Writing for Yoga Teachers: Who Are Your Yogis?

Meeting the needs of your students can be tricky, especially if your career is rooted in teaching public yoga classes. Often, public classes draw a diverse range of students, and it is difficult to assess and address their individual needs.

We’ve all taught that class: the one where you have an advanced yogi, an injured yogi, and a beginner — or any combination thereof. Even the most skillful teachers can have difficulty handling a diverse audience of practitioners.

However, what makes writing more manageable than teaching is that we can tailor our publications toward a specific audience. That isn’t to say we are excluding others. But it does imply that each piece of writing has a targeted audience in mind so that we can effectively meet their needs.

Who You Serve Determines How You Write

You don’t teach beginners the same way you instruct advanced yogis. And you don’t teach your power yoga classes the same way you do your restorative classes. The people in the room and the type of class dictate the way you teach. And you can probably guess what I’m about to say — the same is true for writing. The people who are reading your publications will determine how you write.

As writers and yoga teachers, it is critical that we understand our demographics. That way, not only do we know who we are serving, but we can also consider how to serve them. If we do so, we are more skillfully practicing seva or selfless service because we are writing with their needs in mind — not our own.

For example, if your student demographic is comprised of mostly beginners, your writing wouldn’t include Sanskrit without translations and definitions Or if your student demographic is mostly prenatal students, you would likely publish offerings related to pregnancy and motherhood.

Questions for Identifying Your Audience

As you approach writing for your yogis, consider the following questions:

• What is your predominant student/clientele base? Consider gender, income, ethnicity, occupation, age, and beyond.
• Whom do you want to attract through your writing?
• What sort of language, images, resources, videos, etc. would your audience benefit the most from?
• Where is your audience most likely to look for your work (blog, magazines, manuals, etc)?
• What do you think your audience expects from your offerings? What offers value or benefit?
• What does your audience value? (e.g. scientific information, philosophy, humor, etc.)
• Does your audience want to passively take in information or do they want community/dialogue?

Of course, these aren’t the only points of consideration. As you continually hone your understanding of audience, you can consider more specific methods for meeting their needs.

Audiences Ebb and Flow

Being able to change with your audience is critical. Like everything else in life, our primary audience will change.

The coming and going of students is natural. But that means we also have to consider how that changes our primary audience. And we have to think about that over and over and over — for the remainder of our careers

As yogis, we are skilled at this. For example, consider how differently and with more complexity you understand Virabhadrasana II (warrior II) today than your very first time practicing yoga. And imagine all the questions and adjustments you made along the way to arrive at those changes.

Like yoga, writing is a process and a practice. The critical way in which we understand our audience is part of that process, and we must return to it time and time again.