Yoga Teacher CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a teacher with about seven years who moved from a gym timetable into a boutique studio and now runs workshops and private sessions. The name, studio and school are invented. Scale the numbers down if you are newer; there is a newly qualified version below.

Two very different people hire yoga teachers, and they read your CV differently. A boutique studio owner is protecting a community. A gym's group exercise manager is protecting a timetable.

• Training hours and registration. A 200-hour training is the baseline almost everywhere; in the UK that is often shown as Yoga Alliance RYT 200 or as membership of a UK body such as Yoga Alliance Professionals or the British Wheel of Yoga. 500 hours gets you workshops and teacher training work. Put the number and the school in plain sight.
• Timetable fit. Can you teach 6am, lunchtime and Sunday evening? Studio owners hire for the slots nobody wants. Say which slots you can hold every week.
• Styles you can actually run alone. Listing eight styles reads as a beginner. Listing three you can teach without notes reads as a teacher.
• What happens to the room. Attendance, retention, course completions, private client conversions. Numbers separate you from the fifty other 200-hour teachers applying to the same studio.
• Safety and liability. Current first aid with CPR and AED, your own public liability and professional indemnity insurance, and the ability to modify for pregnancy, knee and shoulder issues. A manager who reads this relaxes.

This is the most searched question about yoga CVs, and most people get it slightly wrong. Two things exist and they are not the same. Your training is the hours you completed at a school. Your RYT credential is the registration you hold with Yoga Alliance after that training; UK bodies such as Yoga Alliance Professionals keep their own registers.

• Put RYT after your name in the header if you hold it. It is read instantly and takes no space.
• Name the school and say it is a Yoga Alliance registered school (RYS). Studios know which local schools are serious.
• Never write 'qualified yoga teacher' with no hours. The first question in the interview will be how many hours, so answer it on the page.
• Add your first aid expiry date. Most studios and every gym will ask to see the certificate.
• Mention public liability and professional indemnity insurance if you carry your own. Freelance teachers usually need it, and it saves the studio a conversation.
• Yoga therapy is a separate track. Only call yourself a yoga therapist if you completed an accredited yoga therapy programme and hold the matching credential, such as C-IAYT from IAYT.

Use a personal statement if you have taught anywhere, including donation classes. Use a career objective only if you have just finished training. Three lines, with hours, styles and one number.

The mistake is describing the practice instead of the job. A studio owner already knows what vinyasa is. Tell them what happened to the schedule, the room and the retention.

• Teaching craft: sequencing for 45, 60 and 75 minutes, hands-off cueing, consent-based adjustment, pacing to breath, theming without lecturing.
• Styles you can run solo: vinyasa, hatha, yin, restorative, heated flow, power, chair, gentle. List only what you can teach without notes.
• Safety and anatomy: contraindications, pregnancy and postnatal modification, knee, hip, shoulder and lower back options, prop substitutions when the room has none.
• Adjacent formats gyms ask for: mobility, stretch, barre-style, mat Pilates, breathwork, guided meditation, sound bath.
• Business side: Mindbody, Momence or similar booking software, health questionnaires and intake forms, class pass and membership sales, workshop pricing, retail and prop sales.
• Room operations: heat and humidity settings, mic and sound set-up, mat cleaning, capacity and waiting list management, cover arrangements.
• Communication: teaching to a room of 30 with no mirror, handling a student who pushes past a limit, taking a complaint about heat or music without escalating.

You finished a 200-hour training, you have taught six friends in a living room, and every studio advert says two years. Here is what to do with the page instead of leaving it thin.

1. 1Count everything from your training. Assisted classes, practice teaching hours, community classes, karma classes, the final teach. Write the totals: '60 assisted classes, 18 community classes taught, 200 programme hours'.
2. 2Add anything you have led anywhere: sports coaching, dance, swimming lessons, fitness classes, choir, tutoring, holiday camp work. Leading a room is the transferable skill.
3. 3Put your own practice years in, with the styles and the studios. Six years of consistent practice is context a manager wants.
4. 4Offer the unglamorous slots explicitly: 6am, 12pm, Friday night, Sunday evening. This is the single line that gets new teachers hired.
5. 5Get a first aid certificate covering CPR and AED before you apply. Emergency First Aid at Work is a one-day course and its absence is a real reason to reject a candidate.
6. 6Say you are insured, or that you will be before your first class. Freelance teachers are usually asked for proof of public liability and professional indemnity insurance.
7. 7Offer a free audition class in your cover letter. Studios almost always want to see you teach anyway.

• One page for up to about eight years of teaching. Two only if you also run teacher training or manage a studio.
• No photo on a UK CV, even in fitness. Your headshot belongs on the studio's website, not the application.
• If you teach at four places at once, do not list four jobs. Group them: 'Freelance Yoga Teacher, 4 Bristol studios, 2023 to present' with combined weekly classes and student numbers, then name the studios in the bullets.
• Put a short 'Teaching timetable' line near the top: styles, weekly class count, slots you can hold. Managers hire against a timetable.
• Include your registration status, first aid expiry and insurance in the header or the qualifications block. All three get checked.
• Send a PDF. Name it firstname-lastname-yoga-teacher.pdf.
• Larger gym chains screen with applicant tracking software. Mirror their words: 'group exercise instructor', 'RYT 200', 'class formats', 'member retention', 'first aid'.

“Half the applications I get list nine styles and no schedule. I hire the teacher who says: I can hold Tuesday and Thursday at six in the morning, I teach yin and slow flow, and here is what happened to attendance last time I had a regular slot.”