This post is the second in my Workshop Series. If you have yet to read Pitch Your Yoga Workshop, start there! If you have pitched your workshop and need a little support on planning – keep reading!
So you’ve gotten the green light and you’re super excited! Then you realize you have to shove all of your passion, excitement, reference notes, and wisdom into a certain amount of time. If you can plan a yoga class, you can plan a workshop. It helps me to think of the same chunks of time.
Each yoga class has a warm up time, this is usually 10-15 minutes of getting things ready for flow. Then we flow. We might start with Sun Salutations – but we get moving the next 30 minutes. That’s a nice chunk of movement. We usually slow class down the last 10-15 minutes. And really slow down for Savasana the last 3-5 minutes. You plan this multiple times every week. You can plan a workshop too.
Plan Your Yoga Workshop
Keep the same thing in mind. What is the most basic needed thing to cover in your workshop. Creating community. I know you went straight to the content, but we want to make sure everyone feels welcome, seen, and appreciated for showing up. If they didn’t show up you wouldn’t have a workshop paycheck.
Take early time to let them introduce themselves and share why they wanted to take the workshop. You might be surprised, it could lead the workshop in a different direction organically.
Then kick off with your basic foundational information. As if you were explaining your topic to someone from Mars. We need that info explained at the beginning – the warm-up. Phrases, concepts, ideas, definitions, etc. That needs to be the first chunk of time. Getting that foundational info out of the way so you can bring it up later without any explanation.
For example. If you’re teaching Chakras you need to explain what a Chakra is, who first believed in Chakras, where they are located, and why we even talk about them. If you jumped right into the Heart Chakra and gratitude – you missed sharing some foundational information. Don’t assume everyone knows what you know. Group foundational info first.
During my Yin Workshop I needed to cover the basic concepts of Yin and Yang energy. How that is related to balance in the world around us as well as in our bodies and how Traditional Chinese Medicine focuses on balance. So I explained “Yin & Yang” and moved on because I didn’t want to talk about passive vs active stretches the entire time. They understood I wanted them to relax because Yin is relaxing.
During this “warm up time” I also highlighted the history of Yin Yoga and the way it evolved from Daoist Yoga in the 70’s to Yin Yoga in the 80’s & 90’s. Who influenced those changes, and how their teachings were different. Which is why we might experience Yin differently, depending on who they trained under.
Once you present your basic concepts – and I’m saying basic as far as entry level understanding – not that they are boring. You can move on to the meat of your workshop, in a yoga class this would be our Flow.
My meat consisted of yin postures and modifications. That’s what everyone wanted to know – how to enjoy their Yin postures better. Since I had a good chunk of “flow time” in my workshop, I also covered Meridians and how the body keeps the score. We went deep on everyday stress and relaxation during Yin classes.
Notice if you need any print outs for this meaty section. It was easier for me to hand out a paper with a body and Meridian lines and we all traced the lines on the paper rather than me trying to show them on my own body. It also shifted the focus on watching & listening to my lecture to be engaged themselves.
Not everyone is an auditory learner, some are visual. Print outs are a bonus. I love take-home information I can read later. Explain the info there during the workshop but also give them something to take home.
Next is the Cool Down Section – this is info they can implement right there in the room. I offered a Yin class. I wanted them to implement everything we learned. Maybe a Chakra Workshop offers poses for each Chakra, mudras, or mantras. Take time to implement.
The Savasana time of a yoga class is an opportunity to make sure you’ve answered any questions they have left over. I’m not a big fan of questions in the middle if I’m explaining something that will be answered later. So this might be the time to make sure everyone had their questions answered. It can also be time to ask, “you had an expectation when you arrived, what else did you learn?” This is sneaky, but it helps others hear things they may have forgotten or didn’t even notice when someone else shares it again. We like repetition in yoga, use it to your advantage in a workshop.
Don’t Forget
Workshops are a great entry point for people who haven’t been to the studio. Make them feel welcome and invite them to your next class.
You do not have to cover A-Z in your workshop. Decide what you want to share and share that info. Maybe it’s only D-G, or N-S. Deciding exactly what you will cover should be shared in your promotion materials – we’ll chat about that later! If you’re teaching a Crystals Workshop I can’t imagine you’d cover every single rock, what it does, where to find it, how to use it, etc. Decide what you want to talk about and exhaust that info. I shared 1 acupressure point for each meridian, because there are 361 acupressure points. I’d still be there teaching.
If you are a yoga teacher with a newsletter list, grab those emails! This is the perfect time to grow your newsletter list. Don’t assume – let them sign up for it. Same with a YouTube Channel or Instagram.
You can’t please everyone. One of the students in my Yin workshop was clearly irritated during the meat of Yin. She left early, didn’t return a goodbye, etc. Later she left a comment about us needing to explain Yin before the workshop. The workshop title was: Deepen Your Yin Practice. It really was geared toward people who already had a Yin Practice. In our description we highlighted I would cover more relaxation techniques for the parasympathetic nervous system, active vs passive poses, Traditional Chinese Medicine & acupressure points. She wrote she expected “a weekend exercise class” – workshops are more lecture based so immediately we could tell she wasn’t familiar with workshop / education classes. Yin isn’t an “exercise”, no matter how much someone wants something I taught what it actually is – so she obviously didn’t Google “what is Yin”. I hadn’t seen her before and I certainly haven’t seen her since. Sadly, I can only assume she didn’t read the description. I am willing to bet next year’s paycheck she confused Yin with Tai Chi. Thankfully, I did have 15 happy students, and I choose to focus on their feedback.
I hope these tips help you plan your yoga workshop! Next in the series, Promote Your Yoga Workshop.
from my mat to yours ~
Stef