- The doubt usually isn’t about the class. It’s a question you teach from, and it fires however well the evening goes.
- A question tells your attention where to look, so it goes there and quietly brings back evidence for itself.
- Feeling like a fraud is well documented. Clance and Imes named the impostor phenomenon in 1978, after studying capable people doing good work.
- Qualifications don’t end the question, and neither does experience. What helps is hearing it as a question, not a fact.
- A steadier question faces the students and can be answered tonight, like ’what does this room need from me in the next hour?’
The doubt usually isn’t about the class. It’s a question you teach from, something like ’what if they realise I don’t know enough?’, and it fires however well the evening goes. Catch it, then choose a steadier one: a question that faces the students and can be answered tonight. YogaPros works on this with its members.
By YogaPros — the professional body for yoga teachers since 2006, with more than 10,000 members across 100+ countries.
Why do I doubt myself even when the class went well?
Because the doubt isn’t really reading the class. You can teach a good hour and still drive home sure you got away with something. That’s the tell. The verdict didn’t come from the room. It came from a question that was already running before you walked in.
A student drops your cue mid-flow and does their own thing. Harmless. Nobody else notices. But something fires under your teaching, the same line it always is. For a lot of teachers it’s ’what if they realise I don’t know enough?’ For others it’s blunter. ’Is everyone bored?’
You’ve probably never said yours out loud. It’s run so long it stopped sounding like a question. It just feels like teaching now. And most of them are old. Someone’s offhand comment on a course years back, or a studio owner’s raised eyebrow in your first year. You wrote it in early and haven’t read it back since.
How does the question I ask myself shape the class?
A question is an instruction to look. Ask your own body ’where’s the tension tonight?’ and it’ll tell you: the jaw, that shoulder that never quite lets go. Ask ’where’s the breath already easy?’ and the same body gives you a different answer. Both are true. You just get whichever one you asked for.
The research on self-talk says much the same. The questions we put to ourselves steer what we notice, and what we notice becomes what we think is happening. So run ’is everyone bored?’ under a class and boredom is what you’ll find. The flat face by the radiator, the person who slips out early for a bus. The question finds its own evidence and hands it back as proof.
It’s also why a kind word can bounce off. If your question is looking for what fell short, ’that was lovely’ just gets filed under they’re only being nice. It was never looking for proof the hour went well.
Is it normal to feel like a fraud when you teach yoga?
Yes. And you’re in well-documented company. If your version runs ’when will they realise I’m not really qualified for this?’, it has a name. In 1978 the psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes described the impostor phenomenon, after studying high achievers with strong records who still couldn’t take their own competence as real. It ran through people doing genuinely good work. That’s what takes the authority out of it.
Feeling like a fraud doesn’t make you one. It makes you someone who cares whether the hour was any good. The feeling shows how much you care about teaching well. It says nothing reliable about whether you’re actually any good. Teachers with twenty years in still hear the question on a bad night. Qualifications don’t switch it off, and experience doesn’t either. What helps is hearing it as a question rather than a fact, and not letting it run the hour.
How do I catch the question I teach from?
Name it first. You can’t change a question you can’t hear. After your next class, before you’ve even packed the kit away, write down the question that ran loudest under the hour. Do it again after a couple more classes, and watch for the one that keeps showing up whatever the evening was like.
The same doubt tends to show up in the same places. Watch for it the third time you rewrite a plan that was fine the first time, or the night another teacher or your old trainer is sitting in. Those are good moments to catch it working.
Then write it out in full, exactly as it runs, no tidying. On paper you can see where it’s pointing: at you, or at the room.
How do I change the question I teach from?
You can’t delete a habit like this. You out-practise it, the same way you’d out-practise any movement pattern. Pick the replacement on purpose, and put it where the old one used to sit.
Two things make a question steadier. It faces the students instead of your performance, and it can be answered tonight. ’Am I good enough?’ does neither. There’s no finish line, and it’s aimed the wrong way. ’What does this room need from me in the next hour?’ works. So does ’who here needs to be seen tonight?’
Notice what changes when the question does. The doubting one puts you in the middle of your own class, auditioning. The steadier one puts you back at the side of the room, teaching. Same students, same skill as last week. The only thing that moved is you.
The old question will still fire mid-class. Of course it will. Name it under your breath, come back to the one you chose, and let the win be that you caught it quicker this time.
Members go deeper. YogaPros members can read the fuller version of this piece in the Learning Hub, with a one-page method for catching your teaching question and choosing a steadier one. It’s part of the Wellbeing & Mindset collection: practical support for the working life of a yoga teacher, not the performance of calm.