Core skills
What are the core skills you should cover on a yoga teacher training course?
By Jacqueline Godfrey
Training to teach yoga is a huge investment, in terms of your time, energy and of course, your hard-earned money. It is not to be taken lightly as any course you choose will help shape you into the teacher that you become. Choosing carefully, with a balance between your heart and your head is vital to ensure you receive a solid grounding from which to teach.
With close to two decades worth of yoga trainings, in the roles of trainee, mentor and trainer, I have put together some of the core aspects which I feel are essential in a YTT.
My own initial 200 hours training was spent far away from home in the Keralan jungle, in a sacred ashram setting. Every day began rigorously at 5am with meditation in an open-sided temple. Each day was steeped in Vedantic philosophy, Sanskrit chanting and spiritual discourses, surrounded by statues of deities and the more than occasional mosquito. Physical practices involved traditional asana but also pranayama and kriya. Karma yoga was an integral part of the experience and every trainee had a daily job to do around the ashram. This training gave me a huge respect for the origins of yoga and yet, whilst I personally thrived in and loved this immersive atmosphere, it was super-tough and not everyone was as beguiled as me by the emphasis on the many hours of philosophy and spirituality. This training provided anatomy lessons but these were academic and pretty dry, as opposed to practical and engaging.