Five questions to ask yourself before joining a Yoga teacher training programme?

If you are considering joining a Yoga teacher training programme, take a few moments and ask yourself the following questions.

1. Are you clear about your motivation?

Yoga teacher training is often misunderstood. Yoga enthusiasts might see the teacher training programmes as a place to learn all the challenging postures.

This could be the case, however, the emphasis during Yoga teacher training is all about how to teach Yoga postures (asanas); to teach the asana, you practice it, learn how to break it down and analyse it. As with everything in life, we start with the easier ones, such as Tadasana, mountain pose, or Uttanasana, standing forward bend, and so on.

Do you have a deep desire to learn more about yoga and how to teach it?

This is the first question to answer. Although Yoga teacher training can be used as a self-development programme, in order to receive certification, the teaching part still needs to be taken part in.

2. Are you ready for the overwhelm?

The asanas are working with the body. Therefore, it is essential for a Yoga teacher to understand the body, what it consists of and how it works. Anatomy is an integral part of teaching Yoga.

There is an entire science behind how to teach, which teaching methods to use to convey your message, how to motivate your students, how to make them feel safe, how to encourage them to try something they fear, and how to deal with tricky students, etc.

Learn how to design a course and sessions, and how to create a sequence.

And not to forget all the legalities around how to start a business and market yourself.

3. You can’t wait to transform from a Yoga student to a Yoga teacher?

Attending Yoga sessions with your regular teacher, having fun, and enjoying the progress while following their lead is downright different to standing in front of a class and leading a Yoga session.

Yoga teacher training is a space for this deep transformation. You step into your vulnerability, into your fears, you need to let go of and step into a space for you to find your own voice and your own teaching style as well. This can be very scary, but so worth doing.

4. Are you prepared to invest time and money?

Joining a Yoga teacher training is a commitment in many ways. The meeting days are intense, listening to lectures, and presentations, analysing, practising and practising teaching asanas, taking part in discussions, and group work just to name a few activities.  At the end of the day/weekend you are tired, even the next day, you might feel tired.

To add to it, you will need to allocate time during the weeks for homework, reading, practising and practice teaching with friends and family to stay on top of the course content. There might be assignments that need to be prepared and submitted.

Are you able to commit and prioritise time for the programme to get the best out of it?  

5. Will you be ready to hit the wall?

Hitting the wall is an expression used during marathons when runners reach the point where nothing seems to go anymore. You will come to this moment, too.

Tiredness, fed up, no end in sight, assignments all seem like a never-ending story. You might no longer connect to this enthusiastic and inspired being who so desperately wanted to join the programme. Now you feel quitting seems a sensible option, there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

Are you ready to push through that stretch and find your motivation, dig deep, take one day at a time, one task at a time until all of a sudden everything seems to have changed again and you see the end close and are motivated again?

Conclusion

If you have considered all the above questions and are not too sure if this is the right step for you, maybe it isn’t just yet.

But if you are still keen to move forward then you might be ready for the next phase, finding the right Yoga teacher training programme for you. Which seems to be equally challenging and needs to be addressed in a separate post.

If you are still unsure, a period of journaling might help you gain clarity.

Writing down, by hand, your thoughts, expectations, fears, and beliefs around Yoga teacher training, how you see yourself as a Yoga teacher, and why you are interested brings clarity to the mind through you formulating these thoughts.

If you spend a few weeks, or months, journaling and reflecting daily, the answer will reveal itself to you.

My experience as a Yoga teacher training tutor is, that nobody ever regretted taking the leap.

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