no idea this state was even available to me for free—and once I felt it, I understood why so many well-meaning restorative classes miss the mark.

Telling students to relax doesn’t make them...

You’ve cued it a thousand times: “Find the balance between effort and ease.” In this episode I take Patanjali’s sthira sukham asanam (Yoga Sutra 2.46) off the mat and show you how it runs underneath every cue you give, every class you plan, and every decision you make about your teaching career.

You’ll learn what sthira (steady, firm, structured) and sukha (literally “good axle space”—...

Right now, three tracks are playing inside you. One is heavy—the energy that makes you hit snooze. One is wired—the one drafting tomorrow's class at 2 AM. And one is clear—the energy that shows up when teaching just flows. Yoga philosophy has a name for this trio: the gunas.

In this episode, I walk through one of the most practical frameworks in all of yoga philosophy. Your students will grasp it in thirty seconds,...

If you teach in any climate with real seasons, summer attendance has its own logic. The first beautiful spring day empties the studio. A July heat wave fills it back up. By August you're juggling subs, outdoor classes, your own travel, and a schedule that no longer makes sense.

After twenty-plus years of teaching and fifteen years of co-owning a studio in North Carolina, a state with four seasons including a warm summer, I no longer...

You know the spiral. A student walks out of your class early, and by the time you reach your car, you've decided your classes are getting stale, the studio is about to replace you, and you should probably go back to your day job. The student leaving was the first arrow. The forty-minute story you built on top of it? That's the second arrow—and it hurts far more than the first one ever did.

This week, I unpack one of the most u...

Have you ever had a student freeze in tree pose and apologize for wobbling? In this episode, I'm rethinking how we teach balance so every body in the room—regardless of age, injury history, or experience—can work the skill without feeling like they're failing.

I walk through the four systems that keep us upright (vestibular, proprioception, vision, and musculoskeletal), why the brain's plasticity means balance can improv...

For over a decade I taught private yoga to Hall of Fame coach Roy Williams, and somewhere along the way I realized I'd been teaching privates wrong. Not because I didn't know yoga. Because nobody had ever sat me down and said, A private is a different craft. Here's how.

In this episode I walk through the three shifts that turn a group-class-with-one-student into an actual private lesson: sequencing for one body (not the whole room) ...