How to prepare your first lecture as a teacher

For yoga teachers it is very important to share knowledge about yoga and conscious-healthy lifestyle. Lecture – it is one of the ways to share knowledge, so it is important to share experience in practical yoga classes and also in the form of lecture.

By giving lecture you allow your students and listeners to get wider and deeper knowledge about yoga system, meditation, pranayamas, shatkarmas, mantra chanting, Vedic culture, philosophy of yoga, yogic diet. It adds great value to you as a teacher and for listeners to their life and personal yoga practice.

By preparing for lecture your experience becomes much wider and sharing lecture becomes one of the ways for personal growth as a yoga teacher.

How to prepare for lecture

1) Choose topic.

2) Prepare material, find knowledge and information that hard to get and prepare it.

3) Think about your own experience as a basis of lecture.

4) Make conspect (an overall view) or write full topic of lecture (especially for beginners yoga teachers). It will allow one more time to thing about material, make your speech better, overcome fear.

How to work with auditory

1) Imagine your potential listeners. People want to get experience that have relation with their experience. Very often listeners have some similarities with teacher. So choose material by characteristics of your listeners.

2) First impression mostly gives success. It’s important to respect dress-code, that is accepted in this surrounding where you give lecture. Preferably to choose neutral, maximum closed clothes not to attract excessive attention of opposite gender.

3) Control relation with listeners. It is advisable to track how attentively they listen to you. When audience have questions it shows interest about lecture and deep understanding of material. When there are no questions it means that there was no contact and understanding. By tracking how attentively they listen it allows to activate awareness of listeners.

4) Personal experience examples give deeper understanding of lecture.

5) Talk on the language of your listeners. Phrases, words, understanding that you are using they should be easily understanding for listeners. Need to master various styles of speech.

6) Mastering nonverbal communication (facial expressions, gestures, posture, intonation).

7) It’s recommended to sit with straight back, because then energy can flow freely in energy channels. Straight back gives confidence. It’s very important to control gesticulation. Don’t use gestures in the level of pelvis and below, all gestures can be used from level of chest. It’s not allowed to use closed gestures, between hands and body there should always be space.

8) Control intonation. Beginner yoga teachers often have “jumping voice.” To overcome it use relaxation practice (deep slow breathing, Mantra Om, calm stretching). Voice should be confident.

Main material

1) Give material level that your auditory will understand. Content should be understandable, capacity not to big. Preparing to lecture better to orientate into middle level.

2) Systematically open topic.

3) Use additional multimedia: posters, stands, literature sources, give practical experience if it’s possible. People hardly understand material only by listening.

4) Principle of truth. Don’t lie about yourself, about facts, in this case you will only loose trust of listeners. It’s important to comfirm reliability of material by showing sources, primal-sources.

5) Principle of simplicity. Tell wise things in simple words. It happens when energy rises to ajna chakra. Real teacher can explain essence of his understanding for 6 year old kid.

6) Relation with yoga practice. You should explain how people can use this knowledge in practice, in life.

Structure of lecture

1) Introduction part, that shows goals of lecture, short characteristic of problem, main idea, relation with previous lectures (if they were before).

2) Main part that explains the whole topic, experience, various facts, various points of view, shows relation with practice, explains how to use.

3) Final part. It’s important to make conclusions, give guidelines for personal work, methodical advice, answer to questions.

Recognize and correct mistakes

1) You can be aware of your behaviour in the time of lecture by recording it to video or recorder. By listening videos and audio it allows to understand typical speech mistakes, words-parasites, to see defects of gestures.

2) Experience of giving lectures – it is the main way for self-development as a lecturer.

3) Personal energy and tapas – it is the main foundation for successful lecture.

Source: OUM.RU