How to Turn Your Love For Yoga Into a Successful Career

Many will wonder about the justification of this wish—to turn yoga into a profitable profession because isn’t this discipline all about renunciation and detachment from worldly things in the first place? We say, no, it is only reasonable if a true yoga lover takes the path of teaching, even by receiving money. Because the world needs to be guided better and the money will go to some good cause. Only a true yoga enthusiast who is schooled in the authentic tradition can do that.

Here are some tricks to turn this noble enterprise into a success:

Be a Part of World Yoga Community

Give yourself a huge exposure from the start of your yoga career. Train under an institute affiliated with the Yoga Alliance- the organization which certifies yoga institutes over the world and brings together its true disciples. This will open up your door to the world of dedicated yogis—a great opportunity to figure out future collaborations and making yourself known to the community.

Attend systematic training to learn how to become a successful yoga instructor at a Yoga Alliance affiliated institute in the heartland of the art—India.

Build Positive Personal Relationships

From your early days of training as a yoga teacher, find opportunities to learn how to present yourself to different people. Attend a yoga teacher training in India, where you will be given opportunities to conduct your own trial-class. Make the most of it, because in the long run as a yoga teacher, your personal appeal in making others feel loved and beauty around them will be a crucial tool. The first step to know how to be a yoga teacher of distinction is to find your own strengths as a public speaker, performer or consultant. Brush up these skills during your YTTC for a successful career.

Contribute Something of Your Own

Like any other field of activity, yoga too needs unique contributions. Learn and understand traditions but refrain from duplicating the same style. Try to innovate and redesign old curriculum as much as possible and fashion your own ways of teaching. Comparative studies between yoga texts and other relevant philosophy like Vedanta is a good idea if you are a philosophically inclined teacher. Citing situations from lived reality and how yoga can make it better is always an effective method to help your followers practically. Attend Yoga teacher training courses at different locales of the East like Kerala in India and Nepal to gather different experiences and know-how to become a yoga instructor with an expanded worldview.

Be a Travelling Teacher

Make traveling a constant part of your yoga life because this will help you expand your reach in both personal and professional life. Stay true to the yoga ideal of "detachment" and become a global citizen. As you make your way through the diversity of our planet, build personal relationships and navigate them on the yoga path. This is the most challenging aspect of how to be a yoga teacher of merit, asking you to partially give up the life of a householder and become a yogi who is always on the move.

Ask yourself whether you are ready for a career which gives you a healthy life and a noble cause to live for. Hard, as it may seem, this is the career-path to freedom.

James has been a spiritual Shahak for several years and practices Yoga and Meditation to enhance his deeper understanding of self.