The End of YTT is the Beginning of My Yoga Journey

The exam is on this Sunday and my 200hr teacher training course is coming to an end.

It is an extremely intense, exhausting, but extraordinarily meaningful program that I’ve attended. I’ve learned so much about yoga and made new friends. I feel grateful to myself that I decided to do my YTT training.

Before signing up for this course, I had struggle and doubt if I should do it. I just started to practice yoga last year on and off and was still at the beginner level. So I was concerned about what if I couldn’t perform asanas and failed the exam. As an introvert, I have difficulty expressing myself in front of people. So another problem dragged me was how I could teach my classmates. However, I signed it up immediately when realizing I just wanted to push myself to exercise and learn yoga for myself. And at the same time, it would force me to talk and practice teaching skills.

I still remembered my first teaching class. Hearing my heartbeat, I was too nervous to forget the sequence and instruction cues. But I felt supported by my classmates’ hard practice and I was relaxed afterward. Master Ram was very kind to compliment my teaching and encourage me really a lot. Teaching is not easy. Memorizing the instruction cues is not everything, we have to know what we are teaching like how to break down a pose into steps, which muscles concentrically or eccentrically contract in the poses, which actions the muscles work on at which bone joints, what the poses benefit for… I feel like yoga anatomy is even harder than asana practice.

Frankly, I was overwhelmed by the theory class over the 2 months. There is a good deal of information to be digested, readings, blogs, project, teaching plans… Over the past weeks, when I was not at work, I was either doing my readings, blogs, project, or thinking about teaching. But I survived! Through this course, I have learned a lot, yoga is far more than what we know. Learning yoga anatomy teaches us how the bones, joints, ligaments, and muscles all work together in yoga. The knowledge of these aspects helps us get more out of the practice and protect us from injuries.

The struggle worthwhile, otherwise I would not make such great progress to surprise myself. The root of practice is bitter but the fruit is sweet. I will stay focused and keep practicing. The YTT 200 program will end but my learning never ends.