Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher

Sage Rountree
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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—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.

  1. 14 hr ago

    96. Technology in the Yoga Room: Phones, Presence, and Consent

    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. Join the Comfort Zone Yoga 200-hour yoga teacher training—curriculum is open now and our live cohort runs September through November 2026. Be sure to tell your students who are interested in teaching, too! Read all about it here. 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: InstagramFacebookThreadsAnd 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. ...

  2. 21 Jul

    95. When and How to Demo Poses in Your Yoga Class

    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. Join the Comfort Zone Yoga 200-hour yoga teacher training—curriculum is open now and our live cohort runs September through November 2026. Be sure to tell your students who are interested in teaching, too! Read all about it here. 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: InstagramFacebookThreadsAnd 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. ...

  3. 14 Jul

    94. Readings from Yoga Off the Mat: Joy, Comparison, and the Fear of the Unknown

    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. Join the Comfort Zone Yoga 200-hour yoga teacher training—curriculum is open now and our live cohort runs September through November 2026. Be sure to tell your students who are interested in teaching, too! Read all about it here. 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: InstagramFacebookThreadsAnd 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. ...

  4. 7 Jul

    93. Yoga Off the Mat—Philosophy for the Rest of Your Life (with Alexandra DeSiato)

    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_e93Preorder Yoga Off the Mat (out July 14): https://amzn.to/3LB2JAvSage’s books: https://sagerountree.com/books/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=podcast_e93All episodes of Yoga Teacher Confidential: https://sagerountree.com/podcast?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=podcast_e93Join the Comfort Zone Yoga 200-hour yoga teacher training—curriculum is open now and our live cohort runs September through November 2026. Be sure to tell your students who are interested in teaching, too! Read all about it here. 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: InstagramFacebookThreadsAnd 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. ...

  5. 30 Jun

    92. When and How to Use Sanskrit in Your Yoga Class

    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. Join the Comfort Zone Yoga 200-hour yoga teacher training—curriculum is open now and our live cohort runs September through November 2026. Be sure to tell your students who are interested in teaching, too! Read all about it here. 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: InstagramFacebookThreadsAnd 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. ...

  6. 23 Jun

    91. The Five Things Keeping You Stuck: An Introduction to the Kleshas

    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! Join the Comfort Zone Yoga 200-hour yoga teacher training—curriculum is open now and our live cohort runs September through November 2026. Be sure to tell your students who are interested in teaching, too! Read all about it here. 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: InstagramFacebookThreadsAnd 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. ...

  7. 16 Jun

    90. Restorative Yoga That Actually Restores

    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. Join the Comfort Zone Yoga 200-hour yoga teacher training—curriculum is open now and our live cohort runs September through November 2026. Be sure to tell your students who are interested in teaching, too! Read all about it here. 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: InstagramFacebookThreadsAnd 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. ...

  8. 9 Jun

    89. Effort and Ease—The Balancing Act You’re Already In

    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/yotmMastering the Art of Yoga Sequencing — https://sagerountree.com/mentorshipthe 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/3yjW83dcCGFShIZuFPA001Join the Comfort Zone Yoga 200-hour yoga teacher training—curriculum is open now and our live cohort runs September through November 2026. Be sure to tell your students who are interested in teaching, too! Read all about it here. 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: InstagramFacebookThreadsAnd 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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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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