Sebastian Brosche · 5 min · 963 words
Previously titled: Introduction to New Teachers
So you have learned the sequence well enough to start practice teaching and you are probably a little bit nervous right now and trust me you are not alone in that. Let me know how it was for you in the beginning Stine. For me it was super scary. I remember the first training I did.
I did not know how to move and I was really shy and I don't know what I was thinking when I signed up for this training. It was in the States so I had to speak another language and I was thinking I would kind of be in the background just observing the weekend. Of course it was practice teach and I was so nervous like I was doing a competition in Jiu Jitsu. Same type of nervous.
I was nervous. And after that first weekend I remember someone told me after that the headteacher he said that oh we will never see her again because I was so horrible both in movement and all of that but also I was a horrible practice teach person. I was so nervous I couldn't get my words out. I remember I was asked to just read something from a book and I could not read two sentences.
I was so nervous. But even though he gave up on me and thought I would never come back and actually be a teacher I came back and I stalked him for several years. I became a teacher and I've been taking many many trainings after that. I'm usually nervous every time I'm at the training even though I've been teaching the last training I took.
I had been teaching for eight years but I was still nervous because it was a new training and it's new people but it's part of it. It's a part of growing and learning. If you're not nervous you're definitely doing a mistake because you cannot grow if you're not nervous. People talk about the comfort zone and for me it's simple.
If you're nervous you're outside the comfort zone. If you do something that you haven't done before you're supposed to be nervous and even things you have been doing for 10 years if there is some new element to it you're going to be nervous. I remember when I subbed your class without having any teaching experience in yoga. I taught some half-as the jitsu classes and some judo classes but since I could kick most people's ass people just listened to me with respect and open ears.
So I could basically do it any way I wanted to and people liked it. But when you're teaching a yoga class it's really different and I remember having a little yellow post-it lap and this was people that loved her class and I was just some random substitute. Most of them hadn't seen before and then I was trying to teach the class and I remember going through this post-it. I squeezed in so much text on this post-it note and I sped through it because I wanted to be finished.
So I looked at the clock and a 60-minute class was over in 40 minutes. I'm like how am I going to fill 20 minutes? So it was like a 10-minute shavasana and then 5 minutes and pigeon pose on each side. It was a horrible experience.
So I actually wished I did some practice before I started teaching live classes. You can smile when looking back at it but being nervous is definitely a super important thing. I'm still nervous if I'm teaching a new crowd. Now we have our studio and before that we were teaching at the Jiu Jitsu Academy for 4 years.
Now we've been teaching at the same place for 5 years. But even if I'm doing a training at a new space I'm still nervous and I think that's a good thing. It just means that you want to do well. If you're nervous you can also relate to the people showing up in your class.
When people show up to a class they haven't done before or not so many times they will be as nervous as you. So it's really good that you together can go out of the... because nervousness is all in your head. So getting out of your head and into the body is something you do together.
So after the class everybody there should feel good and be a little bit exhausted and so should you. So practice teaching is a really good way for you to together perform some yoga. Yes and the only expectations right now is that you are learning something. So nobody will judge anyone by this practice teach.
Every time I try something new that I make sure that I tell myself I do not expect to get a thumb up at the end of this. I'm supposed to fail at least 9 times out of 10. So if I fail I don't even categorize it as a failure. Like I messed up completely haha.
One more time. And maybe I get it after 5 trials and I'm like whoa just 5 trials and I made it wow. Instead of being like punching myself 4 times out of 5 then I'm like okay I forgot about it as soon as it's done. So that's something I can definitely recommend to try to not think about like I want to get it this time, I want to get it this time.
It's better to think I'm going to try 10 times and see how many times it takes before I maybe do a good job. So good luck with practice teaching and be kind to each other.
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