- 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 was never really listening to the class. You can teach a genuinely good hour and still drive home certain you got away with something. That gap is the tell. The verdict didn’t come from the room at all. 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 clocks it. 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: a comment someone made on a course once, a studio owner’s eyebrow in your first year. Written in early, never read 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 files a report: the jaw, that shoulder that never fully lets go. Ask ’where’s the breath already easy?’ and the same body sends back something else. Neither report is wrong. The question picked which one you got.
Work on self-talk lands in the same place: the questions we keep putting to ourselves steer what we notice, and what we notice sets what we think is happening. So run ’is everyone bored?’ under a class and boredom is what turns up. The flat face by the radiator. The one who leaves early for a bus. The question collects its own evidence and hands it back as proof. It’s been marking its own homework for years.
It’s also why a kind word can bounce straight off. A question built to find shortfall files ’that was lovely’ under they’re-only-being-nice, because 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 the part that 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 reports on how seriously you take the work. About the teaching itself, it says nothing reliable. Teachers with twenty years in still hear the question on a bad night. Qualifications don’t switch it off. Nor does experience. What changes is hearing it as a question, not a fact, and refusing to let it run the hour.
How do I catch the question I teach from?
Name it first, because you cannot 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, and watch for the one that keeps showing up whatever the evening was like.
The same doubt tends to surface in the same spots. The third time you rewrite a plan that was fine the first time. The night another teacher, or your old trainer, is sitting in. 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 points. At you, or at the room.
How do I change the question I teach from?
You can’t delete a habit like this. You can 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 live.
A steadier question passes two tests. It faces the students, not your performance. And it can be answered tonight. ’Am I good enough?’ fails both. No finish line, and it’s pointed the wrong way. ’What does this room need from me in the next hour?’ passes. So does ’who here needs to be seen tonight?’
Watch what shifts when the question changes. 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. The teacher’s the thing that moved.
The old question will fire mid-class anyway. 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.