It’s now several years since I graduated from my 200 hr YTT, and I’ve since then graduated from a 300 hr YTT, worked as a teacher since before I graduated, and eventually co-started a Yoga Alliance certified yoga school.
But what were the things that made me take the leap to book my first YTT? Because I waited for years!
Well, here are 3 things that were very important to me, and that made a huge difference in the decision to invest in a Yoga Teacher Training.
✨ 1. I realized teacher training is for anyone ready to dive deeper into yoga.
I spent years thinking that the only reason to do a YTT was to learn how to teach yoga to others — becoming a yoga teacher.
My yoga teacher was running trainings and she frequently asked me if I wasn’t going to join, but at the time I felt happy with my job as a UI/UX designer, even though I’d started to do yoga every day and had fallen completely in love with my vinyasa practice.
Then, during a day retreat with another teacher, which I participated in alone and which gave me plenty of opportunities to make new connections, I spoke to a group of women who were maybe 10–15 years older than me (at the time I was a youngster of 38).
All of them had done a YTT, but only one or two were actually teaching. However they all spoke about this life-changing experience, how they finally got to dive into the yoga world and fully immerse themselves.
They told me how their practice completely changed when it gained so much more depth in terms of philosophy knowledge, anatomy, and general perspective.
It made me change my mind and start looking for a teacher training to do.
✨ 2. I realized many areas of my life could benefit from this training
These women’s stories made me understand that a teacher training wasn’t just about learning how to teach yoga to others, it was about learning something about yourself. And they told me how they’ve learned so much during their trainings, that they actually used both in their daily lives and careers.
It’s a training in self leadership, in compassion, and growth.
This realization opened new doors for me. It told me that even if I never taught a class in my life, this training would benefit me both in my relationships and in my work.
I remember one women saying how the practice teaching in the safe space as a training is, helped her overcome the fear of public speaking and how it made her advance in her career since she now felt confident in her voice, the way she carried herself and in standing in front of people.
Suddenly I could see myself benefit from a training in so many ways beyond the actual teaching yoga part.
✨ 3. I realized it was okay not to know if I actually wanted to teach
This incident at the day retreat was what made me take the leap, because not only did these women tell me that doing a teacher training is the next step if you want to learn more about your yoga passion – they also showed me that you can do a YTT and then decide not to teach.
I didn’t know if I would like, or even feel comfortable teaching yoga when I finally booked my YTT. I didn’t know even half way in, despite a lot of practice teaching in a safe space with the group 😆
But I knew that it was ok not knowing, and that this YTT was a journey of, through the yoga lens, getting to know myself better.
And allowing that to be all, not pressuring myself to teach, I did the practice teaching as part of that journey; to learn more about myself.
And you know what – I really did. And through that lens I keep learning new things about myself, and my place in this world every day.
Even if I’d decided to never teach a class, the YTT journey would’ve been worth every penny, every minute and every moment of frustration.
Because it was life changing in so many positive ways.
/Emilie
