The pros and cons of teaching yoga online

About twelve years ago my most reliable and consistent yoga client decided to move to New York to be closer to her family. The news hit me hard because I both cared about her, and relied on the income from our sessions (she was doing yoga with me three times a week). But I dealt with it, and did my best to connect her with a teacher from the same tradition in New York. But then, right before she left, she asked me “How about phone yoga?” I couldn’t envision phone yoga, but I had an alternative idea – how about Skype yoga? We decided to give it a try, and my go-away present for her was a webcam to mount on her Dell computer (this was a long time ago  )

I started teaching her yoga over Skype soon after, and we are still doing it twelve years later (now I see her five times a week). I have now taught many other yoga clients online from all over the world. In the course of those years technology has evolved, connection and camera quality has greatly improved, and all sorts of other video conferencing options had popped up on the market. So today I wanted to reflect on what it takes to teach yoga online, and what I have learned over those years.