Yoga Girl

Every night I would work on my sequences, trying to write things
down so that I wouldn’t be so nervous about teaching, but failing
miserably every time. I cannot prepare a class. It’s impossible. Even now, if
I try to prepare what I’m going to teach, I always end up throwing
everything out the window the second I see the class and create my flow
on the spot. e people in class are the ones teaching me everything I
need to know about what to do. It’s impossible to prepare when I don’t
know who is going to attend and what their energy levels will be.
But I tried hard during my first days of teaching and would always end
up driving to class in the morning with a knot in my stomach—I was so
nervous! But the class always went well, the words came easily to me, and
I loved guiding people through extra-long Savasanas. One day the owner
of the hotel I had my classes in front of came to participate. “I’ve been
hearing about these classes of yours,” he said. “I hear you’re good!”
Apparently word was getting around about my classes and had reached all
the way to the owner, who lived in the United States.
After class he invited me to breakfast, and before I knew it, I was hired
by the hotel to teach yoga on a regular basis as an in-house yoga
instructor. I booked my first teacher training that very day. If I was really
going to pursue this, I needed to make sure I had all the credentials. I
completed my first 200 hours of teacher training sessions feeling very
confident. I had already been teaching for a while, and everything I knew
about sequencing and anatomy I had learned on my own. My real studies
since then have come from workshops, training sessions, and practice with
amazing teachers all over the world and from immersing myself in the
world of yoga. And from my students, of course!
e yoga community on the island started to grow. I added classes and
invited teachers from abroad to come lead retreats at the resort. Fast-
forward two years, and I was teaching twenty-four classes a week, mostly
Vinyasa-based classes but also meditation, restorative yoga, and SUP yoga,
which is yoga classes on stand-up paddleboards on the ocean. Classes were
big and I was working my butt off to evolve as a teacher.