Why I Don’t Separate Health Coaching and Yoga Education

Most people assume health coaching and yoga teaching are two different lanes.

I don’t.

Not because I can’t choose, well maybe it's part of that.  As a yoga teacher, people were constantly coming looking to improve their health.  Yoga helps with that for sure, but it's not the whole picture.  It led me to pursuing strength and conditioning certifications and my masters degree in clinical nutrition.  I noticed that a similar issue was showing up in nutrition as well as yoga and even strength training.

In health, people are given generic protocols and told to follow them, be disciplined.  Don't miss a workout.

In yoga, teachers are given generic scripts and cues and told to teach breath and a movement based practice to people to help calm them, to make them stronger, to heal them.

When those approaches don't quite work, the individual feels:

• “I wasn't consistent enough.”
  
  
• “I didn't work hard enough.”
  
  
• “i need to come to class more often or clean up my diet more”
  
  

What’s rarely addressed is context.

Human systems don’t respond well to isolated inputs. They respond to:

• nervous system state
  
  
• load and recovery capacity
  
  
• perception of safety
  
  
• stress, grief, and pressure
  
  
• individual history
  
  

The same nutrition strategy can work well for one person but cause gas and bloating in another.

The same breathing cue can calm one student and spike anxiety in the next.

The same yoga class that regulates one student can trigger the other.

That’s not a failure of effort.

It's that we have very individual biologies, unique nervous systems.  All of these things-nutrition, breath, recovery should be customized to the individual.

This is why I work across both health and yoga education.

Both fields require the same skill: judgment under real-world conditions.

My work is about helping people stop copying answers and start understanding systems whether that system is their own body or a room full of students.  It helps build personal agency (or autonomy) so that people feel in control of their practice and their health. 

If this work resonates, you can explore more of my work here.