Hmm. You're asking for either advice or to be cheered up. Would you accept a third option?

When you teach, it's for your students, not you. It's their practice, not yours at this time. Doesn't matter if you're bored with beginner asanas or too gentle a flow or whatever. Try to find empathy for your students, whoever they are and whatever their abilities are, and rejoice with them when they achieve something new, be it a physical ability or a heightened awareness in any pose. If you're craving inspiration yourself, then it's probably time to devote more to your own personal practice, so make sure you're not burning out from teaching too much. You need to be fully you before you can go out there and teach others to be fully them.

And now I'm pitying them. I try to steer clear of lefts and rights, because I'm notorious for mixing them up as well. "Front" and "back" work just as well with arms and legs. Do you practice as you teach, or do you teach "off the mat"? No need to mirror at all when you're off the mat, so it's actually easier (at least for me). Demonstrate, sure, but then let them be the ones practicing the pose fully. Oh, and a trick I've developed about the left vs. right: if I get confused, I just look at a student by standing next to them, so I know which side is which. Piece of cake!

Unfair to whom? The instructors who aren't getting as many students as you?

And you care why? Is it necessary for you to be married to be a good yoga teacher? Your marital status (to your students) is irrelevant, and so if they express any opinions about it, odds are it's probably compassion, so take it as that. Maybe these older ladies all want to fix you up with their bachelor sons!

What they like or don't like is their issue, not yours. People who pass judgment on others are projecting on others what they fear and dislike about themselves. Tattoo this on your forehead and carry a mirror so you can remind yourself of this all the time (well, you'd have to tattoo it backwards, but still, you get my point). It's them, not you. Honest.

Yeah, so? See the response to #5 about passing judgment. Look, when you own your own yoga studio, you'll have the option of not hiring those teachers. Until then, you can only be the best yoga teacher you can be by being true to yourself. Hopefully others will take you as a model for their own behavior someday. But if not, swaha, at least you know in your heart you're being your truest self. 

Well that answers my question as to whether you're teaching off the mat or not. Bad rut to get stuck in, imo. Find a good groove to replace your rut. Teach as you feel called to teach, and those who like it will stay, and those who don't, will leave. Really, that's OK.

I've never danced and I don't like dance, but the instructors where I work who teach dance aerobic classes are the most admired and valued. They get paid the most too.l All the members are impressed with the dancers and seem to think yoga is for 'old people'. My yoga classes tend to get mostly 60 year olds.

Maybe it's time to change where you work. Again, I see this statement of judgment as a reflection of how you might be feeling. Now no one is saying it's wrong to feel a certain way, but rather that you notice from where the pattern of these feelings and reactions are coming. The practice of Yoga is about not allowing all the stuff in life, large and small, get to you. So you need to find a way to practice Yoga with regard to your attitudes and reactions to teaching yoga (notice the change in capitalization). Self-study, it's so huge.

OK, not to shortchange you, so here's the cheering up part: you are perfect as you are, and you come from a place of perfection. Can't add to it, and can't take any away. Purnam adah.

That's another good one to tattoo on yourself. Thanks!

I don't know where you live, but if you can, you should really come to my studio. Just to take a class or two, for a breath of fresh air at least! There is NONE of what you talk about where I practice, and I really don't believe we're all that unique (maybe we are, I don't know....).

Anyway, just wanted to say it really pains me to hear how doing this thing that you love, teaching yoga, causes you such pain. Life shouldn't be so hard, ya know?

Mish, I don't have the experience and therefore perspective you have, so this statement confuses me a bit. Are you saying that it's hard to be accepted as a yoga teacher at a studio if you've only been teaching at gyms so far? I'm assuming that's what you mean, but I just wanted to make sure (don't want to pull an Emily Latella here!).

Anyway, coming from a fitness background myself, I can see how this difficulty could present itself, given the differences in ideology between gyms and "true" yoga studios. Hey, this has been my problem in teaching at gyms all along, because my intuitive approach was a yogic ideology, which is not well received at gyms. I still deal with that issue every week that I teach my couple fitness classes to a practically (if not completely) empty room. Whatever, not the point here.

What is my point, is that I wonder if, in an attempt to be "accepted" by a yoga studio, maybe time should be put into attending classes at a studio, primarily for the objective of being a student there yourself. Not so much to get an "in" with them, but to really immerse yourself in the particular ideology of that studio (which ever one you pick, or even more than one, doesn't matter). Don't attend classes with the intention of teaching there some day, just attend as a student. It's not so much that they accept you, it's that you accept them. Does that make sense? Having differing ideologies goes both ways, I believe.

At my studio, the recommendation is that you attend classes there for at least a year before applying to the teacher training program. You're not applying to study there, of course I understand that, but I believe the principle behind that rule applies to your situation as well.

The phrase you used, "to break into a studio", is what caught my eye, and that's what I'm responding to here. If you make yourself familiar with a studio by being a student there yourself, there is no "breaking in" required. If the grooves match, then all will be good. Just a thought toward a different approach, that's all.