Private online yoga training

I've been experimenting with teaching yoga online for several months now, offering meditation, pranayama, yoga nidra, rehabilitative techniques and restorative yoga, and full classes of postural yoga. One of my plans with these offerings was to see which components worked well and which were not as strong online.

I can say that the more voice-led practices work best, and teaching postural yoga works best when I'm only observing a couple of students at a time. The screen only allows so much detail in observation, which is so key to offering appropriate and helpful cues to the students.

I had a student inquire if I would be willing to offer ongoing private instruction on Zoom, and since this student was also interested in completing an online 300hr training, we decided to simply accumulate the hours of private instruction toward certification - covering all the components and categories necessary to fulfill Yoga Alliance requirements for registration at the 300hr level. The classes are going well and I can see this is an effective way to teach.

I'll begin teaching two students a 200hr training online soon, and again because the group is so small we can focus on areas of specialty that they might find they want to focus their teaching on - essentially allowing "electives" within the broad 200hr training.

I feel much more comfortable with this format and the ability to have longer conversations and check-ins with the students than a large online training with limited ability to observe individual practitioners. I think we are starting from scratch in many ways with online teaching and so it makes sense to start small.