The Mentor Sessions

Social media can be a wonderful tool to help us connect with friends, communities or potential students. It can also be a black hole of despair and panic.  Some people say it is necessary to participate and post on social media to be a successful business nowadays.

I don’t think engaging on social media is a requirement for having a thriving yoga teaching business at all, but if you use it right it can be ...

My understanding of the spiritual teachings is that my liberation doesn’t mean anything unless everyone else is free too. The teachings of Buddhism say over and over again that a huge part of our practice is about creating a world where the safety and freedom and happiness of all sentient beings is possible. So from that I take that being engaged in working for a better world is a necessary part of my spiritual practic...

In episode 148 I collected all my best advice for new teachers. The episode centered around the idea that the most important thing new teachers can do is start teaching and figure out what kind of teacher they want to be.

But once you’ve started that process, there are some important business foundations you want to have in place so you have solid ground upon which to build. This episode (152)  is a deep d...

How do we pour into ourselves so we have enough energy, time and focus for all the people who need us?

How do we stay connected to our practice, since it should be the foundation our whole teaching life is built on?

How do we stay inspired in our teaching without investing thousands of dollars in continuing education each year?

It is not easy! But creating time for our own practic...

Being a yoga teacher, heck being a PERSON, is TOUGH right now. But having a job that requires presence and vulnerability and groundedness all the time requires we pour into ourselves so we have something to give. 

I LOVE hearing the behind the scenes details of people’s lives and routines. And I’m so happy to say that after a pretty stressful few years, I have my self care routines DIALED IN right now! In ...

Teaching yoga, and maybe especially teaching private clients is, to be candid, an unstable way to make a living. But I have done it successfully for twenty years, so it can be done! 

I’m in a season in my life where I have limited spots available to teach, but financially I need every single one of those spots filled every week. I have about ten standing private clients and then I have at least five spots ...

Anytime I connect with a new-ish yoga teacher I end up giving a lot of the same advice, so I collected all of it in one place, right here in today’s podcast episode! Whether you are a new teacher or an experienced one in a phase of rebuilding (haven’t we all been rebuilding lately??) this episode has all my best pearls of wisdom, hard won over the last twenty years of full-time yoga teaching!

In this episo...

You all know that I am only minimally interested in business-- I’d much rather talk about the actual craft of teaching yoga. But we do need to make money, and if we have chosen yoga teaching as our job, we need to be SMART about business because it is not the easiest way to make a living!

Having some smart foundational systems in place can make a huge difference in your yoga teaching career path, and today...

More than ever our work as yoga teachers is challenging and important.

We don’t want to be like this lady, right? Trying to sell people something they don’t need while their house burns down? People need yoga, but they need the kind of yoga that supports awareness, connection and care (which could mean lots of different things for different students and teachers!). People do not need the kind of yoga that ...

You don’t me to tell you that the world as we know it is burning to the ground. This makes teaching yoga hard, important and strange. A few episodes back I answered the question, “Should we talk about current events in our yoga classes?” By essentially saying, “maybe… but most likely YES.” In that episode I talked about how important it was to have an understanding and point of view about what the yoga teachings would ...

Solo or with guests,  I explore the craft of teaching yoga, as its own practice. I’m seeking answers to the questions about why we teach something the way we do, how we could be more expansive and inclusive in our teaching, and how we can continue to grow and evolve in our teaching practice.

I would like to release episodes more frequently and your feedback will determine the kinds of episodes I record. I’...

Even if you first learned yoga from your parents and your grandparents, the path to truly embodying the philosophical yogic teachings can be long and winding. Today we have a beautiful conversation with Reema Datta to share with you that explores:

• the path from a physical focus in teaching to a philosophical practice

You don’t need me to tell you what a wild and scary time we are living through. We know that the tools of yoga can be incredibly supportive in difficult times and also have things to say about the difficult times we are living in.

So are you talking about this in your classes? Should you?

I am, and I’ve been getting a lot of questions about it! So today’s episode is going to dive deep into thi...

As I sit down to write these show notes, RFK Jr is currently in his senate confirmation hearing. By the time you read these words it is my assumption that he will be the new head of Health and Human Services for the United States, a job with incredible power. Anything is possible, so there could be a different outcome, but it seems unlikely. 

You might ask, “what does that have to do with teaching yoga?” 

Building a career as a yoga teacher is challenging because unlike many other kinds of jobs, you have to build out a career in one hour blocks, working to get and then manage each gig separately.

While the explosion of online offerings and social media as a marketing tool has changed much about the landscape, there is one thing it hasn’t changed. In my view, the best way to build a career as a yoga teacher ...

Octavia Raheem first wrote a book called Gather where she talked about gathering ancestors, gathering courage and gathering rest. Then she wrote a book, Pause Rest Be, about how rest has served as a tool for courage and resilience for her and the people she’s worked with. 

And lucky for us, Octavia has written a new book called Rest Is Sacred, that takes these ideas and weaves them together,...

I have been an active participant in the yoga industry since the early 2000s, and I have never really understood how brick and mortar yoga studios, especially locally owned ones without corporate backing, made it work. 

I’ve been curious about it, and I have seen a few studios run incredibly well and last a long time, but we all know those are the outliers. These spaces are so important for us as teachers ...

If you are a yoga teacher trying to make anything close to a full time income with your work, then you are an entrepreneur. Many of us resist that truth, or we at least resist some of the work that is associated with being a small business owner.

That is why today I’m so excited to introduce you to Jackie Murphy. She is here to give us all a business strategy pep talk!

Jackie Murphy (she/her) ...

The learning journey I’ve been on regarding hypermobility is incredibly personal. I was plagued with nearly constant minor and serious injuries most of my life. As a dancer that seemed normal, but it was very difficult and I was often injured more than anyone else I knew. I worked so hard to “build more stability” and “get out of my patterns of gripping” and some things did help quite a bit, most notably Feldenkrais.