First weekend Yoga Teacher Training

"I brought my pencil, gimme something to write on, man." : David Lee Roth 

My first weekend of training is now in the past.    17 more to go.   There is so much to learn..

My class consists of 15 people.    There are 13 women and 2 men.   I would say the age range is 22 to 60.    I do not think I am the oldest but I am in the top 2 or 3.   I actually learned everyone's name by day 2.  That is a minor miracle for me.  

Much of the first day  (class is five hours each day) was spent on Yoga history, the Eight Limbs  (Ashtanga) of Yoga,  and Ayurveda.  Ayurveda is an ancient health system predicated on the balance between mind, body and spirit.  The Ayurveda was all new to me and was interesting.    A good amount of the discussion on it focused on diet and exercise.. We talked about the three general Ayurvedic types (or Doshas)  and then we went through a Yoga flow looking at poses for each of the different types.   I did discover that five hours is a long time to be in one room and to be sitting on a rubber mat on a floor.  Bolsters were necessary along with frequent seating adjustments.

The second day started with basics of two Yoga poses , Down Facing Dog and Chaturanga,  and the breaking each pose down to component parts.   It is interesting to practice something for a long time and to then to look at it at a minute level.   It is also interesting (and I see this often) , to find that one teacher tells you one way of doing something and another tells you a different way.    My shoulders are still sore from the amount of time we spent in Down Dog trying to feel the nuances the teacher was trying to get across to us as well as being the "student" for another trainees.  

In addition to the breakdown of these two poses,  we were started at the foundation level for a Yoga practice and for teaching.   We talked about the foundations of Asana.  This is a general way of looking at a Yoga practice both from a personal practice and from a teacher perspective.    There was a good amount of detail in these foundations and much useful information for me.   Even after reading my notes and typing them up,  it is still hard to get it all internalized.

We ended the long day discussing the five fundamental steps to leading or teaching a Yoga pose.
This was the best part of the class as it brought a paradigm to me that I have been thinking about but have not systematized.  These steps are;

  Center students (breath or another cue)
  Position the posture - getting into the pose
  Begin cue on alignment - adjustments / minor tweaks
  Support the posture
  Guide out of the posture
  Return to centering.


As homework, we were assigned a good amount of reading on Anatomy that we have to do over the next two weeks.  Additionally, we have to prepare the teaching of a foundational Yoga pose.   We have to set up, shape, and cue the pose.  This is the fun part of the learning and why I am here.  A hard part will be picking one.

My feelings are a mixture of happiness that I finally decided to do this with a sense of dread that one day I have to go in front of a group of people and lead, check and adjust them.   There is just so much detail to remember.    My mind is swimming in the middle of all of this.  


Namaste