I have never met Brea Johnson face-to-face, and although I have heard her name in the Canmore yoga community, our Skype call was our first time “meeting”.

We immediately hit it off.

Brea talks easily and laughs often, and her passion for yoga is contagious.

She shared with me her story of becoming a full-time yoga teacher, owning a yoga studio, and then branching away from that and developing her own type of classes that provide accessibility to all of her students. We talked for over an hour, and in that time, I learned so many valuable lessons for my own career as a yoga teacher.

The top 5 things that I learned from Brea are:

1.If you want to be a yoga teacher, you need to jump right in when you’re new. BUT, don’t run yourself into the ground. Find the number of classes that is your energetic maximum for the week. Brea was teaching 20-25 classes every week when she started out, and as she stated, “that is too much!”.

2.  Always stay true to yourself and to what you believe is right. You can do things to make money, or you can do things because they feel right to you, and because they are true to who you are as a person. Brea ran a grassroots style yoga studio for a number of years, and along the way she had a moment of realization that her studio would never be as big as some of the commercialized Bikram studios because she was keeping it true to herself.

3. Sometimes you need to step away from what you’re doing to find it if it’s right for you or not. Brea shared with me how she stepped away from the yoga world for a short period of time, and it was in that time she really realized that teaching yoga is what she loves to do!

4. Yoga should be accessible to all students – anybody with any body. Design your classes not just for the majority of your students, but for all your students.

5. Define what success is for yourself and then follow that path. There are a lot of different paths in yoga, and there are a lot of different ways you can take your career as a yoga teacher, so define what being a successful yoga teacher means to you and then follow that. Don’t let anyone tell you anything otherwise!

If you are interested in hearing more of Brea’s inspirational career lessons, check out the episode on iTunes and the shownotes here.