HOW TO FIND YOUR GROOVE as a yoga for cancer teacher

Being a yoga teacher is one of the most rewarding, life affirming and personally challenging professions. We get to help people on their own journey to better physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

What a joy and a privilege!

It also requires a lot from us in terms of holding space for others, walking our talk, and continually working on our own growth and development both as a professional and as a person.

Like anybody working in a therapeutic field, so much of what we do is dependent on who we are, it’s more than having technical knowledge.

I recently had my car MOT’d. The guy at the garage was very nice and professional which of course helps with the whole process and is good business practise. However, the skill and knowledge of the mechanic to do a good job on my car does not rely on his personality or the energy he brings to work. Both may help him have a better day, but they make no difference to my car!

For us as teachers, the energy we bring to the classroom our presence and ability to hold compassionate boundaries are essential to our students. The words we say and how we say them matter, as does our body language and ability to read and relate to others; knowing when to step in and when to step back.  We need to be attuned to the energy of the room and respond accordingly.

This is sometimes more challenging than we give ourselves credit for. I see lots of stories on facebook of teachers lacking or losing confidence, reaching burnout or losing inspiration. Sometimes there is a crisis of purpose or faith – why am I even doing this?!

This is why the personal development side of my training is as important as the technical knowledge and skills.

When working with serious health conditions we need depth in both areas. Whilst it’s important to know in theory the technical side of adapting poses and lesson planning, it is a whole other thing to deliver the class to a room of people with confidence and compassion. And not only that, but to maintain this level of care consistently and long term.

So how do we make this possible and sustainable?

The first thing is to be deeply rooted in the knowledge and understanding of how to care for the people in our classes. Yoga for cancer classes can be unpredictable as people can fluctuate so much in energy, mood and physical ability depending on how what treatment they are currently having and how they react to it. Lesson plans often end up being a bit redundant! If we have an understanding of how we can adapt our classes to help people as they show up then we can avoid the stress of feeling like we are just winging it.

Secondly we need to do the inner work on ourselves to find our limiting blocks and beliefs that can stop us from finding our unique teaching voice and style. Trying to be like someone else, or following a set script is harder than being yourself. When we give ourselves permission to bring our own personality and style to our teaching we can connect with our innate creativity and intuition. This leads to us being aligned with ourselves and our values.

Both having deep knowledge and being in alignment with who we are enables us to relax into our teaching and when we are relaxed we are so much more present to what is happening in the moment, meaning we are more able to notice subtle signs in our students wellbeing and respond accordingly. It creates a virtuous circle and makes teaching easy!

I wanted to share with you some stories from my 10 week training to put into context the kind of transformation I see in teachers as they progress week by week (names are changed for privacy):

Vicky found her confidence and her own teaching style for cancer

Vicky had discovered that there was a void in holistic cancer care in her local area and felt inspired to create much needed support. She sought specialist training in yoga for cancer but unfortunately on completion didn’t feel ready to teach real patients. She felt somehow stuck, unable to get started and found it hard to get a clear picture of how she would create and deliver classes to actual cancer patients. She just couldn’t picture herself teaching and didn’t feel confident in being able to adapt for all kinds of different diagnoses, ages and abilities.

What was lovely to see as the weeks went by were the ‘aha’ moments when bit by bit things fell into place, with feedback from assignments, live teaching practise and group discussions she was able to find her own teaching style in working with cancer patients.

Having completed the course she is moving on with confidence setting up her own specialist YFC class and building relationships with local health services, clear in what she offers and who she serves.

Sonia learned how to transform her own cancer experience to help others

Sonia had own cancer diagnosis not long before the course started. We discussed a deferral to a later course, but she felt that this had all come at the right time and for reason. She felt the calling to help others, and that her own experience would be part of the learning process.

Sonia was in treatment through the training had her own challenges with this, but found the course gave her structure and the support she needed to maintain her own practise, take care of her own wellbeing and have a group to be part of every week. The course is run with the same ethos as I teach my cancer classes, so it is a very held and supportive space for participants.

It gave her and everyone in the group the opportunity to experience having sensitivity in conversations, offering support and adapting to someone going through cancer treatment. It also helped her to process her own experience and to separate that out from other people’s so she can hold healthy boundaries in her work.

Now having completed the course she has set up a specialist breast cancer yoga class and is collaborating with local organisations to support women in her town.

Liz found her authentic teaching voice to create her dream class

Liz is an experienced teacher working mainly with older people. She had found over the last year that more and more of her students were receiving cancer diagnoses and felt ill equipped to support them. She really wanted to create space for them to be seen, heard and supported as whole people, not just an illness or a patient, to give them a voice. However, she didn’t really understand what their treatment entailed, or their needs and so wasn’t sure how to create the class she envisaged.

What was interesting and beautiful to watch over the course was to see Liz tap into her own creativity. Once the understanding was there about the holistic impact of cancer treatment and how to adapt practises, she realised what was needed was to find her own voice as a teacher first before helping others do the same.

Liz realised she had always held her personality back when teaching. The personal development on the course helped her to tap into her creativity not just for art, but for teaching too, and bring those sides of herself together as a teacher. She now brings her whole self into the room and feels more joyful, in the flow and responsive when teaching and her students are loving it!

These are just some examples of the transformation that happens for teachers when they complete the process of the full course. Participants gain both the deep knowledge of the needs of cancer patients and how to adapt yoga to be therapeutic and beneficial. They also go through personal development processes to identify and shift inner blocks, to grow in confidence and skill as teacher to create a sustainable teaching career that they love.

Would you like to join them?

here’s how you can work with me:

 10 week Holistic Teacher Training Course – Next cohort starts Saturday 15th February 

Course Details & SIGN-UP LINKS

One to One Mentoring & Coaching – I offer 3 levels of support, a one off focused Golden Hour for a specific issue, a 1 Month Plan for a larger project and a 3 Month Plan for ongoing support and development.