Becoming a certified wellness teacher shows you’re dedicated to personal growth and have a commitment to guide others on their wellness journeys. However, the role of a teacher goes far beyond the certification itself. In this blog post, we'll explore what it truly means—on a deeper, spiritual level—to be a wellness teacher and how you can make a profound and lasting impact on the lives of your students.

Congrats, wellness teacher, you’re certified! Now what?

We are impressed with how far you’ve come and hope you are proud of yourself too!

Here are some principles that can guide you in your practice.

What a wellness teacher is – and is not

A wellness teacher is a spiritual friend first.

What does that mean? The role of a wellness teacher is someone who has been down a certain path and can share from their own lived experiences. They will help lead people to a place where they can recognize, get to know, and learn to trust their own basic goodness and inner wisdom. This role can manifest in numerous ways: as a spiritual friend, a guide, a channel, a conduit, a cheerleader, a walking permission slip, or a tour guide to the temple of our student’s experience.

In this way, a wellness teacher is more of a transmitter of their own practice and experiences and less of a teacher of the sort you’d encounter in a school classroom. We aim to help without being caught up in the act of being the helper.

In contrast, here are a few things a wellness teacher is not: a guru, a therapist, a counselor, or an expert in anyone else’s experience. Your students may look to you to be those things, and it’s important to know our boundaries in order to truly serve them in the way that we set out to do.

Being a spiritual friend

The Pali word kalyāna-mittatā describes the Buddhist concept of spiritual friendship. In a world of self-styled gurus, self-appointed shamans, and prophets seeking profits, a spiritual teacher must always embody the twin spirits of learning and friendship.

As part of this, it’s helpful to think of being a teacher as a role not so much of generating wisdom but conveying it. We collect, sift, collate, contextualize, test, offer, and commit to keep learning. People will make their own meaning out of what we present, and we walk beside students as they journey on their spiritual paths.

Teaching from experience

Many certified wellness teachers put pressure on themselves when they teach. We care a great deal about the practice and our students, so it’s hard not to. But when you teach from a place of spiritual friendship with self-experience as your own guide, something pretty amazing happens. There is no need for performance of any kind. *Big happy sigh.* Doesn’t that sound like sweet relief?

As a wellness teacher, you don’t really need to “act like a teacher” at all. Instead, being a teacher means leading people to an experience of their own, offering them a place or way to start on their journey, and then getting out of their way.

We are not trying to ask people to be a certain way, but instead to recognize what is already enlightened in them (their innate wholeness, completeness, and awareness). We are pointing people to what they, on some level, already know. We are not creating, we’re connecting.

Speaking from our own experiences as teachers (and prefacing it as such when we do) gives people permission to have their own relationships with the teachings. In so doing, we normalize all experiences, including any extremes. We meet people where they are and encourage them that they aren’t doing it wrong.

The teacher as the student

While the wellness industrial complex that is all around us benefits from drawing a clear line between teacher and student, spiritual teaching is truly a practice of continuously holding the seat of a student. We learn, we practice, and we stay in community with others.

This means a commitment to cultivating and expanding our own practice is crucial. Having people we learn from is imperative. As Buddhist minister, author, yoga instructor, and activist Lama Rod Owens says:

“If we don’t do our own work, we become work for others, and so we are forever students.”

And here’s added motivation: In many ways, our own level of consciousness about our practice determines how deeply people can receive information from us. Our voices carry our experiences and intentions, and so we focus on our practice as the ultimate teacher training. We know that thoughts are not truths, and that present moment awareness is a superpower. We know that there is no “one right way” to practice or to teach, but that there are many doors that lead to the same room.

A commitment to perfectly imperfectness

Here’s the reality of teaching yoga, leading meditation, or bringing Reiki or other energy healing into another person’s life. You’re going to make mistakes. Plenty of them.

It’s okay these are part of the process; part of the practice of teaching.

Here’s the thing: As a wellness teacher, you truly need to believe that mistakes are okay. This may be one of the most difficult things we teachers need to accomplish on our paths to helping others. Instead of platitudes and hyperbole and toxic positivity, somewhere in our depths, we need to truly embrace thinking like:

We have permission to learn as we go.
Doing our best is enough.
We accept all feedback as signposts to where we are and where we can go.
We teach from inspiration, not ambition.
Expertise cuts us off from the path of uncertainty, and so we practice not knowing.
Everything about us and our students is valid. There is nothing to be fixed. We are not broken.
We are all worthy of love, exactly as we are right now.
We are whole and complete people with no inherent lack or emotional holes to be filled by anyone or anything outside of ourselves.

If those phrases resonate with you as you read them: bingo. That’s the work. Being a teacher means holding these ideas lightly, messing up, learning and practicing more… and then finding a place of okayness with that.

But we don’t have to do this on our own! Practicing and learning in community with each other and our students is crucial to developing ourselves as teachers, and so we continually stay in community. (That’s why our community was created!)

You are complete, just not finished

We never try to fix our students or ourselves. Why? Because every person is inherently whole. The same goes for our students. We are not here to fix anyone or change their experience, but to ensure people feel seen and heard, and do our best to help them feel safe and okay, to bring out the wholeness that is already within them.

The teacher’s role is to help students see themselves as they truly are: brilliant, imperfect, and full of primordial goodness and love.

As wellness teachers, we aim to help our students see and feel their own wholeness. Spiritual work is about finding and connecting to that wholeness. There is, of course, work to be done, and there are teachings to grow from–but our teachings start and end at this place of wholeness.

We cannot create wholeness, we cannot earn worthiness, and we can’t change ourselves into a version of ourselves that we can love. We can simply reconnect to the wisdom and beauty inside of all of us. As Marianne Williamson puts it, we are all lamps; a connected teacher is one who is plugged in and emanating their own light. Make sure you’re plugged in for your students and yourself.

A balance of effort and ease

Being a wellness teacher means showing students their wholeness by truly embracing it in our own selves. For many of us, one of the most important aspects of teaching (and living life in general) is to be gentle with ourselves like a loved one would, and to teach our students to do the same. This is a radical act in our society.

As teachers, we have the ability to create circumstances where people can learn to be compassionate with themselves. We can demonstrate for others what it looks like to grow with grace and find comfort in not knowing. We have the opportunity to convey a felt sense of acceptance in our students by cultivating that felt sense of acceptance in ourselves. How magical.

Defining your values as a teacher

We believe that wellness teachers have the potential to be powerful forces for good in the lives of their students and the world. We also believe that each of us needs ongoing connection, encouragement, and support to grow our practices and our businesses. (The exact reason we are creating a teacher space for authentic community and education.)

Last, but not least, the next step that anyone can take in their wellness teacher journey—no matter how long you’ve been teaching—is to create or revisit your values as a teacher. (We’re talking about the values you hold dear, born out of your own experience, and not those coming from your teacher training program.)

You get to decide what it means to be a yoga teacher, meditation teacher, or Reiki practitioner for yourself. It’s freeing and exciting, but can also be a little daunting.

In thinking about values, we strive to rely on those we know are true for ourselves, but believe will foster the growth and transformation of our students.

As you continue on your path as a wellness teacher and continuously uncover new things along the way, your values will no doubt evolve and grow. You'll gain insight into your values and determine what being a teacher means to you.

We hope you’ve found helpful information in developing your practice and role as a wellness teacher! Becoming a certified teacher is a profound step. By embracing these deeper aspects of your role, you can truly make a lasting impact on the lives of your students and guide them toward holistic well-being.

Would you like help figuring out your values as a teacher? Sign up for our newsletter to hear about future intensive teaching retreats!