The Worst Yoga Teaching Advice We've Ever Heard

When you’re a yoga teacher, a lot of thoughts and opinions come your way. Of course, during teacher training, your instructors regularly share wisdom from their years of experience, but that’s only the beginning. Once you’re teaching “in the wild,” you’ll learn that studio owners, fellow teachers, even students have plenty of their own thoughts and opinions—some of which they won’t hesitate to share with you.

I’ve certainly benefitted from this advice, which includes gems such as “teach to the students who come back” and “talking less when you teach leaves space for students to have their own experience.” But I’ve also been on the receiving end of some tips that left me completely bewildered. Thinking back on that inspired me to ask other yoga teachers what bad advice they’ve received over the years.

Yoga Teacher Advice Gone Awry

Following are a list of my, well, let’s call them “favorites.” Consider them the best of the worst.

Teach certain poses every class

Yoga sequencing can be polarizing. There are plenty of people who assert that every class should follow a set sequence of poses (or at least categories of poses), no matter what the teacher’s intention or the needs of the students on that day.

“I was once told to end every class by “offering an inversion,’ or encouraging everyone to freestyle in Handstand, Headstand, or Pincha,” explained yoga teacher, trainer, and podcaster Adam Husler. “That’s wild to me now. I’ll only offer those if the class has been building toward them, with clear steps and safe variations, not just a room full of people flailing upside down because that’s just what you do pre-Savasana.”

Students appreciate a well-rounded experience, but that doesn’t mean teachers need to tick off some imaginary list of poses in every single class. Some postures, including the more active inversions, require enough preparation that you simply can’t do them justice every time you teach.

Never teach the same class twice

For every person who firmly believes class should follow a set sequence, there’s someone else who believes, equally vehemently, that each class should be completely unique.

I’ll never forget the feeling of overwhelm I experienced early in my teaching career when I heard a much more senior teacher declare that she had never, nor would she ever, lead students through the same sequence twice. At the time, I was already struggling to maintain my full-time job on top of my new weekly class load. I was regularly awake late at night, staring at a blank page and trying desperately to come up with something fresh and new for the next day’s class.

In all honesty, my students would have benefited more from my getting some sleep and teaching something more simple and straightforward instead.

These days, instead of chasing novelty for its own sake, I keep the bulk of my sequences foundational and familiar. This saves my—and my students’—energy and attention for the remaining poses and practices, which I have chosen intentionally to align with the focus of that class.

Obsess about the details

For some teachers, the poses and sequences themselves are less important than the intricacies of the practice—and they advise others accordingly.

“One teacher told me not to end Sun Salutations with prayer hands because it cuts the energy off; keeping the arms open kept students open,” explains yoga teacher and writer Sarah Ezrin. “I was also told not to cue loud or exaggerated exhales or vocalizations because it got rid of heat and prana (life force or energy).”

Although building heat (tapas) and other nuanced details matter, most teachers exist in an environment in which helping students move, breathe, and connect to their bodies and minds compassionately is already enough of a task.

Mention yoga philosophy in every single class

There’s no doubt that asana (the physical practice of yoga) has been too distanced from the practice’s larger historic and philosophical meanings in response to the focus on the physical body of most modern practitioners.

The conclusion that many make is that respectful yoga teachers should teach not only asana (and potentially pranayama, or breathwork, and meditation) but also yoga philosophy in every class.

I don’t disagree. Although I do wonder whether adding an unrelated reference to yoga philosophy to your gym or studio or corporate class is always the answer.

“I don’t think we need to bring hodgepodge understandings of yoga philosophy or misplaced quotes from the Bhagavad Gita into asana classes which are really meant to be physical,” explains journalist, academic, yoga teacher, and researcher Firdose Moonda, MA. “We are using modern asana, created less than 100 years ago, to explain ancient philosophy, and therefore decontextualizing it. And that is probably the complete opposite of respectful. It’s window dressing.”

Ultimately, we want to respect the origins of yoga and teach students the larger principles of yoga and not just shapes. Although that can be accomplished in many ways and not just by quoting ancient texts.

Project confidence at all costs

In any yoga class, the teacher is the authority in the room. Although some take that idea more literally than others.

For example, a studio owner I taught for instigated a policy that no notes were to be taken into class. She declared it would look more professional if all teachers had memorized their sequences, as well as any readings they planned to share. Needless to say, I gave up reciting anything beyond the shortest and most superficial quotes in my classes. I don’t think students felt any more assured of my competence.

Others take the idea of projecting confidence even further. Yoga Journal Editor in Chief Renee Marie Schettler was once told by a respected local yoga teacher to “never say ‘maybe’ in class.” The teacher’s stated rationale was “you have to be emphatic with students to motivate them.”

Even if you accept that your role as a teacher is to motivate, instead of educate, encouraging students to make their own decisions in class can be engaging. Schettler explains, “I defiantly offered a ‘maybe’ regarding taking an arm variation, even after hearing this advice, and a 60-something student came up to me after class and said, with literal tears in her eyes. She said, ‘I love that you say, Maybe you do this or that, because it makes me feel like I’m okay and I’m not doing yoga wrong and that maybe I belong here.’” Sounds like a motivated student to me.

Don’t offer students options

In a similar vein, yoga and movement educator Elena Cheung was once told “offering choices is bad for the nervous system.” This advice, underpinned by a similar brand of magical “teacher knows all” thinking, can be problematic. Offering multiple options for every single pose and transition in class could potentially be a bit much—decision fatigue is a real thing—but that doesn’t mean offering no options at all is the way to go.

Enabling students to tailor their practice through options that meet their needs creates an environment of safety and self-agency. This might actually be the single best way teachers can support a regulated nervous system in our students.

Don’t wear a watch

Another studio owner, eyeing my watch with disapproval, once declared, “Good teachers don’t need to wear a watch; you should instinctively know how long you’ve kept students in each pose.”

Look, I wish I had that superpower. But in between remembering my sequence and focal points for class, offering verbal cues, observing student alignment, adjusting heating and lighting, and occasionally remembering to take time for my own breath, I’m okay with keeping an eye on my watch instead of trusting my own (frequently faulty) perception of time.

Teach for free

Many yoga teachers are drawn to the role from a sense of service. Unfortunately, some of what is presented as advice actually intends to capitalize on, or even manipulate, those good intentions. Yoga teacher and trainer Angus Knott provides a perfect example. “I was told that for every paid gig you get, you should teach a free community class,” he recalls.

If you’re independently wealthy or teaching on the side purely for the love of it, this approach could work. For the rest of us, this advice is unrealistic at best and opportunistic at worst.

Ezrin shared a heartbreaking version of this “advice” that was given to her when her focus on teaching was understandably strained during the last days of her mother’s battle with cancer. “One studio owner told me I couldn’t travel or sub out, or my classes wouldn’t build,” she explains.

No matter how passionate you are about your role, there are times in every teacher’s life when other things should receive your time, energy and attention, period. A “real” teacher doesn’t churn out classes like a robot. Students come to class not only for the poses but for the teacher’s authenticity, and that comes from sharing what they learned by negotiate the same challenges as the rest of us on the mat. Sometimes your own answers to these challenges are the best ones.