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What is one thing that every yoga teacher trainee must do?
Prepare for the work. There are monthly self-study assignments as well as other required components to complete in order to receive the certification. Time management and preparation are highly important to success in this program. Ensure you have to time to study, ponder and practice.
What is one thing that every yoga teacher trainee must avoid?
Isolating yourself. Share you thoughts, concerns and ideas with the group. You are embarking on an exciting and challenging journey. Those with you on this journey are there to support you. They are experiencing many of the same things you are. Use this wonderful resource.
Is being a yoga teacher just trendy or is it here to stay?
Although I have seen Yoga become much trendier in the past few years, I fully believe that being a teacher is here to stay for those who choose it in order to understand, enjoy and share it.
Can a yoga teacher still be successful if they are in a crowded niche?
Yes. If a teacher can find something to offer that is unique or much needed in their niche, that will definitely be helpful. Be patient and willing to look for opportunities. There are many teachers, but there are also many students and potential students.
What has the yoga teacher training done for you?
It has changed my life in many ways. I am much more able to “go with the flow” and have found my emotions are much more balanced. I have found increased patience and compassion in my life. The Yoga teacher training taught me so much about my beliefs and the limits I placed upon myself. It was an incredible experience for which I am very grateful.
Stephanie Wile, Waterford, Ontario
stephanie.wile@hotmail.com
Stephanie graduated through Body Therapies Yoga Training in Dundas/Hamilton, Ontario. www.yogatogo.com
1. Many people that have a health career and enjoy the benefits of yoga, secretly wish they could pass some of these benefits on professionally. No surprise. This desire to share comes naturally to these heath care professionals.
2. Imagine pulling one of the many yoga techniques out of your yoga teacher toolkit, and helping a fearful client sitting in the chair waiting for a procedure or the tense mother lying on the massage table.
3. Think that to become a yoga teacher means you have to stand on your head? I totally agree with the Kripalu thinking that Yoga is less about standing on your own head and more about standing on your own two feet.
4. If you can breathe, you can do yoga. There are many tales about individuals literally nurturing their body back step by step from immobility to slight movement to movement with yoga breathing. Such a gift.
5. Funny how while studying to be a yoga teacher as an add on to your health career, you yourself automatically embark on a healing journey. You discover how to help your unique body mind function better; you experience more ways to natural health through holistic yoga.
6. Yoga fitness is for the physical body. Holistic yoga is for the body mind and spirit. All three are with us, and body mind and spirit need equal attention if we are to be happy and healthy.
7. Somehow being able to touch the toes has been associated with yoga. It is one of those myths right up there with yoga being a religion. What we actually want to touch in yoga is our true self.
If you would like to know more about our holistic yoga and how to enhance your health career with the gifts of yoga, I invite you to check our yoga teacher training program on our website and contact us at heather@yogatogo.com.
As we sincerely practice any skill over years and years, our confidence and comfort level increase, together with the quality of our performance. Whether it is dancing, writing, sailing, or designing a building, we understand ourselves and our object of study better.
As a beginner yoga teacher, my attention was focused on increasing:
- Knowledge of postures and breathing exercises
- The art of creating curriculum
- Skill of hands-on assisting
- Developing style of language and delivery
- Meditation practice
These were the skills that I paid attention to, to become more and more comfortable teaching yoga. The skill set of a yoga teacher is different to that of a yoga therapist.
Each individual brings to his teaching and practice his/her own experience and formal training. To build on my own strengths as well as boost my knowledge in vital areas, as a yoga therapist I pay attention to increasing these skills:
- Listening deeply to the individual
- Quickly identifying strengths within the individual
- Facilitating the experience of the whole self
- Knowledge of subtle and physical anatomy
- Knowledge of healing tools and techniques from Yoga philosophy and psychology
Yoga and Yoga Therapy are vast topics with great diversity from traditionalists to revisionists. Each individual touches a part and can experience the Self as whole.
It is said, “If you want to learn something, teach it.” I invite you to learn more about Yoga and embark on a healing journey. Check our website www.yogatogo.com and contact us if you have any questions.
Joseph LePage founder of Integrative Yoga Therapy.
Joseph grew up in suburban California and left to search for something more real. He first visited India in 1974. He was 20 years old and a student of anthropology in Kenya, East Africa. He dropped out of school for a year and set off to discover the world with a backpack and a few dollars. He began by hitch-hiking the length of Africa from Kenya to South Africa. After 8 months he sailed third-class from Kenya to Bombay, and on a “music club” evening on the deck of the ship he met a spiritual teacher from India. Joseph says that it was in India that he began to understand human suffering.
His next trip to India was in 1984 as a photojournalist. It was this journey that allowed him to see another India, as he had the opportunity to step into the lives of the rich and famous of the country. He walked in Indira Gandhi’s funeral procession. As he boarded a plane back home, he writes “Mother India has worked her magic of transformation again.” The journalist was left behind and something new was being created.
The following year he left journalism to begin his healing journey. One day he hiked into the Himalayas to see a hermetic Tibetan monk. In answer to Joseph’s question, “How can I overcome fear?” the monk answered with another question, “If you love other people and treat them with kindness and compassion, what would you ever have to be afraid of?“
During this trip Joseph volunteered as an English teacher for the Tibetan refugee community, and had the opportunity to have a one-hour private audience with the Dalai Lama. He was deeply impressed with the Dali Lama’s simplicity and humor, and also the depth and presence of clarity. The Dalai Lama took Joseph’s hand between his two hands with “simplicity and love like that of two small boys perfectly content in the moment that surrounds them.” Joseph continues, As we walked slowly and in silence, I felt a light and a prayer rising within my heard: “I offer my life for the benefit of others“. For the first time in his life, he realized that fear had been left behind.
As a yoga teacher in the Kripalu tradition and a body-worker whose special focus was energy healing, Joseph founded Integrative Yoga Therapy (IYT) in 1993. The IYT program developed out of Joseph’s studies of traditional healing arts in over one hundred countries, together with his master’s degree work in experiential education. Joseph has trained over 3000 yoga teachers and yoga therapists around the world, and is recognized as a creative and innovative teacher. He lives in South Brazil with his wife Lilian, also a yoga teacher, where they own and operate Enchanted Mountain Yoga Center.
