Teachers put off writing to studios in other countries because they assume there's a checklist they'd fail. Certification recognized locally. Proof of insurance. Some registration they've never heard of. A language they only half speak.
Then they finally ask, and the studio replies: "Sounds great, can you do the Thursday 7pm? Send me two sentences and a photo for the schedule."
The gap between the imagined requirements and the real ones is where a lot of teaching gets lost.
What almost every studio actually asks for
Across most countries, most of the time, a studio hosting you for a class or a workshop wants five things:
- Your name as you want it printed, and a photo they can put on a schedule.
- Two or three sentences describing the class, in language their students will understand.
- The dates and times you can do.
- Some evidence you are a working teacher rather than a stranger who did a training. Where you currently teach is the usual proof.
- A way to pay you.
That's the list. Not a diploma, not a registry number, not a resume.
The reason is simple: a guest class is a small risk for them. One evening, one room. They're not hiring you, they're borrowing you. The checking they do is proportionate to that, and it mostly consists of looking at your page for twenty seconds and deciding whether you seem real.
Certification: who checks, and when it changes
Almost no working teacher has a certification number visible anywhere. Look at the teacher pages of studios you admire in five countries and you'll find lineages, trainings and teacher names, but hardly ever a registration ID. Venue and lineage do that work instead: "trained with X, teaches at Y" tells a studio more than any number would.
For a guest class or a workshop, nobody is likely to ask to see your certificate.
Where it does change:
Teacher trainings. If you're teaching hours on someone's training, the school may need paperwork because their own accreditation depends on it. Expect to send a certificate and a short teaching history.
Anything employment-shaped. A regular weekly slot on a permanent contract, a job at a resort or a wellness center, a role with a work visa attached. Once you're staff rather than a guest, an HR process appears and paperwork appears with it.
Insurance-linked venues. Gyms, hotels, corporate spaces and some larger chains have a policy that requires documents from anyone teaching in the room. That's the venue's insurer talking, not the country.
Keep a folder in your phone with your training certificate, your insurance document if you have one, a headshot, and a hundred-word bio in every language you teach in. Ninety percent of "can you send me..." requests are answered in one message if that folder exists.
Language: less than you fear, in a different place than you expect
Teachers worry about cueing in a language they're not fluent in. Studios worry about something else entirely: whether their students will understand the class well enough to enjoy it.
Those are not the same problem, and the second one is usually solved by asking.
"I'd teach in English. Would that work for your regulars, or would you rather I did it bilingually with the key cues in Portuguese?"
That single question does more for you than fluency. Multilingual teaching is completely normal in this work, and studios in most cities are used to it. What they want is for you to have thought about it rather than showing up assuming everyone will cope.
Practical version: cue in body parts, directions and breath. Right hand, back foot, floor, inhale, exhale, rest. Those words are learnable in any language in an afternoon and they carry a whole class. What doesn't survive translation is the poetic layer, the metaphors, the long thematic thread. Drop it. Nobody misses it, and a plain class taught clearly beats a beautiful one that half the room is guessing at.
Learn the ten words. Say at the start of class, in the local language, that your local language is bad and you'll be teaching in English. Rooms are generous about this everywhere, and the attempt buys you more goodwill than fluency would.
The paperwork that genuinely comes up
Usually just how you get paid. Some places pay cash on the day. Some need an invoice with an address and a tax number on it. Some can only pay a domestic bank account, which is worth knowing before you fly rather than after.
One line, sent early:
"How do you usually pay guest teachers? Cash on the day, or an invoice by transfer? If you need an invoice, tell me what has to be on it and I'll have it ready."
Insurance, visas and the tax side vary enormously by country, change often, and depend on your own nationality and situation. They deserve their own attention rather than a paragraph here, and the honest answer is always to check what currently applies to you, in the specific place, before you commit to anything.
The things teachers brace for that rarely arrive
Worth naming, because the fear is doing real damage to people's calendars.
Nobody has asked to see a portfolio. Nobody has asked for a filmed class, except occasionally a studio hiring for a permanent slot. Nobody has asked how many people follow you, though a host filling a workshop may reasonably ask whether you know anyone in that city. Nobody has asked for a reference letter. Nobody has asked why there's a gap in your teaching.
What does get asked, constantly, is "what dates are you here" and "can you send me the text for the schedule."
If you're preparing for the first list and not the second, you're preparing for the wrong meeting.
The class they think they booked
This is where more visiting teachers come unstuck than on any legal question.
"Vinyasa" means something different in a Berlin basement and a Bali shala. Ninety minutes in one city is sixty in another. A "gentle" class means restorative in some rooms and slow flow in others. Music is central in some spaces and considered a distraction in others. In some places every class ends with three chanted Oms and in others that would empty the room.
None of this is knowable from outside. All of it is answerable with two questions to the host:
"What does a typical class in that slot look like for you: how long, how strong, and does it usually have music?" "Is there anything the regulars there would find surprising if I did it?"
The second question is the good one. It gives the host permission to tell you the actual house rules, which they'd never volunteer unprompted because to them they're just obvious.
The unwritten rules that vary most
Worth asking about specifically, because getting these wrong is remembered longer than a wobbly sequence.
Hands-on adjustment. The norm ranges from routine to essentially never, and consent practices differ widely. Ask, then follow the house.
Spiritual content. Sanskrit, chanting, invocation, talk about chakras or energy. Perfectly ordinary in some rooms and unwelcome in others, sometimes for cultural reasons and sometimes because the space is a gym with mats.
Time. Some rooms start at the minute. Some fill up over the first ten. Ask when people actually arrive.
Silence. Whether students talk before class, whether you greet everyone, whether the teacher is expected to hang around afterward.
Money in the room. Whether you may mention your own classes and pages at the end. Ask, don't assume, and accept whatever answer you get.
What to send when they ask for "something about you"
Not a PDF. One message with the schedule text already written for them, so all they have to do is paste it:
"Here's everything in one place. Name: Lea Asja. Class title: Breath and Slow Flow. Description: 'A slow class built around long exhales and simple shapes. Suitable for anyone who can get to the floor and back up. Taught in English with key cues in Portuguese.' Length: 75 or 90 minutes, whichever suits your schedule. Photo attached. I'm in town 12 to 20 May and free every day except the 15th."
A host who receives that will book you over a better teacher who sent a paragraph about their path, because you just removed forty minutes of their work.
The question to ask before you teach anywhere new
Every visiting teacher should send one message the week before, and it is not about paperwork:
"Is there anything about this group or this room I should know?"
You'll get answers you could never have guessed. That the 7pm crowd is mostly beginners despite the level on the schedule. That the heating is broken. That the woman in the front row is recovering from surgery. That nobody in this city takes their socks off.
Studios rarely check your credentials. They always notice whether you asked.