Problem Solving for Yoga Teacher
What is a problem? A problem is a situation in which there is a goal, but it is not clear how to reach the goal. Main Problems faced by a Yoga teacher: 1. Classes with only a few students Yoga teachers may sometimes teach a small class, maybe less than 5 students, here brings a great challenge to a yoga teacher since you need to build up a good connection with your students to really look into the needs of each of the students rather than in generalized terms. This takes time for you to know more about each of his/her students. 2. Teaching classes in different locations
Being a yoga teacher, you may have to work in different locations for each class, this will involve a high travelling cost and frustration. 3. Problems on marketing your classes and workshops This is essential for you to be an effective marketer in order to grow your business. Even you are working in a large yoga school providing all the marketing collateral for you, you still have to clearly articulate. If you are not working in such a large company, you must be able to answer a question “Why students should chose you but not these in the large yoga school? 4. Not enough time to practice yoga for own self Many people may have a misunderstanding that when a yoga teacher is teaching yoga, he/she is practicing yoga as well, however, this is not true, and the yoga you are teaching in a class is never the one you are practicing on your own. You may find that you don’t have enough time to practice yoga. 5. Managing illness and scheduled day-off You must have a clear concept that if you don’t teach, you won’t be paid. This is very important to have a good time management on your working schedule. 6.
Thinking yourself is not good enough Teaching yoga is an on-going process, sometimes you may face a situation that the way you are teaching is unfamiliar with your colleague. This may make you think you are not better than the others. Lack of confidence in own teaching style is a big problem in teaching yoga. 7. A class with students in different cultures Sometimes a yoga class may not only have local students, but also students from all over the world. This may lead to a communication problem to these from other countries. Strategies to solve problems
Heuristic – Heuristic is a strategy in thinking under uncertainty. It is a solution strategy based on past experiences. Thinking with heuristic will give a quick answer, it may, however, lead an incorrect answer or even no answer, as past experiences may not be exactly the same to the current situation. Algorithm – Algorithm is a step by step problem solving procedure that guarantees a correct answer to a problem. Which Strategy should be chosen as being a yoga teacher? The answer is Heuristic. Although algorithm guarantees a correct, this is very time-consuming.
The most important thing is the problem you faced in being a yoga teacher is not a simple mathematics question with an exact answer. For example, you are facing a class with on more than 5 students, which teaching methods should be used? In this situation, you even have no time to take a step and step procedure to solve the problem, a quick action must be done! Also, there is no exactly correct answer to you which methods must be better, this is based on your past experience. To know more about your problem solving styles!
There are two kinds of problem solving styles: Representativeness Heuristic and Availability Heuristic Representativeness Heuristic is a heuristic for judging the probability of membership in a category by how well an object resembles (is representative of) that category. In general, the representativeness heuristic leads to a bias toward the belief that causes and effects will resemble one another. Availability Heuristic is a phenomenon in which people predict the frequency of an event, or a proportion within a population, based on how easily an example can be brought to mind.
An event may be prominent in our memories because it happened recently or because it is particularly striking or vivid. Questions: Which kinds of problem solving styles you are using?? Situation 1: When you are teaching a class with foreigners, let says students from USA, they are very aggressive and always ask a lots of questions, so you assume all the students from USA have that kind of culture. Next time when you teach USA students, you refer to your past experience to apply in this situation. Ans: Representativeness Heuristic Situation 2:
