How to Become a Hatha Yoga Teacher

Learning how to become a Hatha yoga teacher will give you the perfect foundation for a lucrative career in yoga!

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know including:

• Qualifications Needed to be a Hatha Yoga Teacher
• How Long Will It Take to Become a Hatha Yoga Teacher?
• Salary Expectations for Becoming a Hatha Yoga Teacher
• Career Options for Becoming a Hatha Yoga Instructor
• Finding a Job as a Hatha Yoga Teacher
• Career Advancement Opportunities for Hatha Yoga
• Benefits of Becoming a Hatha Yoga Teacher
• Skills Needed for Becoming a Hatha Yoga Instructor

Before we start, the most important thing for starting your yoga career is boosting your expertise with the right qualifications. OriGym’s Level 3 Diploma in Yoga Teaching provides the ideal foundation, with 400 hours of guided learning and bespoke online resources.

Alternatively, download and read our course prospectus for the full range of fitness and yoga courses available. 

How to Become a Hatha Yoga Teacher

Now we’ll dive in and take you through everything you need to consider if you’re interested in becoming a Hatha yoga instructor!

Qualifications Needed to Become a Hatha Yoga

As we’ve already mentioned, you need to make sure that you get your qualifications exactly right, both in terms of the content you study and the accreditation you receive for completing your course.

Let’s break these down now.

Level 3 Diploma in Yoga Teaching

The first qualification you should get is a Level 3 diploma in yoga teaching. 

This is the necessary baseline qualification which you’ll need if you want to specify later, with a more specialist qualification.

You’ll receive crucial information relating to teaching yoga classes, planning your sessions, and other fundamentals for becoming a Hatha yoga teacher. 

When choosing a course, you will want to opt for a vocational training provider that is fully regulated, to prove your expertise to potential employers and clients. If your qualification is unregulated, you will struggle to find work as an instructor! 

For example, OriGym's yoga instructing courses are regulated by the government standards agency Ofqual and is also awarded by Focus Awards.

Having this regulation guarantees that the course is approved by a respectable third party to meet the National standards of education and training.

This will guarantee that you have all of the foundational knowledge you need to teach effectively and accurately. 

This Level 3 qualification will include:

• Anatomy and Physiology: You’ll learn how the human body works, especially how they interact during physical exertion like yoga 
• Health and Safety During Yoga: Here you’ll learn some of the legal elements of your job as a yoga teacher, ensuring a safe environment during yoga, and equality and diversity
• Planning a Level 3 Yoga Session: You’ll learn how to design a yoga class for special populations, individuals, and groups in this module as well as the underpinnings of yoga teaching and structuring a class around them
• Delivering a Yoga Session: This will be all about rapport, communication, and motivating your clients in a variety of settings and situations

An in-depth course like ours is blended learning only. This means there’s a combination of in-person training and online learning. 

As part of this, you’ll need to complete at least 50 hours of yoga practice in workshops alongside access to our state-of-the-art eLearning platform!

If you want to know how to become a Hatha yoga teacher, one of the most important things to be aware of is how many “accredited hours” a course has.

The standard employers will expect is 200 hours of yoga teacher training. This equates to the depth and amount of time on average it will take to complete if you had no prior knowledge or experience.

Our own course offers 400 hours of accredited yoga teacher training, ensuring you’ve got a huge advantage over the competition! 

This means you’re starting with a much more solid, and in-depth, foundation for further specialisation when becoming a Hatha yoga instructor!

Blended yoga courses like ours include in-person workshops as well as a practical assessment at the end where you plan and deliver:

• A meditation sessions
• A yoga class

The yoga class you plan and deliver must include a range of asanas and sequences and will take place in one of our practical centres located across the country.

Also, unlike a lot of our competitors, there’s no hidden fees like interest on instalment payment plans, or having to pay for resits if you don’t pass the first time, ensuring the price you see is always the price you pay. 

Level 4 Specialist Yoga Teacher Training

To become a Hatha yoga teacher, you’ll also need to complete a specialist Level 4 diploma in yoga instruction.

This will provide a more in-depth foundational understanding of the philosophy and practice of yoga, as well as allowing to gain specific knowledge of Hatha.

This will develop the principles of Level 3 as well as introducing:

• Understanding and Applying the Philosophy and Spiritual Principles of Yoga: You’ll learn more about the origin and different styles of yoga as well as the benefits of meditation for yogic practice
• Yogic Breathing Styles: Otherwise known as Pranayama, you’ll learn breathing exercises and techniques. These work with asanas to create the necessary, well-balanced practice when becoming a Hatha yoga teacher 
• Teaching Asanas for a Variety of Mixed Abilities: You’ll learn a variety of asanas to help advance learner and how to adjust your practice for a variety of different needs including how yoga can be harnessed for physical rehabilitation
• Planning and Delivering Yoga Sessions: You’ll discover how to plan progressive or regressive exercise based on the population and ability of students. This builds on Level 3 to help you adjust your teaching for a variety of needs and demographics. 

For these courses you’ll be assessed for each module with assignments and online exams. 

Applying philosophy will include a case study and a practical, as well as the extensive practical planning of a lesson which will form a huge part of your final assessment.

How Long Will it Take to Become a Hatha Yoga Teacher?

The Level 3 training course, as we’ve mentioned, includes studying online and practical workshops.

Because of this combination, the course can take as little or long as you like. To give an indication, though, the average student takes 4 months to complete this course.

The Level 4 course is structured in a similar way, and the average completion time is the same: 4 months.

So, in short, you could become a Hatha yoga teacher with complete, advanced qualifications in just 8 months time!

You may wonder why becoming a Hatha yoga teacher takes this long? As we’ve already touched on, both of OriGym’s yoga teacher training courses provide a massive 400 hours of guided learning.

This establishes a strong foundation for your career and guarantees extensive knowledge to potential employers and clients as it equates to the length and breadth of study. 

We’ll cover the benefits of this in more detail later in the article, when we look at career options for becoming a Hatha yoga instructor.

Salary Expectations for Becoming a Hatha Yoga Instructor

If you’re already looking at how to become a Hatha yoga instructor, the likelihood is you’ll want to know exactly what salary you can expect.

Obviously, this depends on the kind of work you decide to do and the environment you want to work in, but first, let’s look at the average salary expectations for yoga teachers.

Because Hatha is one of the most fundamental styles of yoga, it can be hard to measure the average salary as so many people will not stipulate this in their job advertisements.

The easiest way to look at the average for becoming a Hatha yoga instructor in the UK is to look at a holistic yoga teacher salary, and examine how salary develops with experience.

For example, according to Talent the average salary for a yoga teacher is £44,996 annually, based on 91 salaries recorded.

As you can see from this graph, it improves and increases over time based on experience. This means that becoming a Hatha yoga instructor will help you to earn more by:

• Developing a much sought-after speciality
• Increasing your level of qualification
• Increasing your experience levels

It’s impossible to find any exact amount for an average salary for specialities in yoga because this is something unique to independent instructors. 

These average salaries are always based on job listings which, predominantly, will advertise a holistic position for their studio.

Even if they’re more advanced positions they will rarely specify a particular style. This is because when you’re working in a studio you’ll be expected to fulfil a wider variety of roles.

According to Glassdoor however, the average salary, based on 725 salary declarations is:

Again, the average is hard to calculate because a lot of the different variables which affect salary aren’t considered by these websites such as:

• Location 
• Particular specialisations
• Competition in your area

You don’t just want to know how to become a Hatha yoga teacher, but also how to be successful!

We’ll have a look at different career options and which ones can potentially attract more people by boosting your experience and, ultimately, your income.

Career Options for Becoming a Hatha Yoga Instructor in the UK

Your next step after getting qualified is to figure out where, and how, you want to work.

We’ll run through each option to show the salary expectations of each and how your role would work with each model.

Contracted or Salaried Work

These are the positions we touched upon when looking at the average salary. Though it may be difficult to find the average, especially for a particular style, looking at individual jobs will still give you a better idea of income.  

Contracted and salaried work just means that you would work for a studio or a gym where you’re paid a wage, irrespective of clients you bring in, or the amount of classes you teach.

This is a stable option if you’re just starting out and becoming a Hatha yoga teacher fresh out of qualifying.

That’s because there will be a steady stream of clients and classes, usually provided and determined by the facility, rather than you having to source your own pool of people. 

For example, this salaried position is offering £24,000, which is an excellent starting salary that puts you in line with the Glassdoor estimates we examined earlier.

However, positions like this will usually expect a much more holistic approach, teaching a variety of classes rather than a specific speciality. 

As you can see, you’d be expected to have some knowledge of a variety of different styles to do a general, salaried role like this one. 

This is often expected, in many different yoga instructor roles, but don’t let that deter you from becoming a Hatha yoga teacher!

The grounding needed for these holistic positions is provided by a good Level 3 yoga diploma. By studying with a reputable provider, like OriGym, you’ll have the foundation you need!

Though roles specifying just Hatha are rare, there are occasionally ones like this contracted role:

If you have a Level 4 from a provider like ourselves, you’ll have the edge over other applicants who only have a Level 3,  or those that have completed a course with only 200 guided learning hours.

A position like this is great whilst you’re becoming a Hatha yoga teacher and establishing yourself. You can focus your practice on Hatha, develop your niche,  and start to build up a client base.

There’s also nothing to stop you from fitting classes around your contracted work, if you’re in a more holistic role, to build a client base specifically for Hatha whilst you grow your reputation.

Working Freelance

This is one of the most popular options for yoga teachers as there’s far more freedom, and much less restriction on the money you earn.

Working freelance just means that you’re in control of the hours and times you work, and can teach in a variety of different locations rather than being contracted to one company.

As you can see here, though there’s no cap on potential income, you may be starting with less consistency and not many hours.

You can work in several different locations but each one may only be able to offer you one or two classes at first.

Looking at this position below, you can see the upper end of what you can earn based on how popular your classes are and the availability of the facility you’re working for:

One of the reasons freelance is great is because it leaves plenty of room to offer your own classes and master your niche.

You can also cast a wider net and find more clients, from different environments, to increase your adaptability and experience with different needs and abilities.

Other places you could work as a Hatha yoga instructor include:

• People’s offices or places of work
• Sports centre
• Gym
• Spas & Wellness centres
• Hotels

You could even find work in educational establishments! This job listing is asking for a yoga teacher to work part time, offering yoga as part of PE sessions:

In the job description on their website, it stipulates the days and the hours that you would be working:

The benefits of a position like this are similar to that of freelance work. Working part time, in a setting other than a studio or a gym, will help you:

• Gain more experience
• Adapt to different audiences
• Develop your niche
• Focus on your personal and professional development

You can also do your own classes around a schedule like this because you’ll have this as a steady income, whilst you’re growing your client base and class popularity.

We’ll look in more detail now at how you can start your own independent classes, for a potentially uncapped income!

Having Your Own Independent Classes

Having your own classes has costs of its own depending on the kind of space you want to work out of and how you want to structure your classes!

You don’t necessarily need your own studio, or even to work out of an existing yoga studio. You can rent a space in a leisure centre, community centre, or even work from a home studio.

Starting your own independent classes is a huge commitment, but it’s one that can potentially be incredibly rewarding as well as lucrative.

I Yoga, who surveyed 100 drop-in yoga classes in London, found that the average price was £15.50:

Of course, it’s important to remember that classes in London will usually be higher, because of the cost of living.

However, as we can see from these examples below, it’s a figure closely mirrored in other areas of the country:

Yoga Kula in Leeds, for instance, charge £15 for their drop-in sessions.

They offer a variety of Hatha yoga classes, with two different tutors, so this should reinforce how popular and profitable this style is!

Equally, Barefoot Yoga in Birmingham charges similar prices for individual classes and drop-in sessions.

Though these are both from studios, they give you an idea of how much money you can make after becoming a Hatha yoga instructor!

In fact, even if you’re working out of a rented space rather than a studio, you can still charge package prices as well as for individual sessions. 

Looking at these potential prices you can see that becoming a Hatha yoga teacher in the UK can make you a lot of money!

For instance, if you charge a rate like this, between £8 and £10 then, you only need 10 people to turn up for you to make £80 per class.

And that’s just on the lower end of the pricing system. If you were to do two classes per day, for five days, you’ll be making £21,200 per year!

Once you’ve got more experience, and you’ve built up your reputation, your classes will be in higher demand and you can start charging more.

Even if you just charged £10 instead of £8 you’ll be making £26,500 per year minus the costs of equipment, rent for a space, and other small costs.

This should help you understand how to be a Hatha yoga teacher in a variety of settings, and how adaptable the role is!

There’s a huge range of options, as well as combinations of different work available to you when you start out.

Finding a Job as a Hatha Yoga Teacher

Though we’ve seen a few listings for a holistic yoga position, it’s very rare that you will get a job advertisement for a particular style of yoga.

Your best bet is to look into general job listings like the ones listed above for freelance work on sites like:

• Indeed
• Glassdoor 
• Leisure Jobs (fitness-specific job board) 

This way you can build a reputation with several venues and introduce your style of class or practice in that facility.

Another option is to look for specific studios and approach them directly for potential positions.

For instance, you could look for studios already offering Hatha, as you know it’s something they’re interested in, or approach studios where it’s missing from their schedule.

Websites for particular studios, in fact, often have pages called “careers” or “work with us” specifically for us. 

Triyoga have their job listings on a specific page on their website and advertise a range of roles:

Similarly, The Life Centre has a “Work For Us” page where you can send a CV, copies of your yoga teacher insurance certificates, and a cover letter explaining why you want to work for them. 

If you make sure you keep checking local studios, maybe ones that you’ve worked for freelance, or ones where you go to practice yourself, you’ll be able to stay on top of any job listings.

Benefits of Becoming a Hatha Yoga Teacher

So we’ve covered some of the steps for how to become a Hatha yoga instructor, but what about the benefits of the role?

Chances are, you’re already aware of this style of yoga either from the studio you practice in or following Hatha yoga instagram accounts.

But let’s look at why it’s not just an appealing style but also a lucrative choice. 

It’s Adaptable

Because of its moderate pace and static holds for each posture, the intensity of classes can be scaled.

You can choose to split classes based on:

• Ability
• Focus
• Combination

Perhaps the most simple way to do this is to split your classes into “yoga for beginners” and “intermediate yoga” like One Yoga Studio have with their videos:

One of the most common classes you will see is Hatha for beginners, or using Hatha as the foundation for a yoga class for beginners.

This is because the slower pace and minimal flow makes it an easier style to use when you’re teaching complete beginners or people with less experience.

As you can see though, by including other elements, or slightly increasing the flow, this class can be brought up a notch and made harder for more advanced practitioners.

So, why is this a benefit to you as well as the client? Essentially, by creating more classes, you’re being more specific and catering more acutely to people’s needs.

Even if you only had “Beginners” and “Intermediate”, you could charge as little as £5 per class and you’d only have to have 10 people turn up, and offer one of each class, to make an extra £5,200 a year!

This shows how to become a Hatha yoga teacher alongside freelance or part time work in a studio or gym, whilst you’re just starting out and developing your career.

Once you’ve gained more clients, you can start to:

• Increase the variety of classes
• Increase the frequency of each class
• Charge more as you gain experience and reputation
  

You could also decide to combine your style of yoga with another to create a flow with a mixed practice.

This is another way in which becoming a Hatha yoga instructor can be lucrative because of its adaptability and how many different styles of class you could potentially teach. 

It’s a Great Baseline for Other Styles

As well as referring to a specific, traditional style of yoga, “Hatha” is an umbrella term for all styles that incorporate poses, breathing and meditation.

These are the three elements of yoga according to the Hatha Pradipika:

• Asanas (Postures and positions held physically during practice)
• Pranayama (Breathing techniques and control)
• Dyana (Meditative practice)

There’s a heavier emphasis on the physical elements of yoga with Hatha, and the mastery of asanas, and so it forms a strong baseline for other styles.

In the West, many styles can be classified as Hatha because of its generalised definition, including:

• Ashtanga
• Vinyasa
• Iyengar
• Power Yoga

And a vast array of other styles you may be familiar with, all technically fall under the umbrella of Hatha.

Now obviously there are nuanced differences between the focus, purpose, and techniques within these styles.

However, because of the adaptability of Hatha, and its fundamental role for yoga as a whole, it creates the perfect jumping off point for developing your career further.

Interested in other styles as well? Check our OriGym’s other articles on becoming a specific kind of yoga teacher:

• How to Become a Bikram Yoga Instructor
• How to Become an Ashtanga Yoga Teacher
• Hatha Yoga vs Vinyasa Yoga

You will be able to charge more for classes because of your increased experience and expertise too!

By utilising Hatha as a foundation, you'll also be able to combine and separate two different styles. 

For example, if you become a Hatha yoga teacher and add Vinyasa to your styles you could offer:

• Beginner’s Yoga (General beginner’s class building on the fundamentals of Hatha and foundational asanas)
• Beginner’s Hatha (You could offer this as a separate class. Though you can offer essentially the same structure you may attract different clients)

Like we’ve said, the more you offer and the more versatile you are, you’ll grow trust with clients as well as more experience and adaptability.

This will mean you can increasingly charge more, offer more classes, and work towards potentially growing your business or opening your own studio!

It Benefits Mental Health

Hatha yoga has huge swathes of psychological benefits including:

• Improving sleep
• Reducing stress
• Helping with depression

In fact, a scientific study found that Hatha yoga specifically helped to reduce cortisol levels in the body! 

This is a stress hormone that not only interferes with our day-to-day wellbeing, but high levels of it can prevent sleep and interrupt our body’s natural cycles.

Several studies, like this one, looking at the psychological impact of yoga, usually focus on Hatha specifically because it’s such a universal and fundamental style.

This is great for you and your clients. You can attract a lot of different people because of this; Hatha is one of the most diverse styles to reach a plethora of goals.

Being able to promote the mental benefits of this style, as well as its physical effects, will help you to attract a wider range of clients and class members all looking for something different!

It’s Great for Fitness Goals 

It’s not just great for your mind and general wellbeing though! Hatha is also one of the best styles to root more fitness oriented flows in

Because Hatha has less flow between poses than other styles, as we’ve already shown it can be scaled based on ability.

One of the ways you can adjust it is to diversify the poses based on difficulty and which muscles they’re exercising.

You can meet plenty of the most common fitness goals using different sets of asanas. For example, Hatha is great for:

• Strengthening your core
• Increasing flexibility
• Better posture and alignment
• Toning muscles

You can promote these advantages, alongside the psychological effects, to show the holistic benefits of Hatha as a whole.

This is why knowing how to become a Hatha yoga teacher will mean you’ve got one of the most adaptable, and profitable, styles to teach the broadest range of clients and class members possible! 

Career Advancement Opportunities for Hatha Yoga Instructors

We’ll now run through some of the advancements once you’ve established your practice and got some experience under your belt!

Start Your Own Studio

Obviously, starting your own yoga studio will have higher earning potential because there’s technically no cap on your earnings like with a salaried position!

Some of the benefits of owning your own studio include:

• Freedom to dictate which classes you offer
• How much you earn is up to you
• More flexible hours
• Creative control of branding and the aesthetics of the studio
• Can choose your own team

Depending on location, it can be rare for a studio to specialise in one particular style of yoga because it’s often more lucrative to offer a wider variety.

For example, Eleven:Eleven in Liverpool offer Hatha as part of a wide range of different classes:

As you can see, Hatha is included in the timetable without necessarily being the focus. 

However, when we look closer at the tutors and the styles, there’s a focus on Hatha proving its fundamental role and importance in yoga timetables:

This shows just how adaptable Hatha is, and how foundational it is for other styles, as two of the classes offered at the studio focus on this base level.

A lot of the tutors themselves either qualified with Hatha originally or privilege it in the description of their expertise:

All of this should give you an idea of how important Hatha is for building your own studio; at the very least it’s a vital class to include.

Looking at Eleven:Eleven’s prices you can see how much you can make when you own your studio:

The more reputation you have, and the more often drop ins happen, the more likely they are to lock into packages and your income will be regularly high!

But, these earnings are representative of what you could achieve, especially as you grow and:

• Establish a solid niche
• Gain plenty of experience
• Build up a positive reputation

If you were to start a studio that focused on Hatha, and its combination with other compatible styles, you’d have a USP which is essential for any fitness business!

If you were to start a studio focusing on Hatha, and you utilised some of the key yoga teacher resources, you’d have a USP which is essential for any fitness business!

There’s pros and cons to offering a wider variety versus specialising and improving with that niche as much as possible.

If you’re interested in owning your own studio there’s a few initial important steps you’ll need to take:

• Having a clear and detailed yoga business plan
• Start looking at some marketing ideas for your yoga business
• Look at some of the best yoga studios in the UK to check out the competition!
• Write your yoga studio mission statement

Go Online

As with many businesses and niches, if you can develop one of the best yoga teacher sites, you’re able to develop a significant opportunity for revenue 

Given the rise of people working from home, either full time or as part of hybrid working, more and more people are practising their yoga at home!

The advancements in personal technology also means it’s easier than ever to create high quality video content yourself, on a budget. As long as you have:

• A smartphone with a decent camera 
• A podcasting microphone
• A high quality webcam

You could either invest in these things, or utilise what you already have, to create instructional videos of Hatha yoga flows. 

The benefits of becoming a Hatha yoga teacher online include:

• No overheads or rent for a studio space
• You can take more clients due to cutting out travel time!
• You’re not limited by location - you can teach anybody, no matter where they are in the world!
• You won’t have to buy yoga equipment for anybody but yourself
• The freedom and comfort of working from home

 As you’ll be in competition with anybody online, instead of just people in your area, this can be a difficult business to start your career with.

However, whilst you’re developing your brand, marketing strategy, and social media presence, you can film the classes you’re teaching!

This is a great way to build towards your own business, whether you create a home yoga studio or open your own venue.

As long as everybody in the class is comfortable, you can generate your video content from the classes you’re teaching already and either live stream them, or upload them later.

Yoga Soul in Manchester offer their online service as a livestream option. This way the content isn’t separate and people can feel part of a class environment without leaving the comfort of their own home!

The benefit of uploaded video content, however, is that there’s more flexibility in terms of when your clients can use it to practice.

Now Studio in Bristol offers free, short practice videos alongside their usual class timetables, catering to people’s varying schedules and commitments. 

Phrased in this way, listing what clients can “expect” from a class, will introduce your personality and encourage people to sign up for online packages or in-person classes too!

You can offer this content for free initially, like Now Studio have done, as a way of getting more private yoga clients to your website and start building rapport with them.

This isn’t just great for new clients but can also be supplementary material that you offer to people taking part in in-person classes.

Run Hatha Yoga Retreats

Once you’ve got the qualifications needed to become a Hatha yoga teacher, you can look into starting your own yoga retreats and yoga holidays!

Though this might seem like a daunting task if you’ve only just started your career. However, it can be incredibly rewarding and is one of the best ways to advance your career and boost your income!

The price you charge will depend on:

• Location (will it be in the UK or abroad?)
• Duration (will it be overnight, a weekend, or a full week?)
• What you include (meals, style of accommodation, any extras like excursions)
• Amount of classes in a day
• The style and level of yoga 

Generally, a yoga retreat will include staying in accommodation with a group and will usually include:

• Yoga sessions
• Meals eaten together
• Meditative practice

The average price of yoga retreats in the UK is between £200 and £800 depending on the above factors, chiefly the duration and location.

For example, Island Spirit has its Wildcrafted Wellness Weekend in Cornwall, offering the following different activities:

As you can see, there’s plenty of extras available including photography and massage, as well as each day having yoga and meditation.

The broad range and extent of the weekend is reflected in the prices she’s able to charge:

If you choose a venue with different sized rooms, with a variety of amenities, you can afford to charge a variety of prices and therefore attract more people!

This proves that if you’re interested in becoming a Hatha yoga instructor, a retreat can be a great way to advance your career and income!

Combine Your Practice with Nutrition 

Though you’ll need to source a good quality venue for a retreat, you'll also need to source a chef and somebody who can design meal plans for the people taking part.

However, if you become a qualified sport nutritionist then you’ll have the skills to design these meal plans yourself for:

• Retreats
• One-to-one yoga sessions
• Supplementary diet advice for class members

With a sport nutrition qualification you can combine the physical side of yoga with bespoke nutritional advice.

Not only will you be able to design your own meal plans for clients on retreats, you can weave nutritional advice into your classes.

In traditional yogic practice, food and nutrition plays a massive part in:

• Health
• Psychological wellbeing
• The flow of vital energy through the body

In fact, there’s even such a thing as a yoga diet that plenty of yogis and instructors stick to in order to purify and advance their practice.

The essential components of a yoga diet are:

• Vegetarian 
• Sattvic
• Organic (free from modification and herbicides/pesticides during growth)
• Made up of fresh foods
• Eaten at regular intervals (little and often)
• At least one day of fasting 

Another reason this is so potentially lucrative is that you will have another separate service in your roster to offer people.

You’re not limited to just including nutritional advice in your yoga sessions but can offer it as a separate service.

With these nutritionist skills you can design meal plans for a variety of different people helping them with a diverse range of goals. 

In order to be a Sports Nutritionist, you can either commit to a degree level qualification or gain a vocational qualification, such as by enrolling on OriGym's nutrition course.

So, it’s worth bearing in mind that this figure above is based on positions that stipulate you need a degree to apply, and so represent some of the more advanced positions.

However, becoming a Hatha yoga instructor in the UK, and combining it with sport nutrition, will mean you have an edge over other teachers, and can offer a full bespoke service!

Ultimately, this will mean you can make more money because you can charge more for classes, one-to-one sessions, and you’ll have this service as an additional stream of income.

Start Yoga Therapy

Yoga therapy is just that: using yoga in a therapeutic way, to help people overcome or manage certain illnesses and conditions.

This is predominantly used to help with psychological conditions and disorders such as:

• Insomnia
• Eating disorders
• Depression
• Anxiety and panic disorder

Though these are some of the most common, scientific research like this, looking at yoga’s effect on rheumatoid arthritis, shows evidence of yoga’s breadth of benefits. 

The NHS is now starting to recognise this as a valid treatment for certain illnesses so this is becoming closer to an exercise referral specialist’s role.

Because of the medical nature of this specialism you’ll need a separate qualification to become a yoga therapist.

We’d encourage you to look further, in detail, into the availability of these courses and the rigour that they provide.

As a general rule though the course you choose should include:

• Human anatomy and physiology
• Yoga theory 
• Differences between Eastern and Western medicinal practises

Because Hatha is such a fundamental baseline for further practice, this will be a great, eventual career development after becoming a Hatha yoga teacher and growing your client base.

Looking at Surrey Yoga Therapy, you can see how much you can charge with this extra qualification:

Also, with the NHS starting to recognise and recommend yoga therapy for certain conditions, becoming a Hatha yoga teacher and therapist will be an increasingly lucrative choice.

Skills Needed for Becoming a Hatha Yoga Instructor

Now we’re going to look at the essential skills you’ll need if you want to know how to become a Hatha yoga instructor! 

#1 Good Communication

Wherever you work, if you’re interested in becoming a Hatha yoga instructor one of the most important things to master is your communication skills.

You’ll have to make sure that you’re able to adapt the way you teach for a variety of different clients.

As we already touched on, part of your training will tell you how to become a Hatha yoga teacher for different demographics and special populations.

A vital part of this will be communicating the different postures as safely as possible, in a way that makes sense and is beneficial for each client or class member. 

If you’re vague or unclear, at the very least you’re going to lose clients or class members because they don’t feel like your instruction is helpful.

Even worse, if you don’t communicate and instruct people on different postures effectively, this could lead to injury.

This either comes from:

• Practice
• Creating a script specifically for practice and instruction
• Shadowing other instructors 

Using these methods you can improve your communication to build trust and rapport with clients and class members, leading to more popularity and ultimately more success!

#2 Passionate 

If you’re looking for “how to become a Hatha yoga instructor” then obviously you’re already passionate about turning your interest into a career path.

But how can you translate this to clients, and why is it important you know how?

To become a yoga teacher that teaches Hatha you’ll have to motivate and engage your students in a specific way to maintain their calm and focus in your class or sessions.

You also need to be able to communicate the benefits of Hatha yoga specifically so that people keep coming to your class and trust your expertise!

It’s no good just becoming a Hatha yoga instructor if you’re able to communicate your enthusiasm to students. This will be disheartening and damage your ability to build rapport.

If you’re able to use your communication skills to translate your existing passion then you’ll win over new clients as well as keeping hold of your existing ones!

#3 Organisation

This is one of the most vital skills whether you’re working out of a gym, a yoga studio, or running your own classes.

Making sure you’re organised will ensure everything is structured and runs smoothly, with your clients getting the more value for their money!

You’ll need to be organised in terms of:

• The asanas and transitions you’re going to use
• Where the class is held (especially if you work in several different venues)
• The amount of clients planning on attending the class
• What time class begins and ends (and whether people need the room after you!)
• Whether any equipment is required

Learning how to become a Hatha yoga instructor in the UK will involve organisation from the start of your qualifications, right through to your class delivery.

If you build a reputation for well-structured classes, and you make room for interacting with your clients, you’ll seem more reliable and professional to clients and ultimately attract more of them!

#4 Sensitive and Attentive

Last but not least, how to become a Hatha yoga teacher with a successful practice will involve being sensitive to any potential barriers people have and using yoga cues to overcome them.

Your yoga teacher training will have formed the foundation of this by teaching you:

• Planning classes for special populations
• Different demographics 
• Yoga’s potential in physical rehabilitation
•  Equality and diversity

Building on this, you need to be attentive during classes and sessions to spot any mistakes in form that could lead to injury or stall improvement.

Whilst doing this though, you need to ensure you’re sensitive to how people respond to different methods of teaching. 

This is why learning how to become a Hatha yoga teacher involves combining these skills: if you’re communicative, this will help you to be more sensitive and adapt your teaching to cater to an individual's needs.

Because yoga is so frequently used for its psychological benefits, as well as its contributions to overall fitness, being sensitive will make you a more well-rounded and effective yoga teacher.

#5 Patient

Continuing from your sensitivity, you also want to make sure you’re being patient with all of your clients.

Because Hatha is such an adaptable style of yoga, you’ll be attracting a range of abilities to your classes and you’ll often be dealing with beginners.

As you’ll know from your own practice, becoming a Hatha yoga teacher will involve working with people who struggle with certain asanas!

As we’ve already shown, even if you split your classes into a huge range of different abilities and levels, you’re always going to get students who need a bit of extra help.

If you’re able to be patient and helpful with all of your students, this will help them to trust you, recommend you to other people, and ultimately grow your reputation and niche!

If you’re patient, sensitive, and use your communication skills to work out how best to help your students, you’ll be well on your way to being a successful Hatha yoga teacher.

Before You Go!

Hopefully now you know exactly how to become a Hatha yoga teacher, and the variety of avenues you can go down once you’re qualified!

Don’t forget that you can boost your career, and people’s confidence in your abilities, with an accredited yoga qualification.

The best place to start is a Level 3 Yoga Teaching Diploma to advance your career.

Otherwise, download our course prospectus, or register your interest below, for style specific courses and other options for developing your career!