Teaching yoga, you only get but so much time with your students (or clients, depending on how you think of it). It may be a couple hours a week, or at most about an hour a day – and to be sure, you can make a great deal of progress with that time. Many beginner students find that even doing a few short yoga sessions a week leads to quick improvements in flexibility and endurance. As an instructor, however, you may naturally yearn to inspire even more progress. If you’re passionate about what you’re doing, you’ll want to help your students to practice more, embrace regular routines, and thrive rather than just survive.

It’s easier said than done. If people are coming to you for lessons, they likely view those lessons as the special time they’ve set aside for exercise, and they may not make time for it elsewhere. But you can always inspire a little bit more effort – and here are some tips for how to do it.

Teach The Fitness Details

Teaching yoga in person, it’s easy to point out the benefits in real time. You can talk as you go about how a given pose should stretch a given muscle, or how one posture might be restorative or relaxing. You can say things that your students directly feel, and they get a sense in real time of how the session is benefitting their bodies. Without the commentary, however, people can be less motivated from a health standpoint. Thus, you should take some time to either teach or recommend reading material relative to some of the numbers behind yoga’s health benefits. For instance, according to Livestrong a 155-pound person burns about 149 calories per 30 minutes doing yoga. Even that one number can motivate your students to practice more even when they’re not taking a lesson or participating in a class – the numbers can really get you up and on the mat.

Recommend Passive Practices

As an instructor you know that the most effective yoga involves absolute focus. It’s best to tune out all distractions and think only of technique, breathing, and relaxation. However, some benefits of yoga can be enjoyed more passively, and that might just be your ticket to getting students to keep at it more in their own free time. A recent article included yoga breathing exercises like Sama Vritti (something it claims yoga newbies use to “get themselves in the zone”) as exercises people can do while gaming. It’s somewhat odd but it’s not a bad point – and we can extend it as well, to watching TV or film, or listening to a podcast. If you teach your students specific exercises that can be done this way, they may be more likely to practice at least some yoga in between classes.

Send Out Personal Updates

One personal training website made the all-important point a few years ago that it’s always important to engage on a regular basis with your clients. That may sound obvious from a business standpoint, as you want to keep up your clientele. However, it’s also vital for maximum effectiveness. By sending out a daily update on your own yoga updates, or perhaps even recommending a program via email each morning, you can give your students a specific plan to follow from day to day. It’s a little bit more work, but it will lead to better results, which ultimately makes you a more effective instructor.