Finding My Way Back to Yoga Teaching: How I Got My Dream Job

photo : Chris Robinson, Chickendrop Photography

I recently joined the staff of a yoga studio as an instructor—a long-held dream that took me 14 years and a winding path to realize. I completed yoga teacher training (YTT) in 2012, taught at Google and locally, then stepped away after the pandemic but continued to wonder how I could get back into teaching. What surprised me when I finally committed to this goal last year is that landing my dream role followed the exact same principles my coaching clients use to advance in their careers. These principles work whether you’re chasing a promotion, a career change, or a passion project: enhance your skills and do great work, make yourself visible, figure out what you want, and advocate for yourself.

As I was gearing up to leave my Google job, I learned that Nandi Yoga, my "home" studio, was offering an intern program for people who graduated from a YTT elsewhere. I had expressed interest in the past, and saw this as a sign that it was the right time to go for it. The internship started last May, and I am now teaching classes twice a week. 

Here’s what I did to position myself for the role that I wanted.

Do Your Best Work

As I navigated this new world, I was back in the beginner phase, facing confidence challenges and imposter syndrome, much like I had during my corporate career. I started the internship ready to learn, do the work needed to develop my skills, and become a better yoga teacher. 

Hone Your Skills

Although I had years of experience teaching corporate yoga, I approached my internship as a beginner. One of the unique features of Nandi Yoga is that the majority of classes offer hands-on assists. Also known as adjustments, hands-on assists help students to feel more stable in poses, improve alignment, deepen poses, and reduce the risk of injury. I personally love receiving assists, as do most of the students in Nandi classes.

A large part of the internship consisted of learning this skill. I started mentorships with a couple of senior teachers who showed me how to do hands-on assists, and then I assisted during their classes. For the first few months, I felt overwhelmed by all the things I had to remember. I was squarely back in the discomfort of Conscious Incompetence. I worried about making mistakes and hurting students, and my lack of confidence and hesitation often made me miss opportunities to assist poses before the class moved on. But I kept at it week after week, and eventually the assists became more intuitive to me.

My teaching skills had also become rusty. As part of the internship, we taught free Community Classes, which was great practice. In addition, since I already had years of experience teaching Vinyasa flow classes, I became a sub. 

Through my internship, I was taking action to prepare myself for the role that I ultimately wanted, identifying my skill gaps, learning from mentors and experts, and dedicating myself to practice until I became proficient.

Do the Unglamorous Work

Subbing meant teaching at times when other teachers at the studio weren’t available, like 8:00 on weekday evenings. This wasn’t ideal for me, as I regularly fell asleep on the living room couch around 9 pm, but I knew I should make the most of this chance to practice teaching. The classes were often small, and it took some getting used to being the last person in the studio late in the evening and closing up. However, I prioritized pitching in when help was needed, even if I would much rather sit on the couch and get ready for bed. 

I was building credibility by making myself useful and showing that I’m a team player. 

Lean Into Your Strengths

I’m a massage devotee because I always have tense shoulders, and this has given me a knack for finding knots and relieving the tension. So when I’m assisting, I take a few extra seconds to give students a short massage. Being able to help students to feel more comfortable and relaxed is deeply satisfying, and it also made them look forward to having me assist them again.

In other words, I found where I could play to my unique strengths to become more impactful and memorable.

Get Clear on What you Want

One principle that wasn’t as obvious to me up front was that it was up to me to choose my goals for the internship. While I was proud of myself for writing my one-year vision for 2026–which included teaching two weekly classes–it took me a while to realize that it was up to me to figure out what style of yoga I wanted to teach and when. This is embarrassing to admit, but I naively believed that once I completed my internship, I’d be asked to teach wherever there was a need, and that I would be happy and able to teach any style. 

Nandi offers a variety of yoga styles, so the first order of business was to scan the possibilities to see what sparked my interest. I started by following my curiosity. I sampled a few different classes, and when possible talked to the teachers to learn about their teaching philosophy and approach. Some class styles appealed to me because I heard they were very popular. I attended a beginner class and was impressed by the number of students and sense of community, and I thought it would be a wise choice and easy to learn. However, when I tried my hand at teaching beginner community classes, I found it much harder than I expected and, more importantly, I just didn’t enjoy it. Sometimes you have to try things out to get clarity, and that includes identifying things that are not a good fit.

On the other hand, when I first attended a Core Flow class, I was hooked. I felt great at the end of the class, and I liked the focus on slow, mindful movements to build strength. I started assisting in a weekly Core Flow class to get more familiar with the class structure, and then practiced the vinyasa krama warmup sequences that were unique to the style. Wendy, the studio founder and head teacher, had me demonstrate teaching vinyasa krama to her and provided feedback. Once I had that down, I was able to teach as a substitute for Core Flow classes. In order to practice, this helped me to confirm that I enjoyed teaching this kind of class.

My aha moment was realizing that just like in any other career pivot, I needed a clear and specific vision. I had to experiment with a few options in order to really know what was the best fit for me, and even the failures gave me useful information. During this time, it was crucial to distinguish those early feelings of discomfort and insecurity from learning that some options just weren’t right for me.

Make Yourself Visible

It also dawned on me that I wasn’t just going to be handed a teaching job at the end of the internship for completing all the assignments. I had to be more proactive. This was a painfully humbling epiphany at the beginning of this year. I had learned this already in my corporate leadership journey and was an executive coach, but it took a while to recognize that the same was true in this new context.

Build Relationships

In the meantime, I was getting to know members of the Nandi community. Before the internship, I could only practice at the studio on weekends and I didn’t go to classes on a consistent basis. But I was already aware of the strong community at the studio–I saw that teachers and students were happy to see each other and witnessed friendly chatter before and after classes–and that was a key reason I aspired to teach there. Once I adjusted my weekly schedule and committed to attending more classes, I started to recognize and eventually get to know more people. Though it took me a long time to overcome my shyness, I started introducing myself in classes and initiating small talk. 

This allowed me to cultivate a few types of meaningful relationships:

• Peers: Getting to know other interns and teacher trainees who were going through similar experiences made me feel less alone. I was mindful not to fall into a comparison trap, but it was useful to benchmark my progress, and I openly shared my own experiences and tips in return.

• Mentors: Learning from senior teachers who were doing what I wanted to do provided me with a model to inform my own vision. I’m not great at asking for help, but over time, I eagerly sought their advice and personal stories. Wendy occasionally had me teach small segments of her classes.

• Sponsors and Fans: These are the people who could speak well on my behalf, and came as a result of my dedication to quality work, being warm and truly interested in them, and going the extra mile (like giving quick massages or helping with class setup and cleanup). This included people who appreciated my hands-on assists and my mentors, who saw my dedication and growth.

Through these relationships, I built a reputation for being capable and collaborative–not just someone who could teach a good yoga class, but someone people would want to work with.

Advocate For Yourself

Cultivating relationships was the easy part. What was much harder for me was making requests for support and opportunities, something I am still working on. But it became clear to me that I needed to express my ambition to teach classes at Nandi instead of assuming it would happen as a natural next step of the internship. In some ways, I felt foolish for not realizing this sooner, but to be fair, I needed time to build confidence in my skills and figure out what kinds of classes I wanted to teach first. And, I had competing priorities, like figuring out my post-corporate coaching practice.

Finally, I asked Diane, the new studio owner, for a meeting to discuss the path to getting a teaching job. By that time, I had subbed several times at the studio and it had gone smoothly. When I shared that I really enjoyed teaching Core Flow and Vinyasa classes, Diane said she would keep that in mind and that she would be making some updates to the class schedule in the near future. A few weeks later I learned that Wendy would be discontinuing one of her Core Flow classes, and I reached out to Diane to offer to take it over. She already had other plans for that time slot, but a few days later she asked me about my availability at a different time, and then next day she offered me the class that I am now teaching! This taught me that it takes more than patience to get opportunities; I had to clearly name what I wanted before anyone would hand it to me.

This is all still very recent for me, and I won’t pretend that once I got the job everything went perfectly. In my first two weeks of the class, three out of the four classes I was scheduled to teach had zero sign-ups. Diane had warned me this would happen since it was a new time slot and at this time of year, attendance usually declines as the weather gets nicer, so it didn’t come as a surprise. It was still tough. I knew not to take it personally; I had the perspective of seeing class sizes vary greatly from week to week even with very popular teachers. Still, not knowing whether I’d actually be teaching a class when I had been looking forward to it and preparing eagerly made me anxious. But last week, things picked up and earlier this week I had six students in class and got the best compliment: “It felt playful.”

My yoga teaching journey in the past year taught me that landing a dream role takes more than getting picked for the job: becoming great at what matters, getting crystal clear on what you really want, making sure the right people see your work, and asking for it. That last part is easy to overlook, but it’s the one that actually opens the door.