Yoga teacher training and starting to teach yoga

If you are a yoga teacher or training to teach – what governed your choice of training course? Did you feel ‘ready to teach’ before you began teaching?

I realised the title subjects have been occupying space in my head and time in my days without really making it onto my blog – so this week it’s a yoga post!

How I chose my training course, and how it’s going

I knew I wanted a thorough, reputable training course. It had to be mostly ‘distance-learning’ to fit round work, family and living in a remote rural area. I could manage being away for a long weekend every month or so for training.

I can see the allure of intensive training courses: a potentially wonderful atmosphere in which to immerse yourself in yoga and form close bonds with fellow trainees. And it would be particularly lovely if you were somewhere warm (she said wistfully, what with it still being a wintry 5 degrees Celsius here).

Not happening on a beach in Scotland.

(Photo credit: www.thesanctuarythailand.com)

It wasn’t possible for me to trot off somewhere sunny for a couple of months, but anyway I think it suits me better to train over years rather than months – it’s good having time to process and reflect on what I’ve learned between training weekends.

I have done all sorts of yoga over the decades and I knew I didn’t want to train in a narrowly defined school or tradition. I enjoy different styles when I get the chance, particularly if the teachers are not just well-trained in their chosen school, but also open to the possibility of learning from other traditions. There are one or two yoga schools that – while they have some excellent teachers – come across as keeping themselves rather separate and being quite hierarchical. I’ve heard stories of people feeling stressed and miserable about failing yoga exams, or being told they can only do things in a certain manner or routine. Personally, I think yoga is for everyone – no matter their strength, flexibility, age, health, or any other factor. The principles underlying yoga don’t advocate feeling superior, judging others harshly, or excluding. And most of us could benefit from valuing the discipline of thorough learning while still being a little light-hearted and playful in our approach.

So I chose a course which seemed welcoming and inclusive, but also took yoga and teacher training seriously, expecting hard work and high standards. It’s run by a long-established Scottish organisation, with a network of around 300 qualified, registered and insured teachers. It’s fun, too – we laugh a lot at training weekends.

I’ve noticed online that yoga teacher training qualifications often – perhaps particularly in the States? – seem to come as ‘200’ or ‘500’ (referring to the hours spent training). My own course is described as a 500+ hour course running part-time over two years. You can apply for it if you have practised yoga for at least three years and it’s strongly recommended you do a year’s foundation course first, too (their own or any similar equivalent). I did their foundation course (before I had any plan of becoming a teacher!) which consisted of ten 6 hour training days, spread over six months.

Over the two years of the teacher training course, there is a full interview day, two residentials at a retreat centre (Friday-Sunday) and 12 non-residential weekends (9.30am-5.30pm Saturdays and Sundays). We are expected to have a daily home practice of a minimum of 30 minutes and to keep a practice journal. We are also required to spend at least ten hours observing lessons given by experienced teachers. There are a further ten hours allocated to preparation and delivery of our own class teaching, and 15 hours for the planning and delivery of our assessed lessons (over the next year, we will be observed teaching three lessons to a class of at least 8-16 people).

There are specialist guest slots during the two years (covering e.g. First Aid certification, and yoga during pregnancy). The course has two main tutors, responsible for the professional teaching/asana/pranayama aspects. Then there’s a philosophy tutor and also an anatomy tutor (who is a yoga/meditation teacher and also a senior oncology nurse). There are lots of assignments. Last year’s graduates were asked to work out how much time they had spent on written assignments and the range was 32-300 hours, with the average student spending 64 hours.

It amuses me to realise many friends and acquaintances assume I’m wafting around lighting incense, chanting Om and perhaps standing on my head. People always look startled when they ask ‘what’ve you been up to today?’ and I reply something like ‘I wrote 1500 words on aspects of the musculoskeletal system, how about you?’

I’m really enjoying the course. And boy am I glad I’m not school teaching this session. There are a few full-time teachers in the trainee group and they look tired. I do appreciate the luxury of being able to do the course properly, not squeeze it in between other exhausting and competing demands. I’m also glad I’ve been doing (and reading about) yoga for a quarter of a century, and have done some previous anatomy and physiology training. I think this course would be a bit much for someone who had only come to yoga three years ago and had no knowledge of anatomy/health issues.

Ready to teach?

When I started the foundation course, I wasn’t planning on being a yoga teacher. I just wanted to learn more about yoga and spend more time doing it. There are a lot of poses I can’t do and some I will probably never be able to do, just because of the way I’m structured. So I’d ruled myself out of yoga teaching without ever thinking it through. I was genuinely amazed to find that when friends and acquaintances heard I was doing the foundation course, the commonest response was ‘you’d be a great yoga teacher.’ The three yoga teachers who know me best all encouraged me to open my mind to the possibility that there is room for all sorts of yoga teachers, not just superbendy ones.

I loved the foundation course, and wanted to carry on, so I applied for the two year teacher training. At that point I was still thinking, ‘but I don’t think I’ll teach big classes. Perhaps I’ll do one-to-one lessons from home, or specialise in yoga for the elderly, or those with chronic back pain.’ The course tutors have been consistently encouraging in their attitude of ‘well, you may choose to do that, but there’s no reason you have to do that.’

I have 20 years’ experience teaching, in primary and higher education, and several of my fellow trainees who’ve never taught have said to me, ‘oh, that must make it so much easier for you.’ I’m sure it must do in some ways, but it’s funny how different it felt teaching yoga. For more than half my life, it has been something I learned in a class, or practised on my own – a personal thing that was all about exploring my own mind and body. Silently. It was bizarre at first, trying to do yoga that including moving, breathing and talking!

I gave a few one-to-one lessons to my dad and my husband, but I still wasn’t confident about teaching others or larger groups. Then fate forced my hand. My local yoga teacher (a lovely, supportive woman who has taught me for 8 years) has had a terrible year of family bereavement and illness. When the most recent crisis struck, she phoned and asked if I could possibly teach her classes for a couple of weeks.

I wanted to help her. I said I would. But I didn’t feel ready. And I wasn’t even certain if I was allowed to start teaching unsupervised yet (though of course, we have done more than a ‘200 hour’ qualification already). I checked with the course tutors and they confirmed that I was insured to teach and they both felt confident I was ready to. I confessed I was still concerned about not being flexible enough to demonstrate certain poses. One of the tutors said a nice thing to me – I wish I could remember the exact words! It was something like ‘you don’t need to worry – you work with yourself and do yoga with integrity, and that will inspire respect and confidence in your students.’ They both said ‘just be yourself, and you’ll be fine’.

So!

Last week four local ‘yoga regulars’ kindly came round to my house so I could run through an hour and a half lesson with them. It really boosted my confidence. After that I felt nervous, but also sure it would be okay and I would even enjoy it.

Yes, four people AND me in this space. We had to co-ordinate like synchronised swimmers to do some of the poses safely.

I taught my first ‘proper’ class for two hours on Monday.  Nine people, seven of whom I knew and are long-term yoga practitioners, and two women I’d never met before who were new to the class.  I hadn’t expected any newbies at the Monday class, but it was okay as I was able to keep a closer eye on them, knowing that none of the rest of the class would do anything which might injure themselves.  Next week I’m doing the Monday class again, plus a one-off class for five primary age children on Wednesday morning, plus the larger beginners/general class for 90 minutes on Wednesday evening.  That’ll be the trickiest one, with up to 16 people, several of whom will be trying yoga for the first time.  Then I’m likely to be teaching the two evening classes for a few weeks after that.  My yoga teacher has loaned me all her equipment.  When I picked it up, I could see how tired she is, and how relieved she was to be able to hand over the classes temporarily.

My fellow trainees have not started teaching yet.  They are all in the middle of doing their first observed assessment.  You can have this done by your own teacher (the next two have to be done by another teacher).  And I’m in the opposite situation from the rest of our group – not able to get my assessment done yet, but responsible for several classes this month.  It feels a bit odd, but exciting.  It’ll be good experience and I’m sure it will all work out in the end.

Wish me luck…and tell me your own stories!

Plans for my first two lessons. I LOVE doing the little stick yogis, which is just as well because our tutors require us to do them.  The summaries are really helpful to have, too, when you’re a nervous newbie.

Interspecies Yoga Nidra

When I rolled up from Savasana at the end of my yoga practice this afternoon, look what I found:

I’ve written about introducing my ex-racing greyhound to the cat here and here.  They’ve been getting gradually closer, metaphorically and literally, but this was the first time I’d found them happily tangled up together and fast asleep.

 

A year ago, I wouldn’t have put even a fiver on this ever happening!  I’m so pleased.

Look at that sleepy smiley face.  He was so cross when I eventually had to take the dog away for a walk.

Old dogs, new tricks?  Pfft.  Nae bother!

 

 

On loving the library and the last three books I read

I already mentioned I read a lot.  Keeping the number of books in our house under control is a matter of constant vigilance.  In recent years we’ve given lots of books to charities and before buying any new ones, we try to consider carefully if or why we need that book. We vowed a while back we’d use the library more, and in the current climate of cuts and closure threats, this seems even more important.

It took me a while to adjust to our local library, after living and studying in Edinburgh.  The National Library of Scotland, the reading room at Central Library, the university libraries…I didn’t realise how accustomed I was to massive collections of printed material and quiet, atmospheric rooms in which to browse them, until I no longer had them.

The library here is small.  It is noisy.  But that’s okay – it’s in our community high school, so it’s appropriate for it to be a lively place, where children feel at ease and people bump into neighbours and friends.  When I was teaching, I regularly took classes there, and found the librarians helpful and supportive.  We worked together to encourage the 7-9 year olds I taught to feel positive about the library and everything that was on offer there.  Although most of the children lived in the village, many of them had not been to the library.  It was lovely to see how excited they were to explore it, then choose a book and settle down on a bean bag to read it.  Children were given forms for their own library card and a book bag or a ‘library bear’ toy – and many proudly told me the next week they’d gone back to the library with a parent or granny to get their own books out.

Since I’ve started using the library more for my own reading, I’ve found the staff happy to hunt down books for me.  Lots of items I go in asking for are not held locally, but most can come on inter-library loan, or sometimes even be put on the ‘wish-list’ for the book purchasing budget.

Until I joined the wonderful world of WordPress last autumn, I didn’t know that some people keep a record of what they read, or set themselves challenges such as ‘in 2013 I will read 50 books’.  I have no idea how much I read in a year, but I’m guessing I average about 2 books a week.  It’s a long time since anyone has criticised me for my reading habits, which is great.  As a child, people called me ‘bookworm’ and as an adult I used to get remarks like, ‘I wish I had the time to read so much, I’m just too busy.’  Eventually I discovered that if I responded by asking (nicely), ‘oh, don’t you have time to watch TV?’ that usually put an end to it.  I don’t have any moral high ground about TV vs. books.  I just notice that most people watch TV on a daily basis.  I watch a TV programme probably once a month, so I have that time free for reading.  Even when I worked more than 50 hours a week and had a lot of other things on my plate, I still squeezed in some reading – maybe while I ate a meal or just before I fell asleep.

I don’t normally review books.  When I was 17, I decided not to do English Literature at university, because I wanted to keep reading a private, personal thing I did for pleasure, and I’ve pretty much stuck with that approach.  I’ve never joined a reading group, nor wanted to.  So, just in the spirit of trying something new, here are mini-reviews of three library books I read this week.

‘He’ll Be OK: Helping Adolescent Boys Become Good Men’ by Celia Lashlie

I requested an inter-library loan for this.  It was recommended (via Twitter) by Nina Killham.  Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have picked it up.  As someone who in any situation prefers to look for common humanity, I’m not keen on messages such as ‘boys are like this, girls are like that, parent them differently’.  I’m not saying there are no differences between boys and girls, but I do believe we sometimes unnecessarily categorise or push them to opposite ends of a spectrum.

Drhusband read it first – he sometimes has distressed parents in his surgery, worrying about their adolescents, and likes to be able to loan helpful books (most often ‘Blame My Brain’ by Nicola Morgan).  The first few remarks Drhusband made while reading ‘He’ll Be Okay’, along with its back cover blurb, raised my hackles, but I’m glad I set my prejudice aside and read it.  I’d still say there are descriptions in the book of behaviour and attitudes which are actually common to teens of either sex – some were in fact truer of Daughter than of Son1 or Son2.  But Lashlie makes the point herself that you can’t totally generalise.  It’s a lively, easy-to-read book which draws on Lashlie’s experience of working in male prisons and carrying out research with teenage boys in 25 schools, as well as raising her own son.  I learned more about the ‘big picture’ of boys’ development. which should help increase my tolerance and understanding of the two individual examples I’ve got here at home.  Best of all, the ‘mothers, step back and relinquish some control’ message that had raised my hackles was not what I expected.  Lashlie emphasises that teenage boys, particularly around age 14-15, need clear and firm boundaries.  The sort of mother-behaviour she was actually talking about astonished me:  mothers who make packed lunches every day for their high school boys, who change the sheets on their beds for them, who go through their sons’ bins, bags, phones, computers, etc. checking for information, who ask lots of questions and press their sons to talk in detail about what they’ve done and how they feel…I actually finished the book feeling I am probably doing a better job than I thought I was.

‘Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day’ by Winifred Watson

My parents borrowed this novel from the library and passed it on to me, saying they thought I’d read it in a couple of evenings and enjoy it.  I did, and agree with Tracy Chevalier’s back cover quote:

‘Miss Pettigrew’ is irresistible, a perfect mix of wistfulness and joy, substance and froth.

It is written with acute, humorous observation of social mores and a beautifully light touch.  Miss Pettigrew is a middle-aged lady who has never had much luck or fun (and these days would be described as suffering from low self-esteem).  Through some chance encounters and her response to them, her life is transformed in a 24 hour period.  The book is of its era, and sometimes that makes you flinch, in what it reveals in passing about widely-held, acceptable attitudes of the 1930s.  But it’s never a bad thing to learn more about that, and it doesn’t spoil the story.  It’s also quite an eye-opener to realise just how recently a person like Miss Pettigrew could have such a limited range of options open to her, and face such frightening and bleak prospects.   It’s also a book any aspiring writer could learn from: the dialogue is sparkling and characterisation and pace is handled deftly.

The book is illustrated with Mary Thomson’s lovely line drawings from the 1938 original.

The preface to the new edition is also a charming, feel-good read.  ‘Miss Pettigrew’ was the favourite book of Henrietta Twycross-Martin’s mother, and later in life Twycross-Martin was instrumental in getting the book back into print.  She was asked to write the preface, which she thought would be easy as Watson wrote six very popular novels in the 1930s and ‘40s.  However, there was almost no information available about the author.  Eventually, to her ’complete astonishment and delight,’ she discovered Winifred Watson was still alive and well at 93 years of age.  Twycross-Martin was able to meet her and find out how and why she wrote her books, and why she stopped writing.

‘If You Sit Very Still’ by Marian Partington

An unexpected benefit of volunteering at the kennels has been listening to Libby Purves’ Radio 4 show ‘Midweek’ as I drive there.  I’ve heard so many fascinating people speaking on the show, and glimpsed all sorts of new worlds through them.  One of several times I’ve actually had to pull over to gather myself and make a note of the speaker’s name was when Marian Partington was interviewed.  I knew I wanted to read her book when it was available, and I just received it on inter-library loan last week.

This book deals with such harrowing material it may seem trivial to begin by pointing out how satisfying it is to look at and hold.  But I am sure it was important to the author that it was designed with care and love.

When Marian was in her mid-twenties, her 21 year old sister Lucy disappeared.  She had been visiting a friend just after Christmas, and failed to take the bus home as expected.  The police investigation continued for 7 years, but no trace of Lucy was found.  Twenty years after her disappearance, Marian and her family learned that Lucy was one of the many women tortured, raped and murdered by Frederick and Rosemary West.

This is a book about the extremes of love, rage, grief, uncertainty and horror.  It is an exploration of how to live with and respond to what could destroy you.  As the foreword says, it deals with ‘the limits and complexities of forgiveness’.

A few months ago, I skimmed the Amazon reviews, and found a mixed response to Partington’s style – from those who found it overly-clever and wordy, to those who felt it was lyrical poetry.  I found it (style-wise) easy enough to read, though the switches between tenses and between audience (sometimes she speaks directly to Lucy, sometimes to the reader) jarred.  I don’t know whether this was an intentional device, or just a side effect of the fact that the book is distilled down from many years of writing and many thousands of words.  And, frankly, I don’t really care – what is important about the book is what it says about human nature and possibility.

It is human to search for meaning, pattern, a message, or something to learn – and this tendency can help us bear the unbearable.  Partington has faith in certain things that I don’t, but I could still identify with much of what she said and her book made me think long and hard about myself.  If this had happened to my own younger sister or to my stepdaughter (currently the age Lucy was when she died), would I find the courage and strength to survive, to find meaning in my life?  Marian Partington now works with restorative justice schemes in prisons, and has clearly changed the lives of many for the better by doing so.

So – three very different books, although I suppose they are all about the complexities of human relationships.  Thank you, library.  I read in the latest issue of Mslexia that 201 libraries closed in the UK in 2012; and at least 300 more are under threat in 2013.  Let’s hear it for our local libraries – use them, love them, support them!