- Teaching self-doubt usually comes from a hidden question you teach from, not from the class itself; it fires however well the evening goes.
- A question is an instruction to search, so attention goes where it points and quietly collects 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 and experience don’t end the question; recognising it as a question rather than a fact is what changes things.
- A steadier teaching question passes two tests: it faces the students, and it can be answered tonight, such as ’what does this room need from me in the next hour?’
Teaching self-doubt usually comes from a hidden question running under the class, something like ’what if they realise I don’t know enough?’ Attention goes wherever a question sends it, so catch the one you teach from and choose a steadier question that faces the students and can be answered tonight. YogaPros works on this shift 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 reading the class. Picture a Wednesday: halfway through, a student stops following your cue and quietly does their own version instead. Nothing dramatic, and nobody else noticed. But somewhere underneath your teaching a question fires, and it’s the same one it always is. For a lot of teachers it runs something like ’what if they realise I don’t know enough?’ For others it’s plainer: ’is everyone bored?’
You’ve probably never said yours out loud. It’s run so long it doesn’t sound like a question any more; it just feels like teaching. Most of these are old, too. A comment made once on a training course, a studio owner’s raised eyebrow in your first year, written in early and never reviewed since. That’s the actual problem, and it’s a fixable one.
How does the question I ask myself shape the class?
A question is an instruction to search, and attention goes wherever it points. You can feel it in your own practice. Ask ’where is the tension tonight?’ and the body files its report: the jaw, the shoulder that never quite lets go. Ask ’where is the breath already easy?’ and a different report comes back from the same body. Neither answer is wrong. The question decided which one you got.
Research on self-talk points the same way: the questions we habitually put to ourselves steer what we notice, and what we notice hardens into what we believe is happening. So run ’is everyone bored?’ under an evening class and boredom is what you’ll find. The flat face by the radiator. The early leaver with a bus to catch. The question collects its own evidence, then hands you the harvest as proof. It has been marking its own homework for years.
It’s also why kind feedback can bounce straight off. A question set to find shortfall quietly files a warm comment under ’they’re only being nice’, because the search was never looking for evidence that 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 question is a version of ’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 to be real. The detail worth keeping: the pattern ran through people doing genuinely good work.
That’s what cuts the question’s authority. Impostor feelings say something about how seriously you take the work, and nothing reliable about the teaching itself. Teachers with twenty years behind them still hear the question on certain nights. Qualifications do not end it, and experience alone does not either. What changes things is seeing it as a question rather than a fact, and declining to let it run the hour.
How do I catch the question I teach from?
Start by naming it, because you can’t change a question you can’t hear. After your next class, before the kit is even packed away, jot down the question that ran loudest under the hour. Do it again after two more classes and look for the repeat offender, the one that shows up whatever the evening was like.
The same doubt tends to surface in the same places: the third time you rewrite a class plan that was fine the first time, or the night another teacher, or your old trainer, is in the room. Those are good moments to catch it in the act.
Then write it out in full, exactly as it runs, untidied. Once it’s on paper, check where it points: at you and your performance, or at the room and the students. That direction is the whole game.
How do I change the question I teach from?
You can’t delete a habitual question, but you can out-practise it, the same way you’d out-practise a movement habit: choose the replacement on purpose and put it where the old one lives.
A steadier teaching question passes two tests. It faces the students rather than your performance. And it can actually be answered tonight. ’Am I good enough?’ fails both, since there’s no finish line and it points the wrong way. ’What does this room need from me in the next hour?’ passes. So does ’who here needs to be seen tonight?’
Notice what moves when the question changes. The doubting question puts you at the centre of your own class, auditioning. The steadier one returns you to the side of the room, teaching. The students haven’t changed, and neither has your skill. The teacher standing in front of them has.
Expect the old question to fire mid-class anyway. It will. Name it silently, come back to the one you chose, and count the faster noticing as the win.
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.