Yoga is the ultimate practice for living a more balanced, joyful life.
Today I’m sharing all about the top 4 unexpected lessons I learned about life and yoga during my 200-hour yoga teacher training.
Are you ready?
1. Not all yoga teachers have every advanced yoga posture in their personal practice.
Yes, it’s true! Even some E-RYTs do not have inversions or other more challenging poses in their practice. Everybody and every body is different, and that’s a good thing!
I’d love to normalize more yoga instructors not always having a perfectly curated Instagram feed full of all advanced yoga postures that leave others yogis stuck in a comparison game.
Truth: there is nothing about inversions or arm balances that make your practice better than anyone else’s.
Yoga is not a competition, and more importantly, yoga goes far beyond the asanas and physical practice.
That said, go ‘head and ‘flex’ and take cute yoga pics when you want! No shame here 😉 Maybe just balance it with a sweaty picture with your dog pushing his toy into your face during your practice…like this one 😀
Yes, we can be graceful and elegant when deeply in the practice; but, also, let’s welcome the fact that sometimes your practice has interruptions or distractions: a car horn honks outside; your dog barks; or your kid cries or jumps on your back while you’re in plank pose! It’s real life. Life happens.
All of these moments allow an opportunity for us to witness the countless changing sensations that arise, and, simultaneously, our ability to let them go. It adds to our ability to practice this even when we’re off the mat.
If you’re newer to yoga, you may not be aware, but yoga is so much more than just the asanas– that is, the physical postures. There are Eight Limbs of Yoga, which are beautiful, and powerful elements of yoga that make it a spiritual practice and path.
But, more on that later!
2. Having aversions to particular postures can have a much deeper meaning than simple discomfort, or lack of practice.
Maybe it is because of the fantastic teachers and community I had the pleasure of training with at Hot House Yoga- RVA, but a majority of the growth that came from my 200-hour Yoga Teacher training, came from gaining a deeper awareness of how much of our inner emotional world and past traumas take up residence in our bodies. What is it that makes you shrink back from letting go fully, in a posture?
What limiting beliefs might there be that are stopping you?
One of my favorite yoga teachers, from during my time in undergrad, once shared a quote about how as children, we are naturally in alignment, and how you see children with such flexibility and the ability to do inversions and other postures that become difficult as we move through the world, and our hearts gradually become broken; we often move away from playfulness, and connection with our bodies— this manifests in the we carry ourselves, the way pain takes up residence in our bodies.
Yoga is the practice of re-opening our hearts, finding our way back to alignment, and deepening our mind-body connection.
During my 200-hour teacher training program, I realized that over time, I had developed aversions to certain postures for one reason or another, particularly backbends and inversions– and I realized the meaning behind it was much more mental than physical. My instructors offered such a supportive, open environment for exploring this– and I came back to the realization that the practice of yoga requires a certain amount of trust, and the willingness to continually let go.
As much as certain postures require a considerable amount of strength, there is also a trust, a belief, a mindset you must cultivate: that maybe you can kick your foot up, and find your way into an inversion, that perhaps you can open your heart enough and expand deeper into a backbend, or just give a new variation of a posture a try. There is so much of your inner life that you will inevitably learn about, during your time on the mat, or through the study of the other limbs of yoga.
I am so grateful for the amount of inner reflection and journaling that was a central part of 200-hour training program, in addition to all of the focus on anatomy, alignment, class composition and sequencing, of course! But reflection remains such an essential part of our yoga practice.
3. It Made Me Reframe What it Means to Be a Teacher and a Learner
At the time that I began my 200-hour Teacher Training, it had been nearly two years since finishing my graduate studies in Creative Writing. It was hard to believe.
By the time I graduated my Yoga Teacher Training program, I had been teaching writing for three years, and had become so consumed by it, that I was constantly in ‘performance and presentation mode’.
I desperately needed to get back into the learning space, where I had a dedicated amount of time to devote to studying something deeply, reflecting and engaging with material; committing to Yoga Teacher Training was exactly the leap I needed to get back into that space, and in a way, it forced me to commit to it, and to show up… over and and over again, to do the work, over a six month period of time.
In his Ted Talk “How to Get Better at the Things You Care About”, Eduardo Briceño helped in centering my awareness on this notion (one of the resources shared in our teacher training program).
In his talk, Briceño asserts that ‘the most effective teams and people go between two zones: the learning zone and performing zones”, and that we “tend to spend almost all of our time in the performance zone”, which ultimately, “hinders our growth”.
Further, ‘In the learning zone, we are able to confront our struggles…repeatedly to isolate them, and therefore, improve. We take time to observe, reflect, adjust, ask questions, to experiment, give and receive feedback– all elements which are necessary to grow and thrive, in any learning environment, and life in general.’
– Eduardo Briceño, TedXTalks
One main revelation from this, which deeply affected me, was his claim that we are conditioned to avoid risks, which are necessary for learning. Oof. That was a bit hard to swallow, yet it resonated so profoundly.
By diving headfirst into my yoga teacher training, I took a risk— something I hadn’t really done since ending my graduate studies, and it was hands-down one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
I’m a firm believer that stepping into uncertainty can always be an opportunity for life-changing, awakening experiences- and for myself, I know that the choice to move into the unknown that is such an essential part of what makes me feel the most alive, the most fulfilled, and ultimately brings the most joy.
4. It Reaffirmed My ‘Why’, in My Yoga Practice, Desire to Teach, and in Life in General.
I entered my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at a pivotal point in my life, where I was yearning for more in so many areas of my life: I was looking to transition into a new job, and leave behind a career that was leaving me burnt out, and unable to pursue creative work; I was seeking a new adventure, I was restless and already dreaming up planting roots somewhere new, after having moved back to the East Coast from San Diego, and having lived in Virginia for only a year and some change, at the time I started my training.
My wanderer-heart was ready to start a new chapter, once again– and deciding to start my Yoga Teacher Training at that precise moment in time, ended up being one of the best decisions I made in my entire life. I ended up getting what I hoped for, and so much more, one of my major goals came to fruition, and also launched me into a new phase of my mental, spiritual wellness and healing journey.
My wish for you, whether you are considering beginning a Yoga Teacher Training Program, beginning, or finding your way back to a regular yoga practice, is that you find a studio and community that is just as focused on leading and inspiring you to do the inner work, as much as they are with the tangible, physical cued work of the asanas/ physical practice of yoga.
And that my friends, is just a little glimpse into how Om Your Own Way was born.