Often people reach out and ask me, ‘I'm worried that my students are going to get bored. I'm worried that I'm teaching the same old stuff, that maybe people aren't coming anymore because I'm not being interesting enough. How can I keep my classes interesting?’

 

Last week I published a short piece setting some context and perspective before answering this question. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out here.

 

Today I’ve got three tips to help you keep things interesting for you AND your students.

 

 

Tip 1: Deeper vs. Wider

 

When people tell me that they're worried their classes are getting boring or they want to know how to make their classes more interesting, one of the things I like to recommend is to go ‘deeper versus wider’. You don't need to get through ‘all of yoga’ in an hour to make your classes interesting. Choose instead to get specific, dive in to the detail and explore the nuance, rather than offering the full yoga asana buffet in every class.

 

When you’re planning your sequence, think, ‘How can I take something to a deeper level or how can I continue to repeat something?’ If you teach a peak pose class usually, try coming back to the peak pose four times instead of one with a different variation or entry point each time. If you teach a standard sequence, try teaching just a segment of it, but increase the repetitions or the holds. Or try teaching the same pose—basic things like Adho Mukha Svanasana work well here—with a different anatomy focus each time, exploring how the change in focus shifts the experience for the student.

 

If you want your people to come back, if retention is something that you're working on, giving people the onslaught, like the confetti of yoga asana, might have the opposite effect you’re looking for. If it's too fast and they can't grasp a hold of something they might feel that they ‘aren’t getting it’ or that yoga ‘isn’t for them’. Give people the opportunity to explore things more fully. Go deeper versus wider so your sequence and its effects are revealed in deeper ways.

 

 

Tip 2: Incorporate Themes

 

Incorporating a theme into your class can also help make things more interesting. Moreover, themes are a great way to group classes together which can also really help with retention. There is a FOMO element to a series of themed classes that you don’t have in the same way with weekly classes that aren’t connected in somehow.

 

The most important thing about choosing a theme is that you're really interested in it personally. When you’re excited to teach, your students will be excited to learn. And that is interesting! So if you could give an F about chakras don't teach seven weeks about chakras! If your thing is exploring the four different quadricep muscles over four classes—if that lights you up—teach that.

 

Maybe you want to teach mythology. Maybe you're a Patanjali person and you want to teach on the Yoga Sutras. Maybe you love the Shiva Sutras or Mary Oliver poetry. Maybe you're more of an anatomy geek. Maybe you want to do a class about the shoulder girdle followed by one about the pelvic girdle. What would light you up?

 

Themes can be so much fun and they're going to help you stay inspired. Like I said, they're great for retention as well.   

 

 

Tip 3: Keep YOURSELF Interested!

 

Ultimately, if you want your classes to be interesting, you have to be interested. How do you do that? Go to more classes. Be a student as much as you can. Go to all the classes: the shit ones, the brand new teacher ones, the favorite ones, the industry leader ones, the whacky ones. Go to all of them. Get back on your mat as a student and fill up your creative cup!

 

Also get signed up to stream classes so you can practice AND you can also simply observe. Watching classes is incredibly powerful in helping you stay interested and therefore interesting. Take notes, look at how the teacher teaches something, watch their body, be an observer. When was the last time you actually sat back and ‘audited’ another person’s class? Your YTT exams? How powerful was it when you got to sit and watch those classes?

 

Have at least one streaming service that you can watch regularly. Become someone’s Patreon and ‘audit’ their live zoom classes or become a monthly member of one of the corporate platforms. Don’t overthink it: just sign up to one and actively watching.

 

(Note: this is not the same as using their ideas. This is about firing your own creativity. Remember the principle of ‘Asteya’ and be respectful of other people’s intellectual property.)

 

 

Let’s recap!

 

Here's the quick recap of my tips to keep your classes more interesting:

 

1.     Go deeper versus wider with your sequencing. Stop trying to be fancy and let people have a deeper experience of the yoga poses. Let people experience the same pose in the same class in different ways.

 

2.     Have a theme to hang your classes together week to week. If people understand that they are building on something week to week they are going to stay interested and are more likely to keep coming back.

 

3.     Get yourself in front of more teachers. Be a student more often. Observe classes and take notes. 

 

 

 

Remember yoga is already interesting so you don’t have to be. Let yoga be the interesting part. You get to be the conduit for it.

 

No one else is worried about how interesting your classes are. You don't need to impress people. Take them deeper versus wider, hang things together with themes to keep people coming back and make sure that you're staying inspired and interested yourself because that will come through in your classes.

 

 

Looking for more support? What about joining my 2023 Abundant Yoga Teacher Retreat in Chiang Mai, Thailand?

 

Learn more about it here: https://www.amymcdonald.com.au/retreats