4 Simple Ways To Make Your Online Yoga Classes Stand Out

Online training has rapidly become the only possible way to keep teaching yoga while our studios are shut down. Since online classes are now the ultimate trend, even the yoga industry is progressively becoming more competitive by the day. 

While many instructors have successfully transferred their teaching online and even built a thriving online community, some of us are, on the other hand, still struggling with this sudden change of scene and might feel stuck. 

Does this latter description resonate with you? 

Well, if it does, just know that you’re not alone: not everyone can effortlessly adapt to this new reality and break the internet overnight. All it takes is to roll up your sleeves, smarten up and develop skills that can help you make unique online classes and save the day. 

If you want your class to be unique, you don’t need to pursue perfection, you just need to try to give your class a personal touch.

Make your online classes unique

Let’s be honest, teaching inperson cannot easily be replaced by a camera, it’s normal to feel uncomfortable and the pressure of failure can be hard to hide during your lesson. But remember: perfection doesn’t necessarily make a class successful. If you want your class to be unique, you don’t need to pursue perfection, you just need to try to give your class a personal touch. As a matter of fact, the recipe for success has a quite simple ingredient: be yourself!

After all, we’re living in unfortunate times where there’s a constant lack of human contact, so the best thing you can do to your yogis is to allow them to see the real you. So next time, before sitting in front of a camera, try to forget about it for a second and rather act naturally, almost as if your yogis were sitting in front of you. Just feel free to tell a bit about yourself, make some fun out of your mistakes and get rid of insecurities: your practice will surely benefit from that, and so will your yogis.

Check on your tech

During my experience as a yogi, I often found myself attending online classes where you could barely hear or see anything. What’s frustrating is that unfortunately, even if you’re an amazing instructor, if you don’t have the right equipment you won’t be able to teach a great class and efficiently communicate with your audience. And that is of course something you may want to avoid…

This might sound obvious, but good tech equipment may be a big yet necessary investment for the success of our class. Most instructors find wireless earphones, for example, great tools to better communicate with their yogis because they give you the chance to move freely while ensuring great audio quality. Just look around and you will easily find cheaper and equally effective alternatives if you’ve got a tighter budget.

Also, if you’re still feeling a little anxious about your live class, you might as well want to test your tech: to do so you can try to record your class and see if there are things you need to change. Whether it’s about the sequence, the alignment, the lights or just your tech equipment, your goal here is to make a great online class, and recording it can help you get the perspective of your audience and may help you see what needs to be fixed.

Trust me, these are simple and smart choices but they can truly make the difference when it comes to online teaching. 

Stage set-up

Connected to the idea of uniqueness, another tip would be to try to reflect your personal style also when setting up the scene for your class. Remember, the scene’s background is crucial: it is your business card and should also please the eye, so feel free to get creative but try to keep it simple and appealing.

Imagine creating a virtual sacred space where your yogis feel welcome and at ease, a safe place that may resemble your studio, or it can simply be a room where people feel invited to visit and join you. 

Another thing to take into account are the lights you use for your scene: normally, when recording a video we tend to think that the more of the lights are turned on, the easier it gets to be seen. When it comes to online yoga classes though, it’s important to consider choosing lights that could fit in well into the scene without distracting the eye. A great and green option is to use candles or a low-energy salt lamp: they make a great laid-back atmosphere and they save electricity!

Reach out to your yogis and build a community

As we’ve said, something that can keep your yogis close is to show them your real side. Nevertheless, do not forget that building a connection with your yogis doesn’t only apply to in-person classes. Without bonding with them it can be really easy to lose attenders on the way because they won’t feel included, and might replace your class with another one. Make them feel like they belong to a community, an online tribe where everyone shares the same interest in yoga and related fields.

When recording a live class, for example, you can catch up with your yogis, see how they’re doing and check if they have requests or injuries. You could also try asking them to turn on their cameras if they feel like it so that you can see them while practising and correct them.

Finally, when the class is over, it’d be nice to reach out to your yogis and ask them for some feedback/suggestions or if they need further help with some challenging poses. It does create human contact and inclusiveness, and that’s vital if we want our online community to thrive.