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PODCAST

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher

Yoga Teacher Confidential is your backstage pass to the unspoken truths of being a yoga teacher. Sage Rountree, PhD, E-RYT500, dives into the real challenges and rewards of teaching yoga, offering expert advice and secrets to help you build confidence, connect with your students, and teach with authenticity. Sage draws on her two decades of experience teaching yoga, owning and running a studio, mentoring yoga teachers, and directing yoga teacher trainings to share practical insights you can use

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All Episodes

19:39

106. The Shadow Self in Autumn: The Five Kleshas in...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/10/06

Autumn is my favorite season for a slightly embarrassing reason: as the light gets lower, everything casts a longer shadow, and I find that weirdly reassuring. The shadows were there all summer. You just couldn’t see them at high noon. That’s the whole premise of this episode, which goes somewhere more specific and more uncomfortable than the survey I gave you back in episode 91: what the five kleshas, yoga’s five obstacles, look like when they follow you into the teacher’s seat. Because they...

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16:58

105. Introduction to Teaching Yoga Nidra: What Do I...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/09/29

Twenty minutes of continuous talking to a room full of people lying still with their eyes closed has scared off more experienced yoga teachers than any arm-balance workshop ever has. I hear the same question from teachers who can sequence a 90-minute class in their sleep: what do I actually say for 20 minutes? If that question has stopped you from offering yoga nidra, this episode is your orientation session. I’m walking through what yoga nidra actually is, why it’s a distinct practice rather...

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16:12

104. Revisiting Atha—The Yoga Sutras' First Word

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/09/22

Every September I promise myself this will be the year I stay on top of my class planning. By week four, the notebook holds four lesson plans and a grocery list, and the fall shine has worn off—for me and for my students. In this episode, I'm revisiting atha, the very first word of the Yoga Sutras and one my coauthor Alexandra DeSiato and I return to throughout our new book, Yoga Off the Mat. Atha means now, and it turns out to be exactly the word a mid-season teacher needs. I walk through wh...

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16:32

103. Back-to-School Energy in Yoga Class and What to...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/09/15

Every September I watch teachers, myself included, sign up for something new: a fresh planning system, a training, a whole approach to class we’re sure will finally stick. By October, most of it has quietly stalled out. In this episode, I’m talking about the difference between motivation and discipline, and why the surge you’re feeling right now is weather, not climate. I dig into tapas, yoga’s teaching on disciplined effort, and why the structure that looks like it limits your teaching is ac...

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14:34

102. The Real Reason Your Yoga Teacher Instagram...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/09/08

For years, I refused to build an Instagram account for Comfort Zone Yoga. I could see exactly how the treadmill goes: post the same thing twice with a different caption, fall behind on both accounts, and eventually one goes dark. So I built @comfortzoneyoga to be finished in one afternoon instead. It still is. In this episode, I'm previewing the September Comfort Zone Conversation, where we're spending an hour finishing your Instagram so you can stop opening the app and closing it forty minut...

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18:44

101. Smells in Yoga Class: The Room, the Oils, and...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/09/01

Every yoga room has a smell before you say a word of your opening—the space itself, the scent you add on purpose, and the students who walk through the door. In this episode, I’m working through all three: how to get a room ready before class, what to do with your own products and oils, and the real difference between a student who arrives already smelling strong and one who gets that way forty minutes into a good workout. Strong smells in a classroom tend to fall into one of three buckets—pe...

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15:28

100. What 100 Episodes Taught Me About Repetition and...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/08/25

One hundred Tuesdays, and I have opened every single episode with the same five words. I never planned it that way, and I never mentioned it out loud until now, which is a little funny given that I have spent two years telling yoga teachers that repeating yourself is a professional skill rather than a failure of imagination. In this episode I look back at what actually changed over ninety-nine weeks. I got the register of the show wrong at the start: I thought you wanted confessional, and wha...

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18:07

99. What to Do When Your Yoga Class Goes Off the Rails

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/08/18

The second class I ever taught went off the rails before I said a word—and then I spent an hour making it worse by apologizing for not being the regular teacher. Two students set me straight the next day, and I still teach from that lesson two decades later. In this episode, I’m separating the two things yoga teachers mean when they say a class went off the rails: the logistics problem that happens in the room, and the private disaster that happens entirely inside your own head. Only one of t...

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20:17

98. What Most Yoga Teachers Get Wrong About Teaching Yin

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/08/11

My husband took his first yin class with me at Kripalu and told me afterward that I should rename the practice. He wasn’t entirely wrong: a room built on stillness produced an enormous reaction in his body, and that’s yin working exactly as designed. In this episode, I break down the three mistakes I see yoga teachers make most often when they teach yin: treating it as a slower version of a flow class instead of its own physiology, cueing “find your edge” as though it’s a complete instruction...

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8:57

97. All Yoga Pants Are See-Through: What to Wear and...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/08/04

All yoga pants are see-through. Your expensive pair, the clearance-bin pair, all of them—under the right light, in a deep enough fold, the fabric gives away a little more than you bargained for. That isn't a flaw in you or your students. It's fabric and physics, plain and simple. In this lighthearted episode, I walk through the 2013 Lululemon recall that erased roughly two billion dollars in market value, then tell the story of my student Andrea, who landed a job teaching the New York Jets an...

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10:50

96. Technology in the Yoga Room: Phones, Presence,...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/07/28

For years, I was the phone police. I taught with a sensitive wireless mic that glitched every time a phone buzzed, so I asked everyone to power down—and told myself I was protecting the practice. Then I watched a student at a workshop keep fidgeting with a little device. I caught myself judging her for it, until I realized it was her insulin monitor. That moment changed how I think about technology in class, and I want to share where I've landed. In this episode I walk through the small stuff...

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21:17

95. When and How to Demo Poses in Your Yoga Class

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/07/21

Most yoga teachers have heard some version of don't demo. Get off your mat. Cue with your words. Be a real teacher. The advice is reaching for something true—but the rule, as it usually gets delivered, hurts newer teachers and doesn't actually capture what experienced teachers are doing differently. In this episode, Sage walks through when demonstration genuinely serves your students (and when it doesn't), why studios that ban demo entirely are missing the point, and the truth that flips the ...

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24:26

94. Readings from Yoga Off the Mat: Joy, Comparison,...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/07/14

This week is a little different. Sage is joined by her co-author and friend Alexandra DeSiato to read from their new book, Yoga Off the Mat—the book that takes what yoga builds on the mat and lets it shape the rest of your life. Alexandra reads from the chapter on abhinivesha, the fear of the unknown: why we grip so hard for control, what a Stephen Colbert bit has to do with death, and a few practical ways to loosen our hold on what we can’t predict. Sage reads from the chapter on joy, center...

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26:19

93. Yoga Off the Mat—Philosophy for the Rest of Your...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/07/07

In this episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential, I sit down with my dear friend and longtime writing partner, Alexandra DeSiato, for a conversation about our new book, Yoga Off the Mat, out July 14. It is the fourth book Alexandra and I have written together, and it grew from a simple question: what happens when you take the attention you practice on the mat and let it shape the rest of your life? We start where Alexandra likes to start, with death. She walks through what yoga philosophy says ab...

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10:19

92. When and How to Use Sanskrit in Your Yoga Class

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/06/30

A few weeks ago, I posted a simple carousel on Instagram in my “Here’s the Tea” series for yoga teachers: not every pose needs you to call out a Sanskrit name. The comments rolled in—some grateful, some furious, most somewhere in the thoughtful middle. This episode is the longer answer that didn’t fit on eight slides. I walk through what I was actually trying to say in the post, where the conversation sharpened my thinking, and why this was never really an English-versus-Sanskrit question. To...

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14:35

91. The Five Things Keeping You Stuck: An...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/06/23

Ninety seconds of Instagram scrolling. Five distinct forces firing inside you, so fast you experience them as a single feeling: “I’m not good enough.” But it’s not one feeling—it’s five. Yoga philosophy named them twenty-five hundred years ago. In this episode, I’m walking through the five kleshas from Book Two of the Yoga Sutras: avidya (wrong-seeing), asmita (ego), raga (craving), dvesha (aversion), and abhinivesha (clinging to the familiar). These five obstacles to clear seeing are the mos...

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16:13

90. Restorative Yoga That Actually Restores

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/06/16

The first time I felt true parasympathetic rest, I was ten minutes into legs up the wall during a restorative workshop, and the entire outline for my book The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery dropped into my head, fully formed. I had no idea this state was even available to me for free—and once I felt it, I understood why so many well-meaning restorative classes miss the mark. Telling students to relax doesn’t make them relax. The nervous system doesn’t respond to verbal instructions—it responds t...

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16:57

89. Effort and Ease—The Balancing Act You’re Already In

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/06/09

You’ve cued it a thousand times: “Find the balance between effort and ease.” In this episode I take Patanjali’s sthira sukham asanam (Yoga Sutra 2.46) off the mat and show you how it runs underneath every cue you give, every class you plan, and every decision you make about your teaching career. You’ll learn what sthira (steady, firm, structured) and sukha (literally “good axle space”—smooth, well-fitted, easeful) really mean, and how to spot when you’re gripping or collapsing on the mat, in ...

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14:07

88. The Three Gunas Explained—Yoga Philosophy You Can...

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/06/02

Right now, three tracks are playing inside you. One is heavy—the energy that makes you hit snooze. One is wired—the one drafting tomorrow's class at 2 AM. And one is clear—the energy that shows up when teaching just flows. Yoga philosophy has a name for this trio: the gunas. In this episode, I walk through one of the most practical frameworks in all of yoga philosophy. Your students will grasp it in thirty seconds, you can use it to theme an entire class, and it will change how you understand...

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12:52

87. Summer-Proof Your Yoga Teaching

Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a... ·

2026/05/26

If you teach in any climate with real seasons, summer attendance has its own logic. The first beautiful spring day empties the studio. A July heat wave fills it back up. By August you're juggling subs, outdoor classes, your own travel, and a schedule that no longer makes sense. After twenty-plus years of teaching and fifteen years of co-owning a studio in North Carolina, a state with four seasons including a warm summer, I no longer take this personally. Summer isn't a problem to solve. It's ...

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