What is a Yoga Teacher Training?
A Yoga Teacher Training is a full initiation and immersion onto the yogic path. It is an investment in the soul to enhance every aspect of your life. Whether one is looking to teach yoga, or to deepen one’s own practice, a teacher training will always give the practitioner exactly what the practitioner needs.
In a YTT you will be handed the tools that are crucial to a proper practice. It is almost like the “behind the scenes” of yoga that will give you all the secrets to truly getting in touch with what yoga is. A training will launch you onto the journey of coming into unison with yourself. You can expect an intimate dance between hard work and play in every aspect of the training.
We all dream of a fuller life, and becoming a yoga teacher is a way of helping others as well as yourself to achieve that dream. As well as evolving your personal practice, you enter a path of service to help others enrich their lives with yoga. A yoga teacher is one who channels the unity that yoga provides and shares it generously with its students.
There is no one way to teach, but there are specific strategies that are helpful to truly embody the teaching and to share it more holistically in your everyday life. Today, the philosophy of yoga tends to get lost in the constant stream of merchandised yoga on social media and other platforms. In a teacher training, you get to dive into a deeper understanding of the word and the practice. You also build a sturdy foundation upon which you can elevate your consciousness.
This is the opportunity to get intimate with every part of the practice. To fully understand the benefits and the structure of an asana and to feel comfortable in adjusting your students. Though the terminology of anatomy may seem foreign, it becomes accessible and alive in the practice. We understand why we move the way we move and we learn to know what suits different bodies. A Yoga Teacher Training is a means to grow the awareness of the body and how it connects to every other layer of our being. When we understand how the emotional affects the mental and the mental affects the physical, we become more and more skillful in the exercise of yoga. Through the process of a teacher training, you will begin seeing how to implement the philosophy of yoga in your everyday life.
Rather than to merely do yoga, you will learn how to become yogic. That is the state in which you truly become a teacher and can share the teaching in your beingness. A yoga teacher training is an inner journey through the self to transform the self into your highest being. It is a crash course in becoming who you truly are.
So, to conclude, what exactly is a Yoga Teacher Training? First off, yoga means union. Second, a teacher is one who shares his wisdom and knowledge through embodiment. And training is a form of preparation through education. In other words, a yoga teacher training could be explained as “An Education in the Embodiment of Oneness”. Or better yet, “A Preparation in the Personification of Union”.
Words by Antonia @antoniafridarothschild