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Published by Sage Rountree
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 —plus her newest, Yoga Off the Mat , available now. 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.
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Every September I watch teachers, myself included, sign up for something new: a fresh planning system, a training, a whole approach to class we’re sure will finally stick. By October, most of it has quietly stalled out. In this episode, I’m talking about the difference between motivation and discipline, and why the surge you’re feeling right now is weather, not climate. I dig into tapas, yoga’s teaching on disciplined effort, and why the structure that looks like it limits your teaching is actually what sets it free. You’ll hear how a restaurant kitchen’s mise en place explains why prep work is what makes spontaneous, responsive teaching possible, and why a small, repeatable habit beats an ambitious overhaul every time. By the end, you’ll have a concrete way to build a planning structure that holds up long after the fall motivation fades, and a better way to talk with your own students about discipline, so it lands as relief instead of a report card. Listen now! Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 Instagram so you can stop opening the app and closing it forty minutes later having dealt with nothing. I walk through the three wrong assumptions that keep a yoga teacher's profile permanently unbuilt: that you have a content problem, that the profile is about you, and that it can never be finished. I also lay out what a finished profile actually answers—three questions a stranger is silently asking when she lands on your page—and a three-second self-audit you can run on your own account tonight. If you've opened Instagram meaning to deal with this once and for all, and closed it having dealt with nothing, this one's for you. Listen now! Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 workout. Strong smells in a classroom tend to fall into one of three buckets—perfume, smoke, and body odor—and they are not equally hard. Perfume is a room-level fix. Smoke calls for patience, since a movement practice is often part of how someone eventually quits smoking. And body odor is where teachers most often collapse two very different situations into one uncomfortable moment. I’ll also walk through how to actually have the conversation when one is warranted: which channel to pick, how to keep it brief, and how to end with a question that hands the problem to the student to solve alongside you, instead of handing her a verdict. And yes, we get to gas. Bodies do what bodies do when you fold people in half and ask them to breathe deeply on purpose for an hour. I’ll tell you exactly what to do about it (nothing, on purpose) and why that’s the kindest response you have. Listen now! Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 wrong at the start: I thought you wanted confessional, and what you wanted was useful. I sold my yoga studio, which gave the thinking room it never had while I was running a brick and mortar studio. And I started writing the episodes out in full sentences instead of teaching from bullet points, which made them shorter rather than stiffer. I also went back through two years of comments and found two yoga teachers whose stories I had been following without meaning t—one planning her very first class, one teaching her last—along with the three things you keep telling me: consistency beats variety, the worry about being good enough does not care how experienced you are, and service beats performance every time. If you have ever felt guilty about repeating a lesson plan for the students in front of you, this one is for you. Ninety-nine episodes of the same structure with one topic swapped each week, and nobody got bored: that is the argument, and the show itself is the evidence. I also tell you where the next stretch of episodes is headed, and what I would like from you—specific topic requests from your own classroom. Listen now! Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 private disaster that happens entirely inside your own head. Only one of those is visible to your students. I’ve covered the logistics side elsewhere on the show: medical issues (Episodes 34, 40, and 52), challenging behavior (Episode 33), rooms that are too small or too big (Episodes 39 and 49), phones and watches and timers (Episode 96), covering someone else’s class (Episode 38), and the class nobody shows up for (Episode 24). This episode is about the other kind. I draw on a few earlier conversations along the way: why the student who walks out mid-class almost never has anything to do with you (Episode 3), why a bored-looking face is usually a sign of concentration (Episode 8), why silence is a tool rather than a failure (Episode 19), and why one honest debrief beats replaying the tape a fourteenth time (Episode 59). You’ll walk away with language for changing course mid-class, a way to triage what’s actually an emergency versus what’s just embarrassing, and permission to let a mistake pass without comment at all. Listen now! Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 physiology, cueing “find your edge” as though it’s a complete instruction, and building a class from five favorite poses instead of a real sequence. Yin looks like the easiest class on the schedule to teach, and it’s the one most likely to leave a teacher at the front of the room wondering what her job is right now. Getting the physiology, the cueing, and the sequencing right is what turns a yin class into one students come back for. You’ll walk away knowing what tension and compression actually explain about why every body looks different in the same shape, how to cue an entry so a first-time student understands what you mean, and how to adapt the 6–4–2 framework you already use for flow into a structured yin arc. Listen now! Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 of my student Andrea, who landed a job teaching the New York Jets and got handed an XL t-shirt as her dress code. The lesson lands without anyone having to lecture: you read the room, and you dress for it. From there I get practical. There are two sides to this for teachers—what we wear and where we look. I share wardrobe advice you can use this week (including the dressing-room test that tells you the truth), when a private word to a student is genuinely a gift, and why looking away with kindness is its own form of hospitality. Underneath the jokes is something every teacher recognizes: the very human feeling of being seen before you feel ready. Dressing with care and looking away with grace is one small way we take care of the room—for our students and for ourselves. Curious about teaching athletes, dress code and all? That world is what I get into in my Teaching Yoga to Athletes training . Listen now! Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 share where I've landed. In this episode I walk through the small stuff I've learned to relax about and the two things I'll never bend on, both rooted in consent: staying present for the people in front of me, and never photographing a resting body without a clear yes. You'll also get six practical moves—meeting students in the middle with Do Not Disturb, recognizing when a phone is actually an accommodation, narrating your own tech use, teaching a class you know well enough to look up from, recording yourself to sharpen your craft, and honoring a studio's house rules. Stay relaxed about the phones, stay firm about presence and consent, and you'll run a warmer, more welcoming room. Listen now. Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 demo entirely are missing the point, and the truth that flips the whole conversation: the more you demo, the less you see. You'll hear the four ways to present a pose, the teacher-trainee habit that proves the teacher isn't really in the room, and the six rules for demoing in a way that keeps your eyes—and your attention—on the students who came to practice. Repetition is what makes all of this easier. Teach the same sequence over four weeks and your students learn the shapes; your demo load drops on its own. The Prep Station ($39/month) is built exactly for that—a 6–4–2 sequence each month, a Movement Library with 180+ follow-along practice videos so you've already had your practice, and a community of 2,400+ teachers refining their craft alongside you. Pull up a stool at comfortzoneyoga.com/prep . Join the conversation in The Zone, Sage's free community for yoga teachers, at comfortzoneyoga.com . And if this episode helped you think differently about your time on the mat in front of the room, please rate and review—it helps other teachers find the show. Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 on what we can’t predict. Sage reads from the chapter on joy, centered on maitri—the practice of delighting in someone else’s delight instead of sliding into comparison. From there they riff: why social media is the perfect place to practice maitri, the Lucille Bluth “good for her” reframe, the daily walk where Sage and her husband hope a stranger will say hello, and the Monday-night class joke that still lands fifteen years later. Underneath it all is one idea—connection, with others and with yourself, is where the joy lives. If these ideas resonate, Yoga Off the Mat is available now. A five-star review on Amazon or your favorite bookstore site, a few words about what the book meant to you, or a quick request that your local library order a copy all help these ideas reach more people. Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 start, with death. She walks through what yoga philosophy says about the fear of letting go (abhinivesha, one of the kleshas), and why making peace with impermanence helps you live with more joy right now. From there we get into presence as the whole practice, why a one-minute practice can still change your day, and how the Yoga Sutras open a door the book then walks well beyond. Yoga Off the Mat is written for anyone, not only for people who teach or practice. It takes the breath, the noticing, and the practice of coming back, and applies them to work, relationships, and the inside of your own head on a hard afternoon. If you do teach, you will hear how living the philosophy shows up in your classes on its own, without forcing it as a theme. We also pull back the curtain on co-writing: the shared outline, passing the baton when one of us gets stuck, and how two voices become one on the page. Consider this your invitation to the live book talk on July 16 inside the Zone, our free community. We will read from the book, tell the stories behind it, and answer your questions. Next week’s episode continues the conversation as a book reading. Resources: RSVP for the July 16 live book talk: https://www.comfortzoneyoga.com/c/comfort-zone-conversations/book-talk-yoga-off-the-mat?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=podcast_e93 Preorder Yoga Off the Mat (out July 14): https://amzn.to/3LB2JAv Sage’s books: https://sagerountree.com/books/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=podcast_e93 All episodes of Yoga Teacher Confidential: https://sagerountree.com/podcast?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=podcast_e93 Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 sharpened my thinking, and why this was never really an English-versus-Sanskrit question. To a brand-new student, “Triangle” is no clearer than “Trikonasana,” so the real skill is describing the shape so well that the name—in any language—has something to land on. Along the way, I steelman the smartest pushbacks from teachers who love this language—the lineage argument, the repetition argument, and the case for using both—and offer three rules for using Sanskrit well: learn to pronounce it (with teachers from inside the tradition like Dr. Anuradha Choudry and Dr. M. A. Jayashree), pair it with English so the meaning travels, and tell the stories the names came from (with a nod to Dr. Raj Balkaran’s lovely book The Stories Behind the Poses ). I close with a simple way to decide what to say in any given room. The question was never “Sanskrit or English.” It’s who am I serving, and what helps them feel at home in their body and their breath while also respecting the tradition of yoga. This isn’t a hot take. It’s a call to center. If you’ve ever felt squeezed between honoring the tradition and meeting your students where they actually are, this one’s for you. Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 (aversion), and abhinivesha (clinging to the familiar). These five obstacles to clear seeing are the most undertaught framework in the Sutras—and I think they’re the most useful one for modern teaching life. I’ll show you exactly how each klesha operates—why the confidence gap, imposter syndrome, burnout cycles, and creative stagnation all trace back to specific combinations of these five forces. Then I’ll give you a five-question diagnostic checklist you can run on yourself this week, plus classroom cues you can use right away without ever naming the Sanskrit. This material comes from chapters 15–17 of Yoga Off the Mat , my new book with Alexandra DeSiato, available July 14 wherever books are sold. Listen now! Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 relax. The nervous system doesn’t respond to verbal instructions—it responds to conditions. In this episode, I’m naming the most common ways teachers accidentally short-circuit a restorative practice, even when the props are perfect and the lights are dim. I walk through the difference between a class that looks restful and one that actually delivers rest, what parasympathetic activation requires, how to hold space during long holds without filling silence, and how to plan a restorative sequence using the 6–4–2 framework as your structural checklist rather than a Pinterest mood board. Get the free guide Best Savasana EVER, which shows you how to set up the Six Supports that inform every restorative pose: https://www.comfortzoneyoga.com/savasana?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ytc_e90_czc This episode is a preview of the June Comfort Zone Conversation, Restorative Yoga That Actually Restores , on Thursday, June 25 from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern—a free hour for members of the Zone, my community for yoga teachers. If you want the full framework with CEUs and a complete pose library, that’s inside the Fundamentals of Teaching Restorative Yoga course. Listen now and bring your next savasana, gentle class, or full restorative offering up a level. Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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”—smooth, well-fitted, easeful) really mean, and how to spot when you’re gripping or collapsing on the mat, in your planning, and in your career as a yoga teacher. I name two common defaults—the teacher who over-plans and over-grips, and the teacher who under-plans and coasts—and offer a One-Degree Practice for moving toward the middle in whichever area needs it most this week. This episode is drawn from Chapter 32 of Yoga Off the Mat , my new book with Alexandra DeSiato. Yoga Off the Mat is a book about taking what yoga does to your attention on the mat and letting it shape the rest of your life—work, relationships, parenting, hard conversations, the inside of your own head on a Sunday afternoon. Pre-order links are below. If class planning is where your sthira-sukha ratio feels most out of balance, that’s the work of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing. The next cohort runs July through December, and enrollment opens Monday, June 22nd. The waitlist is open now—get on it before Monday and you’ll hear from me first. Resources mentioned Yoga Off the Mat (book) — https://sagerountree.com/yotm Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing — https://sagerountree.com/mentorship the Zone (free community for yoga teachers, 2,400+ members) — https://www.comfortzoneyoga.com/c/the-zone/ Yoga Teacher Confidential podcast — https://open.spotify.com/show/3yjW83dcCGFShIZuFPA001 Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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, you can use it to theme an entire class, and it will change how you understand your own energy as a teacher. We dig into Chapter 28 of my new book with Alexandra DeSiato, Yoga Off the Mat . You'll learn how tamas, rajas, and sattva show up in your teaching, why "sattva begets sattva" is one of the most useful ideas in the tradition, and how to bring this language into your classroom without making it sound like a Sanskrit lecture. If you've been looking for a way to teach yoga philosophy that actually lands with your students, this is the framework to start with. Pre-order Yoga Off the Mat (out July 14), join The Zone (my free community for yoga teachers), and learn more about Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing—links below. Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 take this personally. Summer isn't a problem to solve. It's a season to work with. In this episode, I share four moves to summer-proof your teaching: build a small repertoire of go-to classes, sequence for the heat, lean into the gift of small classes, and take real time off without guilt. Mentioned in this episode: The Zone, my free community for yoga teachers, where the Greatest Hits Lesson Plan (built on the 6–4–2 framework) is waiting for you: https://comfortzoneyoga.com The Prep Station, with a full month of summer-themed lesson plans, sequences, and tips in June, including the legs-up-the-wall sequence: https://www.comfortzoneyoga.com/prep Episode 24, "What If No One Shows Up?"—for more on teaching to small classes A lighter summer is not a smaller career. It's the foundation for a steady fall. If this episode was useful, share it with a teacher friend who is staring down June with dread. Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 useful teachings in yoga philosophy: the Buddhist concept of the two arrows of suffering. You'll learn what dukha actually means (spoiler: it's about a wagon wheel), how the kleshas load the second arrow, and the three flavors of second-arrow thinking that show up in every teacher's life—the story of meaning, the projection forward, and the retrospective edit. From there, we move from diagnosis to practice. I walk you through simple tools for your own life—the three-breath pause, the label, the journal prompt—and show you how to bring this teaching into your classroom without a lecture. One sentence can land the whole concept in your students' bodies: “Notice if you're adding a story to the sensation.” Chapter 22 of Yoga Off the Mat goes much deeper into dukha , with a full ACTIONS box of practices for the week ahead. Preorder here: https://amzn.to/3LB2JAv —preorders genuinely move the needle for a book, so thank you in advance. Whether you're planning this week's classes with a blank notebook on your lap or replaying last night's class at 2 a.m., this episode will help you notice which arrow you're actually carrying. Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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 improve at any age, and why fear has a mechanical effect on your students' ability to stabilize. Then I share five concrete shifts you can make in your very next class: weaving balance through every quarter of class, using the 6–4–2 to teach across all three planes, offering a sweeter-to-spicier spectrum instead of one "right" pose, cueing the system (not just the shape), and changing the language that surrounds wobbling so students stay with the practice. If you want to go deeper, I'm hosting a free Comfort Zone Conversation on Thursday, May 21, called Balance for Every Body. And the full self-paced course, Fundamentals of Teaching Balance, is open for enrollment now. Listen now! The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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) by applying 6–4–2 as a checklist, slowing your pace about thirty percent so the quiet can land, and treating consent as an ongoing conversation rather than a one-time opt-in. I also cover the two pieces your training probably skipped: how to hold your scope so you don't drift into PT, psychotherapy, or yoga therapy, and how to price privates so your students take them seriously and you build a sustainable income. My starting-line recommendation is $75 an hour, scaling up five to ten dollars per year of experience. Two privates a week at a fair rate can out-earn four studio classes. This episode builds on three earlier ones, E23 (Confidence in Private Lessons), E35 (How to Prepare for a Private Lesson), and E36 (During a Private Lesson). Listen to those for the foundation. Today's conversation is the full craft in one place. If you want the complete kit, The Private Lesson Playbook has six lessons, seventeen templates, and three ways to consume it (video, private podcast feed, or written). Launch sale $57 through May 31st at comfortzoneyoga.com/private . Live online classes are back in the Prep Station this fall: one lesson plan a month, taught live by me on three Mondays, 6:00–7:00 p.m. Eastern, with 15 minutes afterward to talk teaching. Balance Play Trio in September, Yoga for All Athletes in October, Meet the Warriors in November. Every class posts as a recording. Membership is $39 a month. Practice with me The next cohort of Mastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing Mentorship Membership—MMM, my six-month group mentorship for yoga teachers—starts in January 2027, and the wait list is open now. Doors open to the wait list first, in December, before anyone else hears about it. MMM is also the required half of the Comfort Zone Yoga 300-hour yoga teacher training. Add your name: Want to become (almost) everyone's favorite yoga teacher? Join Comfort Zone Yoga , my virtual studio focused on teacher development. I have a ton of Sage advice in there for you! For more insights, subscribe to Yoga Teacher Confidential , check out my YouTube channel , and follow me on socials: Instagram Facebook Threads And come explore my mentorship program , Yoga Class Prep Station membership , continuing education and 200/300/500-hour teacher training programs, and my many books for yoga teachers . It's all at sagerountree.com . ...
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