Yoga Teachers: Spark Your Story

May 6, 2014

Connect with your students and tribe!

My friend Rachel Resnick has been helping entrepreneurs, healers and small business owners rev their career by finding their voice on the page and the stage. Her teachings at Writers on Fire are fodder for the conversation for us wellness industry evolutionaries. In this podcast you will harness the power of your voice and your story for income and impact.

If you like this conversation, click this link to register for Rachel's upcoming free webinar.

In this Interview We Talk About

• Some of the biggest problems in your yoga teaching:
• The problem of putting yourselves on a pedestal
• A Simple structure to get your stories out
• How to get studio/newsletter/blog mileage out of the same story
• Looking at your stories from different angles
• Building a Tribe with Stories
• What voice is … and how to use it more effectively

Are you not connecting to where your students are, or what they want? Are you bored by your own teaching? Are you not skillfully building a following around your teaching... and therefore, not making enough money? Do you not
know what to put in your newsletters or on your website? Are you curious about what is TMI and what is just boring? Then listen.

What we mention in this episode

Concrete ways to combat these specific problems through the deep and powerful practice of personal narrative.

What is your personal narrative.

• Relatability through the power of vulnerability
• The power of point of view; switching from teacher to student perspective
• The art of falling in love with your teaching again through story discipline
• The hidden trap of low self worth; and how claiming your voice and story can turn that around and yield more money
• The endless source of story rooted right in your own body, your own senses, your own memories.

About Rachel Resnick + Writers on Fire

Rachel started Writers On Fire in 2004 because she saw all these experts who couldn’t communicate their message in a noisy world. Every day, more yoga teachers appear. Every day, more experts crowd the market. Every day, a new message launches, a new yoga studio opens. How will you stand out? Expertise is no longer enough. You must also:

1. Emotionally Engage
2. Entertain
3. That is Your Story. Your Personal Story. Your Signature Story.

Register for Rachel's webinar and learn  about the need to find your Signature Story. And she’ll share some tips to get you started. She’ll talk about the Art of Memoir. What is the right way to tell Your Signature Story so you attract clients and make money. And why memoir is urgently needed in today’s crowded marketplace.

She’ll talk about the critical missing ingredient that most people in the wellness world don’t understand and don’t know how to teach.

Favorite Quotes from the Conversation

• "I hope you're jotting notes down because that is how story comes up…"
• "You will jog your memory as you write."
• "Let your story be your practice. Add in 5 minutes of writing. Let it arise, and let it anchor in your message."
• "I write to be surprised. That is what makes it vital."
• "As humans, we completely crave story. We always will."
• "Creating a story is communion."
• "Think of 1 person you are sharing with."
• "We're not taking time to be meditative about your own journey."
• "Our culture is intimacy repressed."
• "Vulnerability is the # 1 place of connection and inspiration."
• "Sales is the transfer of inspiration."
• "I always lie in my early drafts. Most people do."
• "People are hyperaware of who has depth. People are attracted to depth."
• "Expertise is not enough. You need to emotionally engage and entertain."

Other bits:
Suggested title for Cate's next blog post: The Tightest Yogi in the Room

Write Your First Draft Exercise:

1. What is 1 before moment in a story for you. Write in first person. Bring us there.
2. What is 1 deciding moment in your journey of transformation that shifted your outcome? Write in first person. Bring us there.
3. What is 1 after moment in where you are today, as related to 1 and 2?  Write in first person. Bring us here.
4. You wrote a story with an arc. Now move onto the Craft Your Writing Exercise.

Craft Your Writing Exercise:

1. Give yourself time to write a few drafts. Know that the first draft will be shitty. It just is.
2. Identify if your first draft needs you to put more in or take more out.
3. Ask questions of your draft. What is this story really about?
4. Revise according to your revelation about what your story is really about.
5. Remember, write in the present moment that the story was taking place. Inhabit that moment. Create mini-movies for your readers.

Register for Super Spark Your Writing  - Free Webinar with Rachel Resnick!