Nowadays, during this lock down period to contain the spread of COVID-19, all yoga professionals have started giving online classes through zoom or other online video calling tools. Now-a-days, a wave of ‘Yoga At Home’ has started across the whole country. Even new people, who have never had time before or had no interest, are now learning yoga mostly through zoom.
In this context, I have made some seven points which can improve your yoga classes.
Table of Contents
Keep Ready necessary items handy, before the scheduled time of class
It is often seen that some yoga professionals are seen arranging their audio, video settings or phone or laptop.
If you do this kind of preparation in advance, 40 minutes of zoom or free minutes of other online tools will be potentially used.
Along with this, you can share your class outline or some slogans of yoga / quotations on the zoom screen for the first 3-4 minutes as during this time, many students are joining you on zoom or other online tools – microsoft team or google team or even facebook.
If possible, some good instrumental soothing music can also be played. This will keep the students engaged in meditative or relaxing mood.
Use Common Yoga Protocol
The Ministry of AYUSH, Government of India, with the help of leading Yoga gurus and reputed institutes, has prepared Common Yoga Protocol which you can use in your class. It is recognized all over the world, which has given easy and simple exercises of Yoga, which is very effective.
Brief case history of students
You should be aware as to which student is suffering from any diseases like asthma, diabetes, arthritis or spondylitis or have had any surgical operation before.
In such a situation, you can keep the health / medical profile of the students of your class in the record so that you can give them better and careful advice on yogic practices and other health.
After a long time, you can use the same record of your students as data for research in future.
I have created a sample online form which you can use for your yoga students to know about their case histories.
Never Ignore Warm up & Relaxation
You must ensure that your students must not be injured while practising yogasanas and pranayamas. You must not ignore warm up for this, especially new people who are yet to get accustomised to the yoga practice. If you teach suksham vyayam for a few days before teaching yogasanas and pranayama, they can derive very good results. I have added all the 48 exercises of suksham vyayam on this website. You can go through them all. If you have any question on these exercises, you can comment below.
At the end, you should get them relaxed because our immunity is improved by the relaxation. Anyway, at this time during Covid 19 lock down period, every one needs is to boost up increase immunity.
You can also take sessions on yoga nidra separately.
Time Management
So far as zoom app is concerned, we only have 40 minutes in a free zoom account, out of which the first 5 minutes are consumed while waiting for all the students to join you. So, we are then left with only 35 minutes. Therefore, out of 35 minutes, we can prepare our class of 25 minutes, so that the last 10 minutes can be used for relaxation or doubts clearing session.
Similarly, for other online tools like microsoft team or google team, you can adopt the same break up of the free time to ensure that last 10 minutes are used to relax or answer the query or cater to the needs of the individual yoga students.
Professional Dressup
Teachings of Yoga is very esteemed and respectful across the world and its teachers are also considered to be equally respected, so if we adopt our costumes according to this prestigious profession while teaching yoga, then all Yoga students have a positive impression.
Design Your Class Around Your Students
Your class should be according to the needs and capacity of your students only. You should ensure that your students always take care that –
If they want good results of yoga, then they should practice yoga every day, of course, for a short time, but practice yoga regularly.
If you do yoga exercises sometimes or randomly, then they are not going to get real benefit of Yoga.
So the above are the tips I have prepared to enable you to better serve your students in online class. I hope that some of the points must help you not only in online class but even offline classes too.
Please comment if you have any suggestion or query to ask.
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You can also see the presentation at this link: https://www.slideshare.net/GulshanKumar11/7-tips-for-yoga-professionals-to-make-online-classes-better-on-zoom
Best of Luck!
Stay home Stay Safe Stay healthy!