What Makes a Good Yoga Teacher?

Yoga is in nowadays. You have heard that yoga can improve health, relieve stress, and bring balance to life. You want to give it a try (who doesn’t?). With thousands of yoga teachers available for you, however, how do you identify a good one who can help you develop safe and effective practices?

Having been practicing yoga regularly for more than two years with several teachers, I understand firsthand the vastly different experiences that different teachers can give you. Therefore, to find a good and suitable yoga teacher for yourself is essential to your practice as well as your benefit from it.

Based on my experiences, I have identified four characteristics that make a good yoga teacher.

A good yoga teacher asks whether students have any injuries or concerns

Yoga could be challenging — and harmful to your delicate joints or injuries if you don’t do it carefully enough. A good yoga teacher, therefore, should understand students’ needs and conditions, by asking them if they have any injuries or concerns at the beginning of the class. By doing so, the experienced teacher can customize poses for their needs, such as modifying poses or avoiding poses that may worsen those injuries. A student may not be aware of the powerful effects of these poses; a good yoga teacher should take the responsibility to provide a safe practice.

A good yoga teacher walks around to check students’ poses

Some yoga teachers take the class as a chance for their own practices and do every pose along with the group throughout the session. However, good yoga teachers should focus more on students than themselves. Good teachers should guide students through the poses rather than engage in their own postures. Of course they need to demonstrate some poses, but they should also walk around the room often and closely observe each student’s posture in different views (front, back, and sides) in order to give good instructions and some adjustments if needed.

A good yoga teacher respects students’ different needs and proactively provides modifications for difficult poses

Yoga is not about torturing your body but about unifying your body, mind, and spirit. A good yoga teacher understands this and helps students to keep a peaceful mindset during difficult poses. A good teacher respects your physical limitations and is ready to provide you with modifications with perhaps help of props (blocks, blankets, and/or straps), so that you can truly enjoy the practice and gradually improve at your own pace. I have found that there are many good yoga pose demonstrators rather than instructors. Although they themselves can do beautiful and perfect poses, they don’t know how to modify them to better suit a naive beginner.

A good yoga teacher gives clear instructions and explains them in several complementary ways

Notice how your yoga teacher gives instructions. Does he/she simply demonstrate the pose and ask everyone to follow? Or he/she clearly explains everything regarding the poses? There could be a lot of things going on with a pose – some very subtle. For example, how do you get into and out of a pose? How do you align you body and use your muscles (where should be engaged)? How do you incorporate breathing with the pose? Where do you gaze at to help you focus and balance? A good yoga teacher should be able to provide all these detailed instructions during a pose.

He/she should also describe a pose in various different ways to enhance understanding and memory. Clear instructions may be more important than you think – for example, if you are instructed to engage your legs in downward facing dog, you can prevent injuring your wrist joints.

The above four important qualities are what I think make a good yoga teacher. Good teachers are crucial for especially beginners. Hope my experience forms a guide for you to find a good and qualified yoga teacher for yourself.