| i started training before there were a lot of teacher training programs. at the time, there were two or three major programs--all of them requiring 1-3 months in an ashram-styled facility of some sort. very few people were training in the sorts of teacher trainings like you see today--delinated out into 200 and 500 hr trainings that could be a few weeks, a few months, or a year.
my training started rather accidently. i had studied yoga at home with my mother and with books for a number of years, and then i went off to university. once i got to university, i started taking yoga at a near-by yoga studio called LifeSpirit Yoga. The teacher was a Kripalu trained, buddhist yogini. she predominently taught beginners--her classes only had two levels--and most people 'moved on' before anyone got to level 3. She also worked for the university (she had a PhD in Kinesiology--taught that and yoga there), and she ultimately taught 4 levels of yoga there--the 4th level being a week-long 'retreat' at kripalu center.
when i went to my first class--a level 1--she noted that i was experienced with the practice. i took that 8 weeks, and then i volunteered to work-study. this would take me throuhg the 8 week level 2 class--i mostly did things like vaccum the floors (floors were carpeted),checked and sorted mail, answered phone calls (when people called for studio info and left messages), answered questions, and helped students set up their mats when they arrived. I would then take classes.
After that 8 weeks, i started taking both level 1 and level 2 classes--one class a day. Then, my teacher encouraged me to observe the level 1 class and take level 2 for a time. Then, she encouraged me to observe level 2 and take level 1 for a time. This was during the second semester of my freshman year.
And then she suggested that i take classes at another studio (Iyengar) that was a good distance away (20 minute drive), and that i continue to come and observe classes with her, and then assist some of those classes. She sent a letter with me to the other studio; i do not know what it said. I stayed at school during the summers--so i started studying and volunteering there in the summer after freshman year.
by the end of the summer, my first teacher had me sub teaching classes for her at her studio when she went out of town, assisting and co-teaching a number of classes as well. At the other studio, i'd started observing and assisting in those classes mid-first semester of my sophomore year--i was taking level 3 classes at the time. By the end of the school year (may) i had been through level 4 and was assisting and co-teaching level 1 classes at that studio as well.
I can put forth that i felt very ignorant the whole time. i studied and practiced and assisted and taught for these teachers for many years. I would teach whatever they asked me to teach--but i always felt like i didn't know enough--i had little to no confidence in my teaching.
Sometime around 4th year (i went 5 years to uni total), i started taking a class with a kundalini teacher. Neither of my teachers knew her--she was new to the area and teaching at the gym that my DH (then boyfriend) and i belonged to. Her class was at 6 am, and this was great for me because it didn't conflict with my classes or my yoga work, and it was completely 'for me' and not about anything else (teaching, etc), but i quickly moved into an apprenticeship with her as well--so i was working with/for three teachers for the last two years that i was in university.
shortly after this, i moved and went to law school. for the first year of law school, i looked for studios in the area and there were two--but i didn't really care for them. one was classical yoga with more emphasis on philosophy, which is great except that i'd already read and studied the major scriptures in both a university and comtemplative setting--and i could go to the hindu temple, the vedanta center, and the buddhist center for more of that (which is more in-depth--the yoga studio was more of a 'for brand new beginners' situation). The other studio was an 'iyengar based' studio, but the teacher was a bit nutsy and i didn't care for her much.
half way through first year, i found another studio--a vinyasa studio--and i started doing work study there within about 2 weeks. it was mostly in exchange for classes. About 3 weeks after that, the owner asked me to obesrve/assist in his classes, and then this started a teacher training program officially about 6 months later (with a group of us), but prior to this official start, i was already in a loose apprenticeship with him.
it was at this time that i started 'counting hours' in the yoga alliance sort of way--and within a year, i had my 500 hrs of training and 100 hrs of teaching documented. THis was second year of law school. During third year of law school, i taught yoga at the studio, took classes, volunteered at the front desk, etc. I graduated from law school and started teaching yoga full time.
It wasn't until mid-way through second year of law school that i felt really confident about my teaching. I can't really say what it was that caused this change, but during first year, i taught a couple of private lessons, a few classes now and again, and lead a pranayama and meditation class at the law school. But, i felt a bit like a fraud or a fake somehow--which was kinda odd in retrospect--but i guess it's because i never felt "official' or had any overt feedback about whether or not i was doing well or what have you.
And i think that comes down not to my yoga, but my teaching skills. I knew yoga, meditation, pranayama, philosophy, whatever. I knew my stuff and i know that i knew my stuff. what i didn't know what 'how to teach' and at some point during the second year of law school (after a year of apprenticing at the vinyasa studio) i suddenly "got it" in regards to how to teach--and that really set up my confidence in the process.
I find that this is the case for many new yoga teachers. This past summer, i met a young woman who felt equally overwhelmed. While she was relatively new to yoga (less than 5 yrs practicing herself), she took a month-long intensive teacher training and then returned to her home town. She was immediately offered a number of positions teaching yoga throughout town (there's a teacher shortage there!), and she started teaching. But she felt daunted, like she didn't know what she was doing, like she shouldn't be paid for what she was doing.
I told her that i felt the same--and this took a load off her mind. In talking with other teachers, i know that many of us have felt this way for a time--with that time lasting longer for some than others.
I know that, for me, it was partly the case because of an internal conflict. I dind't wake up one morning in my freshman year and go "i want to be a yoga teacher; i'll see if i can apprentice with my teacher." instead, my teacher chose me as the apprentice and i simply did as she asked. i enjoyed it, but i didn't feel as if i really 'owned' it--and i dind't take the teacher's confidence in my into my own consciousness. I felt like (and still feel like for most things) that i have a lot to learn, a long way to go, and i usually do all of this for the sake of learning, of enlightenment--even teaching.
At some point, i think i realized that i really LOVE teaching, that i really LOVE teaching yoga and that it was the right thing for me. And that's when i had the confidence. I realized that i had more experience than many teachers, more education than many teachers. But they had confidence and i didn't--why was that? It was largely because i wasn't allowing myself to 'go all the way' with my love for it, with my talent and education.
so now i do. and now i continue to educate myself through my own study and practice, through teacher training intensive workshops with various teachers, etc. it's a joy really. |
yoga teachers-your experience
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