Yoga Teacher Training: 11 Reasons to Dive In
Yoga Teacher Training: take your next step
The following is a piece written by Sarah Zandbeek. Sarah is directing our 200 Hour Foundational Yoga Teacher Training in the fall with faculty Stephen Thomas, Neil Dalal, Ian Hayward, Brea Johnson and Sean Haleen.
Any yoga teacher or human I know that has taken a yoga training has said they believe that this should be a mandatory life program. I agree. Here are 11 reasons why:
1) Remoulding Reality: There is so much we don’t know about what we know. Having been raised in a culture that deeply values hierarchy and money, we have been secretly trained to hold rules that might be enslaving us instead of propelling us forward. Our idea of success is buried in things that don’t touch the Soul. Yoga trainings begin to ask more, begging the question again and again, "is that true for you, are these ways of existing true for you?" Some how in some way, something opens and all of a sudden the need to hustle and feel stressed about not having enough transforms into “holy shit, I am so taken care of.”
2) Space Holding: Ever feel like no one ever really quite listens to what you are saying? Their physical ear is there, but they’re not hearing the words or the frequency beneath the words? Well, Yoga Training, helps you to not be that friend. As Teachers, we become guiders in Life, whether we chose that or not. When we begin to look at our lives with a higher resolution microscope, we learn things about life and the way it works and in that, we gain empathy, understanding, and compassion. So, when friends and family come to you, you can actually listen with a tuned in ear to the pains they are speaking of without needing to try and push it away with statements like, “it’s going to be all good, he is a jerk any ways, or you’re going to be fine.” Being able to listen is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, your community and humanity.
3) To Live: Yoga training helps you to understand life. In this you gain the courage to really start living it - outside the bounds of who and what someone told you you were suppose to be/do. When we start to observe what the body is experiencing, it becomes a beautiful guide that moves you towards your authentic truth. When we are in line with truth, ease arises, and the dance of life begins underneath our feet.
4) Freedom: I bet you often hear a calling for something more and you have been ignoring it for a while. There is something deep within you that is getting louder and louder, asking you to listen; the Soul's cry for freedom. Answer that call. The time for change is NOW.
5) Strength and SURRENDER: Learning the pulsation of life can help you move through the tough times with more grace. Unfortunately (fortunately), tough times are an essential part of life and learning; imagine learning from the rough patches in a much less stressful and tumultuous way. Not everything needs to be dealt with head on: yoga can teach us to surrender to that which we can not change and to look a little deeper in order to see the truth of the matter, which is always humbling and filled with powerful teachings.
6) Re-Inhabit Intuition: Living in a society that is mostly based on lies, we have grown to stop trusting our intuition - that which guides us to who we are and our highest purpose. This can lead us to wondering, “what am I doing, what is the point?” Not knowing your purpose can make it really hard to wake up each day, moving through the motions that aren’t moving you. Yoga training helps build Self-trust and confidence to stand up for what you are feeling. It offers a space for others to drop their lies and start moving toward speaking truth and having the strength to say the hardest of things. Moving lies out of the body makes space for deeper movements and more profound moments in life. Life becomes much more juicy!
7) Dissolve Suffering: Suffering exists due to undigested emotional experiences, which tend to inhabit the tissues of the body in the strangest ways. As we practice asana, engage in breath work, and meditate, these stagnancies begin to move. This brings emotions to the forefront, giving us a chance to dissolve past happenings and release them from there grip on our day to day perspective of life.
8) Threshold meets Change: Often, when we reach the edge of something, there is that friction has built and it's hot, frustrating, and it feels like it might collapse us. We turn around and go back to what we already know and that courageous part of us turtles once again - the cycle ensues. What if we learned to meet these thresholds and had skills to yield through them? We may start to desire these times of great change instead of fear them. Grace may begin to exist as a consistency in our personality.
9) Authentic Self: Who are you? Be that. Scary? Maybe. Impelling? Most definitely. Yoga training can help you begin to move through life guided by what really serves you in all senses: food, relationships, work, and love life. Live in complete accordance to that which you were designed for.
10) Navigation: Yoga training teaches us how to begin chipping away all the built in patterns that we have created over time through our experience in this life. How does one begin to “listen” to the inner guide, to have courage to follow it no matter what, to speak truth even when the voice quivers and the truth is hard. Observing the journey of Yoga in the body-mind-spirit continuum teaches us so much, allowing us to start observing moments in a much more profound way.
11) Life becomes an Offering: Empathy. Through working on your Self, the vastness of what makes you begins to reveal itself. Within that, we start to see that we are all things: crazy, wild, kind, and free. It is only through allowing yourself to experience all of Life’s emotions, that you begin to make space for the uncalculated pathway of others. Each life, each soul is having a different experience than you and your way and learnings may not be their way. Once this is realized, there is space for you to not attach to their experience but rather joyously (and sometimes frustrating) observe them as they unfurl, at their own special pace, way, and time. Not to be corrected or fixed, only loved through the process. The Ultimate offering.
Get in touch for more details around this upcoming program and stay tuned for information session details!