Have you (just) finished your yoga teacher training? Seen a teaching opportunity? Or are you looking for a new teaching job? You know you love teaching yoga and you’ve got a lot to offer to yoga studios, schools or even gyms. However, you probably need to hand in your CV (curriculum vitae). In this blog, I’ll give you a step by step plan for what to include in a great yoga teacher CV.   

Writing a yoga teacher CV is a strategic task. Allow yourself to really take all the time you need for it. Before you list all your skills and experiences and call it a day, it’s important to reflect, do some research and find clear answers to the following questions: 

1. What type of establishment are you interested in working for?

(E.g. a yoga school, yoga studio, a gym, a community centre, etc.).

2. What type of classes are you trained in and willing to offer?

(E.g. vinyasa, ashtanga, yin, Yoga Teacher Training material or workshop based activities).

3. What are the core values or mission statement of the establishment you want to apply for?

(E.g. Do they purposefully promote inclusivity? Are their classes geared towards an older audience? Or are they more focused on offering a form exercise?)

4. Who will be receiving your CV?

(E.g. is it a studio owner, a frontdesk assistant or an HR manager?)

5. What type of qualifications, certificates and (continuing) education have you completed to become a teacher?

(E.g. Maybe you’ve obtained a 200 Yoga Teacher Certificate and 50h of continuing education in yogic history).

6. What type of skills and experience do you have that ‘they’ are interested in? 

(E.g. it’s unlikely that your future employer wants to hear about the subjects you took in high school. But they will want to know about your experience working in marketing for a yoga or wellness  brand).

The answers to these questions will help you massively in knowing what to include in your yoga teacher CV. 

Let’s analyse the ‘steps’ to creating your yoga teacher CV.

1. Name & title 

Write down your first name(s), your last name(s) and any titles, letters or pronouns you use. Optionally, you could include the styles of yoga you’re trained in.

For example:

• Maria Joanna Fernandez Murcia – 200HR RYT* Hatha/Vinyasa
  she / her

*Note: RYT stands for Registered Yoga Teacher / CYT stands for Certified Yoga Teacher.

2. Contact details:

• Email: if at all possible, try to use a professional email address that’s not something like ‘yolo@hotmail.com’
• Phone: especially if you live or want to apply to work abroad, or you’re on the road, include your country code.
• Website: this is a great optional feature if you have one.
• Social media: if you use social media to promote your classes and services, you can include links to your Facebook page and Instagram account. 

Consider deleting any images online that could give off a bad impression, such as party pictures or posts you shared in the past but wouldn’t share now. If you prefer, make your account invisible. Remember there are many employers that will look for you on social media, even if you haven’t provided your links. 

For example:

• mariayoga@yogamaria.com
  +34 123 456 789
  www.mariayoga.com.es
  @mariayoga
  

Make sure that all of these details are up-to-date and people can actually reach you. You’ll be surprised to see how often people miss out on great opportunities because they didn’t update their contact details.

3. Teaching & work experience

After you’ve listed your contact details, you’ll describe your teaching experience. Do this in chronological order, from the most recent to the earliest experience. If you haven’t got any teaching experience yet, you can skip part A and go straight to B: relevant work experience.

A) Yoga teaching experience:

1. Write down the name of the workplace and their location
2. State your role and the time period you worked there
3. List between 2 and 5 of the responsibilities you had. Highlight the skills you gained and your achievements there

For example:

• Lotus Yoga Studio | Barcelona, Spain 
  Yin & Vinyasa Yoga Teacher | September 2020 – current
  Thorough class preparation for multi-level classes and daily studio set-up
  Sequencing and designing creative classes according to seasonal themes
  Monthly teacher assistant at recurring moon ritual workshops
  Nurturing student-teacher relationships by making an effort to get to know each individual
  Encouraging new students to join Lotus Yoga Studio through social media and word-of-mouth 

B) Work-experience:

Here you’ll write down every other job that has contributed to your skills development. Think of jobs that display the knowledge you have of specific material or programmes. It could be experience with a specific group of people or jobs that display you show initiative and are a team player.

These experiences might only be linked by ‘transferable skills’. These are skills which you originally developed for one role, but can be applied directly to another role. For example, my first job was in administration for a language school. I learned skills for booking classes/courses, writing formally, taking and recording payments and filing documents. My next job was a receptionist at a yoga centre. The fields are completely different, but my root skills were valuable for both roles.

1. Write down the name of the workplace and their location
2. State your role and the time period you worked there
3. List between 2 and 5 of the responsibilities you had. Highlight the skills you gained and your achievements there 

For example:

• International Language School  – Seville, Spain
  Front-Desk Agent – June 2019 – September 2020
  • Responsible for booking private and group classes with software such as Sutra, Mindbody, and Moomoo yoga
  • Marketing, communication and public relations on social media (LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram)
  • Customer service: register new students, answer phone calls, answer questions about the curriculum, and give recommendations

4. Training and education

Your yoga teaching certification or the fact you’ve taught yoga classes are not the only thing that will be considered in your application. Here, list all the types of education you have that have built up your current knowledge. They could be diplomas, certificates, continuing education, but also degrees or exams that are relevant for the job you’d like to apply for.

Follow this structure:

• Course title (classification/level) 
• Name of the school or education centre
• Time period

For example: 

• 200HR Yoga Teacher Training
  Beautiful Soul Studio – Seville, Spain
  June 2019
  
• Bachelor of Science – Psychology 
  University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
  September 2014 – May 2019

5. Other skills that are relevant

List here all the skills that are relevant to this teaching job. Think of your technology skills: using Zoom, IG Live, YouTube or other video platforms. You could also include your marketing, communication, organisation, and collaboration skills. 

For example:

• Social media skills:
  Photo and video editing
  Planoly, Later
  Instagram (all features)
  Facebook Business
  YouTube Studio

• Teaching skills:
  Creative prop-use
  Trauma informed
  Chair yoga
  Advanced anatomy
  Inclusivity and diversity

I hope this little guide has given you some clarity and helped you to determine what to include when you create your yoga teacher CV. If you’d like to learn more about creating a yoga teacher CV, join us for our English for Yoga Teachers Course. 

In the English for Yoga Teachers Course, we’ll explore important things such as the design, fonts and colours. Whether to include your insurance or Yoga Alliance registration. The type of language and tenses to write in. And we’ll clear up common questions like if you should use a photo and how to find the right synonyms that really describe you and make your CV stand out. In our English for Yoga Teachers Course, I’ll get super specific and explain what more to include and how to create a killer yoga teacher CV.