Do you know a survey which has been conducted by the yoga alliance international in the US in the year 2016 says that “For every one yoga teacher there are two students who wants to become a yoga teacher. In other words one yoga teacher inspires minimum of two students to become a teacher.
Transition from student to teacher.
You might have started to notice that you are very flexible and you are excelling in all the poses in your regular one hour yoga class , also you want to know more yoga beyond the postures. Meanwhile your colleagues who are with you in yoga class also might have told you that you are doing good and why can’t you explore to become a yoga teacher. All these things make the zen ,inside you to become more alive.
May be you wish do a yoga teacher training for two reasons
, one reason is that you want to explore more about what yoga is for your self understanding ,for analysis and go in-depth to the other part of yoga apart from the asanas ( postures), like the control of senses ,the concentration ,the state of meditation and second you are very much fascinated you find a lot of transformation in doing yoga and you want to pass this transformation to others.
When you are ready it will automatically appear to you .
In our school Thousand Petaled Lotus Yoga in dubai we strongly believe that if you are the own witness of your transformation you can easily pass it on to others, that is how many of our regular students after some time enquire or show interest about our yoga teacher training programs after they feel their transformation
So now you decided that you want to become a yoga teacher the next step is to find out what is the available yoga institutes in your locality. You have this option of doing this course completely online especially after the pandemic but I strongly believe that yoga is something which you need to learn from a teacher face to face so that you understand everything which may be lacking when you do it online. You can do a google search of all the local yoga training academies, you can also check with the yoga alliance website.
Yoga Alliance is the largest repository of all the yoga teachers in this universe. As of now there is more than 120000 yoga teachers and yoga schools ,registered with the yoga alliance USA.
There are lot of other yoga alliance apart from yoga alliance USA. Every country now a days has its own yoga alliance , you may also come across yoga alliance professionals yoga alliance Australia , yoga alliance India, spiritual yoga alliance and there are more.Why we are recommending yoga alliance US is only because it is the largest repository. Apart from maintaining a registry of all these yoga professionals and yoga schools yoga alliance also does a lot of other activities like continuing professional development.
If you look into their website you will find all the details. So check which are the schools available next to you. Apart from yoga Alliance theres also going to be local regulations for sports education in the country which you are living now. There may be lot of physical education training institutes who may also offer this course.
For Ex: in the UAE there’s a separate registry called Registry of Exercise Professionals in the UAE. And the reps UAE database is automatically updated with the international Reps, International council for all those registered exercise professionals and now reps is also having a mutual understanding with Reps Europe in which all those database of the registered exercise professionals in the UAE will automatically update to the system in Europe.
Let’s put in this way: – if it is Dubai – UAE you need to find a yoga institute which has the accreditation from the yoga alliance US which is the largest repository of all the yoga teachers and the yoga schools and also you need to see if it is accredited by any of the local bodies like Reps UAE .
Now next you need to check in the yoga school website to see if the course meets all your expectations.
People want to do yoga for various reasons , there are people who do yoga for physical reasons like they want to increase their flexibility ,want to increase their strength and there are people who wants to do yoga for something with the mind ,they want to calm their mind or they want to sleep better and also there are people who use yoga as a tool for spirituality like exploring deeper into meditation the sub conscious mind. Check if your yoga teacher training covers all these people.
After you check in the website ,call and speak with the lead trainer. Every yoga institute has a lead trainer and this lead trainer will be teaching almost 3/4th of the course apart from other trainers. You speak with the lead trainer and ask all your doubts ,you ask about the syllabus ,you check what their manuals are ,you check with their schools if they have a very illustrative manual of how to get into the pose, what is the safety ,what is the contraindications ,what is the anatomy, will they teach you the sequencing methodology are they going to teach you philosophy are they going to teach you holistic biomechanics, the breathing exercises (pranayama) , the history of yoga. Make sure you will have a thorough idea about what are all the different topics which this school is going to teach for you.
Once you get into this you can also ask for the teacher training school for a trial class because you also want to know what style of yoga they are going to teach you .
Their are different styles of yoga, as you may know ,power yoga, gentle yoga, vinyasa yoga, restorative yoga, hatha yoga, you need to also ask at the end of the course what all different styles of yoga you may teach and also check if this syllabus allows you to teach a one to one personalized and customized class.
After gathering all those information’s you also look into what is the cost of the course. you may get the same product , same RYT 200 in other institute but you need to look into the reputation of the institute by comparing what they offer ,what is their syllabus ,what is the experience of the lead trainer. Do consider those reviews from google or directly from the yoga alliance. Do check with the training institute what their previous students are doing, where they are teaching. This gives you a very good idea about what the school is and how confident the student will get immediately after finishing this course. And don’t forget to ask what is the alternate plan, if you miss some modules / classes.
When you are convinced and your heart and mind says, yes this is the school I am looking for, just enroll for the course.
We wish you the best in your yoga journey and embrace you into our yoga family.
Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu
