Since signing up to do my Yoga teacher training with Yoga professionals, I’ve been teaching yoga classes and have also now done a few 1-1 sessions. Although people have always been kind afterwards and thanked me for the class, I’ve felt each time there was something missing.
Although I have a daily yoga practice and love how yoga makes me feel, this in itself isn’t enough to be able to teach a group successfully.
I found the practical element of my teacher training fantastic and thoroughly enjoyed the sessions. However, now I’m teaching and coming to the end of the course, I feel that creativity was the missing ingredient — for me anyway! I don’t yet have a personal teaching style, but I’m confident this is something that will come with time. You can’t, after all, expect to roll out of a yoga teacher training being the perfect teacher.
During the course, we were taught how to structure a series of 10 yoga classes catering for a mixed ability group. However, we were all taught in some respects, to teach in a similar style required by the accrediting body. I wasn’t opposed to this; It’s always good to learn correct alignment, anatomy and physiology and then find a niche. But, at the same time, I think it would also have been useful to go more into detail about class themes and personal style. You can’t, however, expect to learn everything in such a short space of time. Yoga is such a vast subject with hundreds of different styles and variations after all.
Yoga lesson plans
Over the weekend I was doing some yoga workshops at Cock & Bull Festival with another yoga teacher who had studied with Apple Yoga and she showed me one of the lesson plan structures from her teacher training which I found really helpful. Although, we were given lesson plan templates on my course, I felt that they could have gone into more detail.
For example, just glancing at the Apply Yoga lesson plan really got me to think about the purpose of my classes and all the different possibilities with themes. I’m now really inspired to go away and write a series of different classes such as yoga classes to help people feel more grounded, classes for extra confidence, classes for letting go and feeling lighter…
What I am grateful for on my course, however, is the thorough background in physiology and anatomy — even if the online tutorials can be a bit dry at times. I know that once I’m qualified, I will have a good yoga teacher training foundation to work from. And like with any new course — the real learning happens when you actually get out there and teach.
Image Source: Fotor
