I signed up for yoga and meditation teacher training last fall, committing to 200 hours of instruction come springtime. Springtime is here, and the training actually begins on Saturday (gulp). There’s not much more I can do to prepare for the 90 hours of training that will happen between March 12 and March 20 (again: Gulp).
This leaves me to reflect on the first step in the process, which is already behind me—the pre-work that my fellow trainees and I were assigned back in December.
The reading. We were assigned several books to read, which was thrilling to me as a lifelong bookworm. Some were wonderful and life-changing, and I’m glad I finally had a reason to read them (I’m looking at you, “Mindfulness for Beginners” by Jon Kabat Zinn). Others, such as “The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” contained a few revelatory parts, but otherwise didn’t feel applicable to a modern American yogi (knowing that the physical practice isn’t the main point of yoga is cool; learning about the various levels of consciousness and enlightenment seems irrelevant). And then, there’s the “Bhagavad Gita.” It is not pictured here, because its gargantuan size would take up the entire frame. I really *wanted* to love the Bhagavad Gita, which is about the best I can say about that.
A few of the books assigned ahead of my yoga-teacher training.
The sun salutations. Part of our pre-work involved teaching sun salutations to friends and family members. This was by far the most instructive—and humbling—task on our list. I found it pretty easy to get my “spiel” down, and easier than I thought to keep my lefts and rights straight. However, it was waaay harder than I thought to actually focus on what my “students” were doing. After leading my mom through several rounds of sun salutations, I told my teacher: “I realized that I was saying and doing all the right stuff, but I hadn’t looked up at her for maybe five minutes. She could have been doing jumping jacks, for all I knew.” And that’s with one student, not a room full of students. Other challenges: With all the breath and alignment cues, when do yoga teachers breathe? I have a lot to learn.
Photo credit Acyuta Gopi, from a kirtan in New York City.
The kirtan. If you Google “kirtan,” you’ll get a long description about traditional call-and-response chanting rituals. This makes it sound unfun at best, cult-like at worst. Here’s how I’d describe a kirtan: You know the music yoga teachers play in class? The songs that have a vaguely Indian-sounding beat and Sanskrit words you don’t understand that help you get in your happy yoga place? The groups that produce this music hold live performances, called kirtans. I attended one at Yoga Mandali on Feb. 20 with Gaura Vani.
My main impressions: You get to sit on comfy yoga bolsters, not traditional seats (win!). You hear cool folk stories about ancient yogis and yoginis (win!). You sing along after learning what those Sanskrit words actually mean (fun fact: “mangalam” means “auspicious.”). And you leave feeling relaxed and energized at the same time—kind of like after a yoga class (win-win!). This wasn’t assigned as pre-work, but it helped me understand a different side of the yogic tradition, which felt extremely worthwhile.
So now, it’s all over but the shoutin’. Wish me luck!
Have you gone through yoga-teacher training? What do you wish you’d known beforehand—and what advice do you have for me as I embark on mine?
