These tips are inspired by experience and stories I’ve heard during the year I’ve spent traveling and teaching yoga. It’s a carefully honed list…
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1. Be a diva. Make eccentric demands about your diet, your schedule and your optimal room humidity levels.The more specific the better. Pre-soaked, dehydrated room-temperature, organic almonds are not something you can go without. You know your needs.
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2. Practise competitive spirituality with all around you. Do not be out-meditated.
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3. If you are sharing a room, make it clear that you need absolute silence and darkness by 8pm or your doshas will slide out of balance. Set your alarm as loud as possible for 5am to begin your morning chanting meditation. Ommmmm…
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4. Refuse to do anything other than teach yoga. You are a qualified yoga teacher, that is what you do, and people need to understand that other menial tasks are beneath you.
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5. Remember that the above mentioned “menial tasks” include setting up the sound 
system for your yoga classes and clearing away props. That’s what personal assistants are for. If you haven’t been provided with one, demand that situation is rectified immediately.
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6. Utilize social media for its true purpose: venting about your employers. Be as personal as possible. That’s the point of the internet. You’re not meant to write things you’d say to their faces.
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7. Initiate unprofessional relationships with guests. You are basically on holiday after all.
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8. If you are volunteering, make sure everyone knows that you are DOING THIS FOR FREE. Bitch about it at every opportunity.
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9. Be flakey about your schedule and refuse to commit to staying more than 24 hours in advance. You’re a free spirit after all. Ain’t nobody gon’ tie you down.
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10. When the time comes to leave, burn those bridges. Who’d want to return to a place they’ve been before anyway?
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Good luck my fellow yogis and yoginis.
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If on the other hand, you fancy making a positive impact on the community you are staying with, follow the exact opposite of all these tips and you won’t go too far wrong! Be flexible, see everything as an opportunity for growth and keep an open-heart and mind. Being a traveling yoga teacher really is the best job in the world. Happy traveling!
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Jade is a skillful and intuitive yoga teacher and life coach, passionate about sharing the happiness yoga has brought into her life. She specializes in leading magical yoga retreats, as well as writing her blog, jadelizzie.com.
