Claim OwnershipYoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher
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© 2026 Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher
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Yoga Teacher Confidential is your backstage pass to the unspoken truths of being a yoga teacher. Sage Rountree, PhD, E-RYT500, dives into the real challenges and rewards of teaching yoga, offering expert advice and secrets to help you build confidence, connect with your students, and teach with authenticity. Sage draws on her two decades of experience teaching yoga, owning and running a studio, mentoring yoga teachers, and directing yoga teacher trainings to share practical insights you can use right away. You'll also hear advice from her books, including Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses, The Art of Yoga Sequencing, and The Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook. Yoga Off the Mat is coming out in July 2026. Whether you’re navigating imposter syndrome, mastering classroom presence, or refining your skills to teach specialized niches like athletes, this podcast empowers you to lead your classes with clarity, grace, and ease.
74 Episodes
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I recently dropped a class I'd been teaching for nearly 23 years. Monday nights at 6 p.m.—since the literal day when the studio opened in 2004. Walking away from that class was one of the most bittersweet decisions I've ever made. In this episode, I'm sharing the full story of how I came to that decision, along with the signs that it might be time for you to let go of a class: declining numbers, a gut sense that the chapter is complete, burnout, the math not adding up, or a change in your lif...
I was teaching a free yoga class at an outdoor gear store in Edmonton when a woman walked in with a toddler and an infant. Not a sleeping infant in a carrier: these children were alert, wandering, making noise. And if you've ever taught yoga, you know exactly what happens to your nervous system in that moment. In this episode, I'm sharing what I've learned about staying composed—and student-centered—when you truly don't know who's going to show up. From the student who took my breath cues so ...
I once sat next to the drummer from Loverboy on a plane, and we realized our lives were almost identical: city to city, same performance, different crowd, trying to find a salad somewhere. Except he was an actual rock star, and I was coming back from teaching yoga at an REI store in Minneapolis. In this episode, I'm sharing what sponsorships and brand ambassador deals actually look like from the inside. I'll walk you through my journey from cold-pitching Athleta in 2008 to a multi-year, five-...
If you've ever spent three hours planning a sixty-minute yoga class—or shown up with nothing but vibes and hoped for the best—this episode is for you. I'm unpacking what I call the Planning-Confidence Cycle: the exhausting trap that keeps yoga teachers bouncing between meticulous overpreparation and chronic underpreparing. Here's the thing: neither extreme gives you what you actually want. Overplanning leaves you too in your head to see your students. Winging it leaves you uncertain whether y...
Instagram can feel like a second job-especially when you became a yoga teacher to teach, not to perform online. In this episode, I share a simple reframe that takes the pressure down fast: your job on social media is not to entertain the algorithm. Your job is to help the right students find the next step into yoga with you. I walk through three struggles I hear from yoga teachers all the time: hating social media and feeling guilty, spending lots of time on Instagram without seeing fuller cl...
When I started teaching yoga at the UNC Wellness Center, I had to complete hospital safety training about bloodborne pathogens and biohazard spills. I was teaching yoga in a gym. The odds of encountering a biohazard during downward-facing dog were essentially zero. But they paid me for that training time, and there were snacks at the meetings—so I wasn't complaining. Teaching at gyms and YMCAs isn't a consolation prize for yoga teachers who can't get hired at studios. It's one of the best pos...
Most new yoga teachers approach studios completely wrong. They send generic emails, mention how much they need the work, and haven't taken a single class at the studio they're asking to teach at. Some even copy-paste so carelessly that they mention the wrong studio's name. In this episode, I'm sharing the exact approach that gets yoga teachers hired—the one that makes you stand out from the hundreds of other applicants studio owners receive every year. This isn't about luck or connections. It...
I've spent twenty years watching yoga teachers struggle with the same pattern. They finish their training, start teaching, and then something happens. They're standing in front of three students wondering what they're doing wrong. They're scrambling every Sunday night to plan Monday's class. Or they never start teaching at all because the imposter syndrome is too loud. Here's what most teacher trainings won't tell you: more knowledge doesn't cure imposter syndrome. Clear, confident teaching c...
Most yoga teachers feel secretly terrified about teaching meditation. You know how to cue a vinyasa, but when it comes to that moment where you ask students to sit still and turn inward, the panic sets in. Who am I to guide someone's meditation practice? In this conversation with Gabrielle Harris—author of Lessons in Meditation, The Language of Yin, and The Inspired Yoga Teacher—we unpack why teachers struggle with imposter syndrome and what to do about it. Gabrielle shares her evolution from...
When Lana Boone first started teaching formats beyond her familiar Baptiste sequence, she was terrified. Today, she's the lead teacher at Yoga Six in Potomac, Maryland, confidently teaching everything from power to restorative to sound bath—and her classes are filling up. In this conversation, Lana shares how the 6-4-2 framework and chunking approach completely transformed her lesson planning. She went from spending hours trying to memorize set sequences to creating balanced classes in fiftee...
Most 200-hour yoga teacher trainings teach you how to do yoga—but they don't teach you how to teach yoga. If you've been through a training yourself, you know exactly what I mean. You spent weeks learning Sanskrit names, memorizing muscles, and perfecting your own poses. Then they handed you a certificate and said you're a yoga teacher now. Except you didn't really feel like one. In this episode, I'm taking you back to 2003 when I chose my own 200-hour training by looking through the printed ...
Most yoga teachers end the year measuring what they didn't accomplish. The workshops they didn't lead, the certifications they didn't finish, the Instagram following that didn't grow. But here's what I've learned after two decades of teaching: you're probably measuring the wrong things. In this episode, I'm walking you through the reflection framework I use in my mentorship—roses, thorns, and buds—and showing you how to create a Bridge Statement that turns your 2025 lessons into clear 2026 in...
The most awkward yoga class I ever taught? When my husband raised his hand mid-class like a third grader to ask if he was doing it right. If you're teaching through the holidays, you're probably about to experience your own version of this—friends, family, and visiting relatives showing up to your class. In this episode, we're diving into one of the most complex dynamics in yoga teaching: what happens when people who know you outside the yoga room show up to your class, and what it means when...
I've been creating yoga video content since the DVD era—and I've made just about every mistake you can make along the way. From losing the rights to my own videos to stress-recording live classes while trying to serve paying students, my journey with video has been full of hard-won lessons. In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on 20+ years of creating yoga videos. I'll share what worked, what didn't, and the one mistake I will never make again. Whether you're thinking about recording...
Most yoga teachers avoid watching themselves teach. The cringe factor is real. But self-assessment through video recording is the single most effective—and completely free—tool you have for evolving as a teacher. In this episode, we're diving deep into the second E in my S.E.R.V.E. Method: Evolve Your Voice. I'm sharing the complete framework I teach in Module One of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing—the multi-pass review system, reflection techniques, and advanced strategies that transfor...
After two decades of teaching yoga and training teachers, I've noticed something profound: some of my most meaningful moments happen when I visit the teacher trainees of my former students. These metaphorical grandchildren—students of my students—represent what Phase 5 of the Yoga Teacher Success Timeline is truly about. Phase 5 isn't about age or years of experience. It's about the depth of your impact and your readiness to share what you've learned with the next generation of teachers. In t...
There's a phase that happens before yoga teacher training even begins—a liminal space where you're no longer just a student, but you're not yet ready to call yourself a teacher. I call it Phase Zero. Maybe you find yourself mentally teaching along during class, wondering why the teacher chose that particular sequence. Maybe people keep telling you that you should be a teacher, or you're naturally the one helping other students find their way. Maybe you feel called to share yoga with specific ...
I used to think teaching yin and restorative yoga were niche skills—nice to have if you wanted to teach those specific classes, but not essential to your development as a yoga teacher. I was completely wrong. After 20+ years of teaching and training teachers, I've discovered that learning to teach yin and restorative might be the most transformative thing you can do for your teaching—no matter what style you teach. These aren't specialty skills for specialty classes. They're foundational skil...
In this episode, I explore what it really means to thrive as a yoga teacher. Phase Four of the Yoga Teacher Success Timeline—the Thriving Teacher Zone—is where teaching becomes intuitive, fulfilling, and sustainable. I share the signs that you’ve reached this stage, from having loyal students and diversified income to teaching from intuition rather than fear. I also unpack how thriving doesn’t mean being overbooked or burned out—it means working with joy, confidence, and clarity. You’ll hear ...
Have you ever felt like your teaching has hit a plateau? In this episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential, I dive into Phase Three of the Yoga Teacher Success Timeline: the Professional Development Zone. This is the stage where teaching starts to feel sustainable but can also begin to feel routine. I share the hallmarks of Phase Three, including confidence in delivery, steady students, and a desire to specialize or increase income—but also the risks of stagnation. You’ll learn how to embrace plat...
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