By Josh Jennings
While yoga instructor Kacey Smith always sets a goal for the classes she leads, she also monitors cues coming from her pupils as the classes unfold. Sometimes, she'll discern that she needs to intensify things and other times that it's best to ease off.
She says she's become more attuned to reading the room through her growing experience and training.
Kacey Smith started her own yoga instruction business in 2012.
"I believe an experienced teacher can definitely read the room well," says Smith. "If people start to come out of the pose or they're getting a little fatigued, that's usually a sign. We're always encouraging people to listen to their own body and listen to their breath. If they need to back off, we tell them to back off."
Smith, director of Hawthorn East yoga studio Kula Yoga, typically splits her time between teaching classes and running her business.
She says her classes are aimed at helping as many people as possible be fitter, healthier and happier through yoga; running her business involves everything from business development, planning and marketing to managing and training staff, administration and customer service.
"The thing I love the most about my job is the people," she says. "I've met so many amazing people since we opened the studio." In Victoria, Yoga Australia lists 23 registered yoga teacher training programs it approves for individuals interested in becoming yoga teachers.
Smith says her own gravitation to yoga teaching evolved out of her participation in yoga classes as a pupil. She had previously worked in marketing - after studying marketing and PR at RMIT from 1998-2002 - but enrolled in yoga instructor training through YYoga, Canada's largest yoga company, in 2009.
She began to create corporate yoga classes in Melbourne and established Kula Yoga in 2012.
One of her most satisfying achievements, she says, is the success of the yoga cruises she started running in Kula Yoga's first year.
She's been running the retreats around Bali and Lombok for three years and next year she's expanding to Fiji.
"I wanted to do something a little different from your standard yoga retreat. I learned as I went. That first year was an amazing challenge and very rewarding because it went well, but it could have gone either way." To be successful at yoga instruction, Smith says aspiring teachers need some key attributes.
"They need to be able to have the confidence to hold a room, and that comes with experience and study, so I highly recommend they find a style of yoga they enjoy and would enjoy teaching, and start to explore different training options within that style that might suit them."