Picture this: after spending a week teaching at a yoga festival in Costa Rica, the valuable connections you made were infinite; the student you met, unforgettable. After most of your classes, students approached you asking for your contact information, where you’re located, and suddenly you realize that there is no meaningful way to keep instructing these amazing students. You have a business card, but it seems futile to simply share your contact information when these students need ongoing instruction. You are unsure of who to refer them to, since you don’t personally know yoga instructors in their varying locations.
Reflecting on your week, you see so many wasted opportunities: students wanting to continue their training with you, but you’re left with nothing to offer them. You want to connect, inspire, and ultimately guide your students to a higher level, personally and physically. You crave an ongoing presence in their lives.
At home, you have a similar problem. Bouncing around a few studios a week, you can never really get to a deep, meaningful instructing level with most of your students, although some have inquired about private tutorials. Because of your crazy commute and their busy schedules, as well as varying levels, there isn’t an easy way to offer a more challenging, but tailored class for your students who are ready to take their practices to the next level. You wish you had more time and an easy way to provide private instruction for these students who have so much promise.
Throughout the course of your yoga teaching career, it’s easy to recount dozens of missed student connections. Whether it’s because of travel, changing studios, or simply not being able to be in three places at once, the potential of growth doesn’t have to be lost.
Enter The Doña Shine app. Elevating your instruction and expanding your reach, Doña Shine was built to help busy yoga professionals continue their connections with students. Each feature was created keeping connections in mind, essentially making it easier for yoga instructors to meet their students where they are, in ability and location.
Instead of sharing your website, you instruct your students to download the corresponding Doña Rise app. They’re able to connect with you one on one through your Virtual Office Hours, which you set, expanding your reach and availability. Connect with featured articles, establishing a conversation with your students around popular ideas and trends. Most importantly, nurture the connection that was established at your teaching festival instead of leaving so many students behind, and continue the conversation for your local students ready to be guided to the next level.
Doña Shine also offers a way to build your yoga class sequences. Provide Compositions for yourself and for your students easily. This allows you to customize a sequence (or sequences) specifically for a student to practice, or for you to keep track of teaching to live, in-person yoga class. Save these Compositions for future use, essentially creating a library of sequenced postures for you to choose from at a later date.
One of the reasons why yoga resonates with so many is the ability to connect with yourself and others through mind, body, and spirit. Doña Shine honors these connections: meeting your students where they are without the constraints of location and time revolutionizes the way we think about our teaching and our practice.
Author: Sarah Ronau