Start with why

As you enter your journey of the yoga teacher training, you should take the time to write down your reflections and ask yourself : what led you here? what do you expect from this life-changing experience? Why are you doing this? 

I took the decision to sign-up for a Yoga teacher training in June 2020, during the circuit breaker in Singapore. This 3 month long lock-down was prone to a lot of internal reflections for me. I had more time than I can ever recall to hit the “pause” button and ask myself some structuring questions on the meaning of life. I also had the rare opportunity to practice yoga on daily basis, by starting my day with at least a 20 minutes yoga morning session. 

This context led me to look for a new personal challenge that would help me progress in my life generally speaking (and have my own “thing” besides work that eats most of my time), but also create a positive perspective in a difficult time like this one. 

That is how I set this objective to become a yoga teacher and enroll in a YTT. I did it more specifically for the following reasons:

1- I wanted to deepen my physical practice and better understand how to do asanas and what are the benefits related to them 

2- I wanted to focus on my inner-self and create more opportunities to spend quality time with myself 

3- Being new to Singapore, I wanted to use yoga as a way to meet and connect with people, while keeping in touch with the loved ones living abroad through online classes

4- I wanted to join and belong a community of people who share the similar interests and use it as a tool of empowerment 

As I write these words, I have been almost a month into my yoga journey, and I feel that I have already been answering some of the questions I had initially and achieving part of the objectives I set at the beginning.

At the same time, this journey has also showed me how little I knew and understood about yoga, and how important it is to address this philosophy with great humility. As we are learning and developing knowledge on yoga, we actually realize during the YTT how ignorant we are about yoga, how many misconceptions we have and how huge is the knowledge we still need to build up before calling ourselves “yogi” or “yoga follower”. All in all, the YTT is a great lesson of humility. 

This is why it is important to know why you are doing this and what do you expect from it, but most importantly to be aware that you might change your view along the way, as you learn and progress throughout your journey.