Today I’m sharing a recap of my latest weekend of yoga teacher training.
It’s hard to believe that I’m already halfway through! My next weekend of yoga teacher training won’t be til January 2019. It makes me realize how close we are to 2019 to say that. This weekend we had a few tests, so we were all a bit nervous about it.
Friday PM
We’re emailed the schedule for the weekend the week before so we have an idea of what we’ll be covering throughout the weekend of teacher training. We knew that we’d be doing our practice teacher on Friday night. We were teaching each other (in small groups of 4 or 5) 30 minute classes that we’d put together for homework. I had gone through my class on my own and it came out at just over 30 minutes, which I figured was perfect as I tend to talk fast when I’m nervous. I thought that I would be when I was teaching, so it would come out right at 30 minutes.
I volunteered to go first in my group. I wanted to get it done! It ended up going by really fast because I was so nervous. Thankfully it was over before I knew it. I got some great feedback from the group about what they liked and what I can improve on next time.
Saturday AM
Saturday morning was focused on meditation and pranayama practice (breath work), followed by a yoga nidra practice. I always learn so much from the instructor that teaches us the meditation and philosophy of yoga side of the teacher training because I didn’t know much about it begin with when I signed up.
Saturday PM
We started off Saturday afternoon by taking a test – we had to be able to name poses in both English and Sanskrit, as well as identify which muscles were being contracted and stretched for each pose. It was definitely nerve wracking, but I still did alright We spent the rest of the day walking about what we’d be doing after the Christmas break and we did a short yoga practice.
Sunday AM
We had our anatomy test first thing in the morning on Sunday. We had to know the bones, muscles, and chakras of the lower body and core. I did well on it thanks in part to the anatomy and physiology classes that I took in university. Having that background to draw on helped me a lot. After we went over the answers we did another pranayama practice and meditation.
Sunday PM
We talked about yoga philosophy to cap off the weekend of yoga teacher training. We started off by discussing the yoga nidra that we did the day before, sharing our experiences with it. We then learned about the yamas and niyamas (they’re essentially a yogic way of living). We looked at each one and how we journalled about how they manifest themselves in our lives. It was a really interesting conversation.
Final thoughts
I went into the weekend feeling stressed because of the 30 minutes of teacher and the tests, but I ended up doing relatively well on all of them. Was there room to improve? Definitely, but I went into the weekend well prepared. I’m very glad that all my studying paid off!
I now have 5 more weeks until yoga teacher training starts up again after Christmas. As much as I love being able to immerse myself in yoga every other weekend, I’m also looking forward to some down time over the holidays.