(Two posts today…)
I signed up for a 200 hour yoga trainer certification course.
I really enjoy practicing yoga, and I also very much enjoy teaching yoga classes. My training to this point, though, has been what I consider to be woefully inadequate: I received a one day training at the health club seven years ago when we hosted a team from YogaFit to come and deliver a workshop, and I’ve attended a couple more one-day sessions from outfits like AAAI/ISMA. Really, though, most of what I know about yoga - and about alignment and safety and teaching - has come from self-study.
Woefully inadequate, is what I’m saying here.
Of all the fitness-y things I do, I like my yoga classes the best. There are times when I really get into step class, to be certain, but I always leave my yoga classes satisfied that the class went well - a “good” class isn’t always a guarantee in step. I’ve also forged some pretty good friendships in yoga, and I’ve gotten the most positive feedback from the participants of my yoga classes: people have come up to me to tell me that they’ve made real breakthroughs in my classes, or that they’ve learned a lot about how to control their stress levels or how to start learning to accept what their bodies can or can’t do or how they’re learning to really breathe and relax. People have told me that they have experienced attitude shifts as a result of something I said during the final relaxation. They come to me to tell me that, through their practice with me, they feel better.
All of this thrills me, and I’m convinced that, if I’m making this much of a difference in some people’s lives with the piddling training that I’ve received, I could help that much more if I were trained up right.
So, with the sincere hope of making a good thing better, I signed up for a 200 hour training at a yoga studio in my hometown. I call it “Yoga National Guard” because it meets one weekend a month for the next ten months - and it makes my yoga class chuckle when I tell them that I’m going to yoga boot camp. The first session is tonight, from 6-9:30, with the weekend classes running both days from 9:30-6:30.
I’m approaching tonight’s very first session with a mixture of excitement and trepidation: I’m really thrilled to get started, but what if I’m not comfortable there? What if everyone else in the class is vegan and organic and lives a cleaner and more ecologically responsible life than I do? What if I’m not accepted because I’m practical and pragmatic and I’m in it not to get all mystical and airy-fairy, but because I’m interested in learning how to do what I do better? What if I feel stupid chanting? What if I don’t fit in?
Very exciting! It sounds like it will be a rewarding experience that will only enhance your already awesome yoga classes.
I kind of chuckled at your worry about the other participants and their vegan-ness etc. I remember when I joined a food co-op at my university and they suggested having potlucks at various people’s houses I never invited them to mine because that would mean I would have to have no meat in the house and no waste whatsoever - my biggest fear was that they would focus on the toilet paper and that I should probably have a wet rag or something instead! haha. Yuck!
We’ve talked about the fear of the fruity patooti, militant organic, mean environmental people. I feel certain there’ll be at least one of those people but I also feel certain you’ll be able to find your spot and it won’t be a solo one. As for feeling silly chanting I think they’ll teach you to concentrate on looking inward so you can forget that everyone else is doing it. However, remember that everyone else is doing it too, you’ll look sillier if you DON’T chant.
You Rock! mrschili!
Let me know when and where you start teaching afterwards. I live in Sunderland and would certainly give yoga a try.
And we (at least I am) are way old enough to not care what the “fruitiy patooti, militant organic, mean environmental people” think, and I am pretty able to suss out just which ones they are too!
Some of my very best roll models and heroes are the 80 year olds in my tai chi class. Those ladies are limber, and they laugh…at almost everything. Hope yoga does that for you.
Have a blast and stick with it.
Best wishes,
Laurie B
mrschili,
I have practiced with many different instructors, all special in their own way, yet I return weekly to the wonderfully sweet person who first taught me to listen to my body, respect my limits and, most of all, laugh. I consider her a dear friend. Actually, you seem a lot like her…LOL.
Love,
Your Weeble
My Dearest Weeble, it is partly for and because of people like you that I am undertaking this training. Just as I have taught you, you’re teaching me, too - and I want to continue to grow and learn and evolve in the joy that I find in this practice with people like you!
If it’s a YA 200, it will change your life.