Yoga Teachers: Why Your Time on the Mat Is Just a Warm-Up
In this Changemaker Challenge Career Clarity Session, Carly Banks sits down with Yoga Health Coach Alec Hurley to discuss the difference between fitness instructors and transformational teachers.
Alec was trained professionally as a chef. For years, he led a very arhythmic lifestyle working as a chef and managing kitchens. He realized he needed to make a change. He went back to and dove deeper into his yoga practice and started to enjoy life a bit more. Around the time he started teaching yoga, he found the Yogahealer Real Life Show podcast and realized there were changes he could make in his lifestyle that would better support his wellbeing. He started making those changes and it made a huge difference, not only in how he experienced his day to day life, but also in how he was able to show up for others. So he enrolled in Yoga Health Coaching as a way to take control of his career as well as his physiology.
Alec weaves lifestyle lessons into his yoga classes, calling them “warm-ups for life” and reminding his students that while they refine their breathing, their attention, and their awareness during class, the real practice starts when they leave the studio. In this way, he differentiates himself from fitness instructors. The 10 habits of ayurveda that we learn to teach in Yoga Health Coaching assist in the implementation of taking our yoga off the mat. Implementing and automating the 10 habits is even more important for yoga teachers, who are often keeping arhythmic schedules and running from place to place to teach. Post YHC, Alec has been able to design a schedule for himself that helps keep him in a state of ease and flow.
What you’ll get out of tuning in:
- How YHC makes you a solopreneur while providing you with a network of colleagues and “coworkers.”
- How yoga teachers differ from fitness instructors.
- How the 10 habits of Ayurveda are the tools that help us live our yoga off the mat.
Links Mentioned in Episode:
Show Highlights:
- 0:00 – One of the benefits of being a yoga health coach is that while we are all solopreneurs, we have a network of colleagues or “coworkers” that span the globe.
- 2:26 – Alec was trained professionally as a chef. For years, he led a very arhythmic lifestyle working as a chef and managing kitchens. He realized he needed to make a change. He went back to and dove deeper into his yoga practice and started to enjoy life a bit more. Around the time he started teaching yoga, he found the Yogahealer Real Life Show podcast and realized there were changes he could make in his lifestyle that would better support his wellbeing. He started making those changes and it made a huge difference, not only in how he experienced his day to day life, but also in how he was able to show up for others. So he enrolled in Yoga Health Coaching as a way to take control of his career as well as his physiology.
- 6:35 – Alec weaves lifestyle lessons into his yoga classes, calling them “warm-ups for life” and reminding his students that while they refine their breathing, their attention, and their awareness during class, the real practice starts when they leave the studio. In this way, he differentiates himself from fitness instructors.
- 8:46 – The 10 habits of ayurveda that we learn to teach in Yoga Health Coaching assist in the implementation of taking our yoga off the mat.
- 10:14 – Implementing and automating the 10 habits is even more important for yoga teachers, who are often keeping arhythmic schedules and running from place to place to teach.
- 12:22 – In addition to teaching and coaching, Alec still works as a chef, cooking privately for people, in a more relaxed environment and with a sense of ease that helps keep him in a state of flow.
Favorite Quotes:
- “We can’t really gives something that we don’t have a full and true understanding of ourselves.” — Carly Banks
- “Over time, I’ve been able to create my own schedule to where it supports me in deeper ways. . . . So I have these really key points in my day that help anchor me into what I’m trying to create this day, who I’m trying to serve this day and how can I better support myself along this journey while supporting others.” — Alec Hurley
- “We can be doing our dharma . . . but stress and tension come from being out of alignment with self.” — Carly Banks
Guest BIO:
Alec Hurley is a yoga teacher in the San Diego area and a lifelong surfer. He is the founder of Higher Self Wellness and an avid practitioner of ancient wisdom and spiritual practices which he infuses into his public yoga classes and group program “The Art of Connection”. He is professionally trained as a Chef and incorporates the ancient wisdom of “food as medicine” into his culinary creations. Currently enrolled in the Yoga Health Coaching program, Alec is adding the practices of personal and planetary alignment into his modern healthy lifestyle toolkit to help shift the collective into deeper states of connection. You can download a Free guided meditation here to get a deeper sense of what he is all about.
