Another weekend of yoga teacher training is in the books! We only have one more weekend before we have a break for the holidays. It’s hard to believe that it’s flying by so fast. Before I know it I’ll be done!
Friday PM
We started off out weekend of yoga teacher training with a flow practice. It was really nice to do some yoga, as it had been a few days since I had last done it (last week’s workouts were all about the cardio). We then spent some time going over the details of 8 or 10 postures. We always do a practice with postures and then talk about them or vice versa, which I really appreciate. We get to experience it during a practice and then talk about the little details.
Saturday AM
We talked about how joints and their range of motion affect poses. We watched a video that took people with different ranges of motion around joints and looked at how poses looked when they did them. There was a lot of variation with the poses because of the different range of motion for each person. It was a really good reminder that there’s no one “perfect” way for a post to look. Down dog will look a bit different on everyone because of varying ranges of motion around the knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, and wrists.
Saturday PM
We started off our afternoon session talking about the muscles of the back. Once we had covered some anatomy we were given a muscle and told to prepare two poses – one that contracted it and one that stretched it. We then had to teach that pose to the rest of the class on Sunday morning.
My partner and I were given gluteus medius, so we decided on tree and child’s pose. Along with the posture we had to give a few facts about the muscle, so I shared the origin and insertion of the glute med. Thankfully the instructor gave us time to practice the cuing and get comfortable with what we wanted to say.
Sunday AM
Sunday morning started off with a flow practice in which we taught our classmates the poses that we had worked on the day before. We set up our mats in a circle and we went around the circle. To be completely honest, it was a bit nerve wracking to teach to 25 other people (even if it was only one pose), but I survived and I’m so glad that I have that experience now.
It was a great, sweaty practice. It was great to get a little taste of what other people’s teaching styles will be like. We finished off the morning by going over the nervous system.
Sunday PM
After lunch we were put into small groups of three people and given a beginning pose and an ending pose. We had to get from the first pose to the second pose using 2 postures between to link them. I know it doesn’t sound very hard, but it was tougher than I thought it would be.
Once each group had our mini sequences planned out, each group taught them to the rest of the class. It tuned out to be another great practice. I thought everone did a great job.
Final thoughts
Over the next two weeks before out next weekend of yoga teacher training I’m going to be doing a lot of studying. We’re having a test on the poses (names in both english and snaskrit, as well as muscles being contracted and stretched in each pose) as well as anatomy (being able to label muscles, name the action of the muscle, and their associated chakra.
That will be our last weekend of yoga teacher training until after Christmas. It’s hard to believe that I’ve already completed 5 weekends of yoga teacher training.