Is Yoga Teacher Training for Me: A Closer Look
Deciding whether to commit to a Yoga Teacher Training program can be a daunting task. There’s so much you don’t yet know about the expectations, the workload, or the payoff for completing this kind of program. Maybe you’re interested, because you want to understand more about your practice. Maybe you want to teach. Maybe you’re not sure what you want from a program like this, but you’re curious and worried you’ll be an outlier of some kind. Having completed my own YTT program in 2022-2023, I want to share with you that anyone who is passionate about yoga can complete a Yoga Teacher Training program.
Let’s first talk about expectations. I know before I began my program, I believed the training would focus on intense practice sessions, perfecting poses, and tackling difficult inversions I had never attempted before in my own practice. I was worried I wasn’t physically conditioned enough to be successful. These worries were unfounded. Yes, you will practice yoga, and you will try poses you may have never tried before. However, 200-hour trainings are not about perfection. They are an introduction and explanation to help you broaden your knowledge base to provide a strong foundation for either sharing or growing a yoga practice. My training group was also made up of all ages, from young twenty-somethings to nearing-seventy-year-olds. And while predominantly made up of women, our solo man had a great impact on our learning environment, and brought important perspective into our group. All this to say, that anyone can take this kind of training and find themselves growing as a yogi and as a human being.
Next, let’s discuss the workload. From our schedule you can see that this is an intensive program, but the goal is to not take up a large span of the next year. Condensed into six months, it will require many of your weekends, but we’ve also broken up the days into shorter meeting sessions, so you can still live your life around this program. There will be homework, which will likely include reading, worksheets, practice teaching, and online lectures, but these can largely be completed at your own pace, with occasional deadlines to keep you motivated. I won’t pretend it isn’t a lot of work, because it is. However, it’s like returning to school where in order to really learn and master new material, it must be practiced and digested in repetition. Being proactive and setting aside organized time for you to complete the out-of-studio work, will help you avoid becoming overwhelmed toward the end of the program when assignments come due. Don’t stress about this! You can do it!
Lastly, I want to discuss the payoff for completing a 200-hour YTT program. Everyone’s takeaways will be different. However, it is likely you will walk away from these six months having made incredible connections with your fellow trainees and with the Northern Life Yoga community at large. You will have a greater context for your practice, where it comes from, and how it fits into both an ancient tradition and a modern lifestyle. You will have the skills to share this practice with others, to meet practitioners where they are when they arrive, to create an inclusive community, and to share yourself and your creativity with your classes. And if teaching is not your goal, you will still leave with a deeper understanding of your body’s functionality, of how to meet its physical and emotional needs, and how to meet yourself wherever you may be each day.
For some, yoga is simply a physical practice, for others it is primarily a spiritual one. For you, it may be either, or fall somewhere in between, allowing for the mental-emotional-spiritual benefits to manifest through the physical practice. Yoga is a personal journey. This program will offer you information, context, and strategies for how to develop your own practice as well as a deeper connection to yourself and others.
I believe that everyone who partakes in a YTT program, grows as a human being and benefits in innumerable ways from their time in this sort of community. There may be aspects of the program that don’t resonate with you, and that is okay. We all take what we need and file the rest away as context for a tradition we may have moved away from, but can respect as the source of a new practice.
If interested at all, I highly encourage you to spend some time with Northern Life Yoga this fall and see what it’s all about. You never know what friendships you’ll make, or what lifechanging discoveries may find you over the course of this journey together.
Still have questions? Please reach out to northernlifeyoga@gmail.com or nlymemberrelations@gmail.com to speak with Allie or Gabbie further. You can also visit www.northernlifeyoga.com/yttinfo for more information about our schedule, curriculum, and pricing.
—Gabbie Gordon, Client Experience Manager
