What Makes a Good Yoga Teacher?

The question of what makes a good yoga teacher is rarely asked with rigor.

—and even more rarely answered with clarity.

We default to vague descriptors—authentic, warm, knowledgeable. Important as they are, these terms don't give us anything to work with. They can't be taught, measured, or developed with intention.

Replace them with observable behaviors and design principles:

• Authentic → Be transparent and specific. Show intent: explain why you chose a cue, sequence, or modification. Share decision-making—what you prioritized and what you left out. Invite corrective feedback. These actions create trust that feels authentic because it's verifiable.

• Warm → Cultivate connection through micro-interactions. Use naming, steady eye contact, calibrated touch or distance, and brief personalized check-ins. Design transitions and pauses that acknowledge people’s experience in the moment. Warmth becomes a repeatable skill when mapped to timing, language, and proximity.

• Knowledgeable → Demonstrate competency through structure and clarity. Use predictable session architecture, clear learning objectives, and layered explanations (what, why, how). Cite accessible sources, model problem-solving, and scaffold progress. Knowledgeability is shown by how you organize learning and how you help others reliably reproduce results.

Translate these into measurable criteria:

• Frequency of explicit rationale in class (e.g., percent of cues that include “why”).

• Number and timing of personalized interactions per session.

• Presence of a stated learning objective and a closing recap.

• Use of progressive challenges with observable student outcomes.

When you design for specific behaviors and create metrics, 'authentic, warm, knowledgeable' stops being an aspiration and becomes a professional standard you can teach, test, and refine.e corrective feedback. These actions create trust that feels authentic because it's verifiable.

This is pedagogy: the science and art of teaching. Effective instruction requires understanding how people actually learn movement. It demands attention to cognitive load, while considering the sequence, and to consider not just what they're teaching, but how instruction lands in a student's body and mind.

The Case for Objective Feedback

Picture taking a Spanish class from an instructor who doesn't speak the language—the absurdity is instructive. Yet in yoga, we often evaluate teaching without objective measures. Assessments drift with mood, bias, and circumstance. "It was a hard day" or "I didn't vibe with them" aren't useful frameworks for growth.

Objective feedback doesn't strip away compassion; it grounds it. When we create shared criteria for effective teaching, we create a shared language for improvement. That shared language reduces defensiveness, increases accountability, and raises the consistency of instruction students receive.

The same principle applies to teaching yoga. Students shouldn't be able to recognize your cueing structure. They don't think about how you sequenced that transition or why the music shifted at that exact moment or what made them feel safe enough to take a risk they've never taken before. They simply experience it.

That's the goal. Not to be impressive. To be invisible. To create conditions where learning becomes interesting, memorable, and the practice itself becomes the teacher, and you become the guide who made it possible.

Structure allows you to be a more present.

References

Chtourou, H., et al. (2012). The effect of verbal cues on exercise performance. Journal of Sports Sciences, 30(8), 779-786.

Hess, E., et al. (2018). Vocal intonation and motivation in coaching. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 13(4), 567-574.

Jerath, R., et al. (2015). Yoga and the autonomic nervous system: A review. Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine, 20(4), 299-308.

Karageorghis, C. I., & Priest, D. L. (2012). The effects of music on exercise performance and psychophysiological responses. Sports Medicine, 42(12), 1153-1170.

Schmidt, R. A., & Lee, T. D. (2005). Motor Learning and Performance. Human Kinetics.