Almost Done With My Yoga Teacher Training! (And what’s next for me)
Long time no see! I’ve been away from this site for hot minute. After a few months enduring the friendly reprimands of @iamredbar and @blervin, I’m back. At least for today.
I’m finishing up my schooling for becoming a yoga teacher this month. (Well technically I have classes to make up but.. that’s irrelevant.) The program is only nine months long but I swear I have Senioritis. I’m ready to be done with it and move onto the next step.
What is the next step? Thanks for asking. I’ll tell you.
Of course I want to teach some classes. But career-wise, my dream is a little bit different than the traditional group class experience of Westernized yoga. In its original practice in India, yoga was practiced in a one-on-one, teacher-and-pupil format. Yoga lost some of its personalized, philosophical touch somewhere over the Pacific Ocean on its way to the States.
I want to bring it back.
The two things I love about yoga the most are its philosophies and the intimate relationship you curate with yourself. But how much have you heard about the teachings of yoga and when have you practiced yoga by yourself? Most people only practice yoga if they take classes. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that. I just love delving into the deeper layers.
Did you know that what we commonly understand yoga to be-the postures and physical movement- is only ONE aspect of yoga? In fact, the practice of yoga is comprised of eight separate qualities, or limbs, as they are referred to in yoga. Much like the Eight-fold path in Buddhism, the eight limbs of yoga serve as guidelines for a moral and meaningful life. Traditionally, a student would master one limb at a time before moving onto the next. And asana, the physical practice we all recognize as yoga today, is the third limb.
I’ll share more with you about the eight limbs at a different time, but I just wanted to portray how what you might know about yoga today is really just the tip of the iceberg.
Now I’ll explain how all of this is incorporated into my vision. You know how we can hire personal trainers for working out at the gym? I want to be the equivalent of that for yoga. I want you to be able to come to me, tell me what you’re looking for from your practice, how much time you want to dedicate to it, and what’s going on with you and your body so that I can create a personalized yoga sequence catered to you and your individual needs and physicality.
As you may already know, yoga is great for increasing flexibility, reducing muscle soreness, and coping with stress. But what else can it do? A lot. Like, a lot a lot. Personally I like to craft my personal yoga sequences help me become stronger and to cope with my anxiety and depression. But you can do yoga that wakes you up, makes you sleepy, helps with congestion, heals previous injuries or adds focus and clarity to your life. You can do yoga to help process difficult feelings or to help create mental and emotional transformation. It’s really kind of crazy what yoga can do for you.
AND-here’s the kicker- I want to do most of this from the comfort and stability of my own home. I have a scheme in my head of how I want to do it, but I’ll share that at another time as well. Just know that I wanna be a badass online yoga personal trainer.
When it comes to the philosophical aspects of yoga, I’m not quite so sure how to integrate those into my life and the lives of those around me. Evangelizing all of my friends with the works of Patanjali and Iyengar hasn’t always gone over that well. For now, I think I’ll try to post about it more. Maybe there are some curious yogis in this crowd. =)
Till next time! Namaste.
I'm glad there are other teachers that want to go the one-on-one route. I do enjoy the group glasses I do teach, they are great but working with one student at a time has such an impact on them.