When you’ve been teaching yoga for a couple of years, you get the hang of directing your students through movement.
You know yoga is more than Asana and you're experimenting with ways of bringing depth and meaning into class.
Maybe you theme around some of the other limbs, the chakras or do a series on the yamas and niyamas as this was the philosophy you learnt during your YTT.
Or maybe you centre classes around the moon, astrology, the seasons, holidays?
I did all of this.
I took workshops and trainings on how to find my voice as a yoga teacher. How to theme classes and tie it all in to the movement so that it sounded meaningful.
But something always felt off. Because I knew that if a student questioned me - h0w is this related to the teachings of yoga. I'd struggle to answer.
That's when I took the deep dive.
Into the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita and the funny thing was, a lot of what I had been teaching was YOGA as per those texts.
The difference being that once I had the grounded experience of studying these texts, I better understood the roots and context.
I could make it relatable for the people I teach without feeling like a fraud.
If you're where I was and want your classes to be more than life-coaching through movement, I've got you.
Michelle Finlay Yoga
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Yoga Teacher located in Plymouth, Devon. Your Yoga Your Way. Inviting you to engage with the philosophical teachings of Yoga though a physical practice.
17/06/2026
This is an example of what happens in a yoga room. But let's take it off the mat and in to every day life to make it more relatable.
Maybe you or someone you love has tried to make a lifestyle change. Improved diet, giving up sugar or smoking?
You'll have set out with all the best intentions and maybe even achieved the goal for a number of days or weeks.
And them something happens like a particularly stressful week at work and you slip back into old habits.
You reach for the biscuit tin even though you'd stayed away from them for weeks or you open a packet of smokes and tell yourself you'll just have the one.
But the old habit creeps back in and before you know it, you've abandoned the idea you set out on.
When framed like this, you understand how hard it is to break an ingrained habit or replace it with a newer healthier one.
The chaturanga situation is no different.
You're dealing with the mindset of the student who is attached to doing Chaturanga the way they're doing it because they've always done it that way.
They think that this is what it means to practice yoga and to do something different would essentially equate to a lesser experience.
And maybe your own trepidation of introducing something new which when ignored, you assume was wrong.
When you understand yoga from a philosophical POV, you can explain to your students what's potentially happening for them and offer them another way with more information.
Some will take you up on your offer, some won't.
Your practice as the teacher is to let go of what happens or doesn't happen, knowing that you've done your job regardless.
You get the benefits of a consistent yoga practice, it's why you trained to teach. Because you are eager to share what you've learned with other people.
But what really happens when your students roll up their mats and leave the studio?
Yoga is a way of life. You know this. But do your students?
You do your best to convey the deeper messages of a yoga practice being about a conversation between mind and body...
But somehow it always ends up being about the poses.
How to make the pose fit the person. How to help your students navigate the flow of the class and find the variations that suit them best that day.
But then that takes over and all the other stuff you wanted to layer on top kind of gets lost amongst helping your student with the injured wrist modify during a sun salutation.
You realise that once they leave that room, the yoga stays behind until they come back next week. And you want to help your students take yoga off the mat.
There's a way to do this. It begins with yoga philosophy. I'm not talking about the yamas and niyamas (although they are important too), but much of the stuff that comes before them.
How when you learn just few key concepts and begin to apply them to your own life, you start to see them everywhere!!
In your relationships, in books, on TV and in the class you're teaching in front of you.
At that point, you don't need a plan of words to sprinkle over your students while they're in savasana. You're teaching yoga in real time, because you're living in it real time and it just becomes part of who you are!
As I say here, it's scary to allow more freedom in your classes, especially as a new teacher.
I know this because I've been called "brave" for the way that I teach which is incredibly invitational and allows lots of space for students to explore their own bodies and decide what needs to go where.
Remember your students are adults. They've been living their whole lives in their body. No one know it like they do.
You can guide your students through a sequence but you can't feel it for them.
This is why options aren't just for the people who can't do pigeon pose upright so are offered the reclined version.
Or for the person with a hamstring injury being invited to bend their knees in a forward fold.
Or for anyone not wanting to go upside down to rest in child's pose.
Options are for everyone. Because no two bodies are the same. No two days are the same. No two practices are the same.
Yoga philosophy teaches us that change is inevitable. Can you teach in a way that honours the human individual experience day to day? Because we're not robots (yet 😵💫).
10/06/2026
The wonderful Lauren at Wellbeing Workshops has successfully secured more funding for these sessions at St Budeaux Baptist Church Hall. Open to any women who want to come along and join in. We've had some fantastic feedback about these classes so super excited that they will continue! 💚💚💚
08/06/2026
This year is my 10 year anniversary of teaching yoga.
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been at this for a whole decade. In some ways it feels that long. In others, it feels like my first 200hr YTT was just a few months ago.
Some of you have been here with me for that duration. Others of you have joined along the way.
However long we’ve known each other, I’ll always be grateful to the practice for bringing us together.
I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on where it all began and how I got to where I am now…
Read the rest over on Sunstack. Check my stories.
03/06/2026
In your 200hr YTT you got a flavour of all things yoga.
You likely learnt about anatomy, injury, poses and sequencing. You probably had to memorise the definitions and contents of the Yama's, Niyamas and 8 limbs.
Maybe you were supposed to read a translation of the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita and give a summary of what these were about to pass your final exam.
But you may not have learnt the core principles and teachings of these texts in a way that helped you understand what yoga is really deeply, and how to get this message out to your students.
This isn't a criticism.
200hrs is barely enough time to scratch the surface especially when you think of everything you did learn during that time and the fact that 200hrs is the equivalent of just 75% of one school term in the UK.
It's not enough time to learn very much in depth at all - even with the most excellent of teachers and well presented course.
So after a couple of years teaching you find yourself thinking that you're no more than a glorified group exercise teacher (nothing against group ex instructors, I love what you all do).
But yoga is more than that.
I know that.
You know that.
And both you and I want your students to know that!
So talk to me here. What are the gaps?
What do you wish your students knew about yoga and how it's different from other movement classes?
01/06/2026
You're a few minutes into your yoga class and you notice your left wrist is aching.
It twinged a bit when you made your way to table top and then as you move from down dog into plank you really feel it speaking to you.
Sun salutations are up next and EVERYONE else is doing chaturanga to cobra or updog. You know if you follow along with that it's going to hurt.
So what do you do?
You hear that part of you telling you to look at what everyone else is doing - that your practice means less than theirs if you don't do the same.
That you'll be disappointing the teacher if you don't follow along.
Then you hear the quieter, softer part of you begging you to make a different, wiser choice that won't aggravate your wrist.
Do you honour your experience of the moment and go against the grain of the group and do something different?
Or do you follow along and suffer the consequences?
Has this situation come up for you?
What did you do?
What did you learn?
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