Starting From Scratch How To Be an Ashtanga Yoga Teacher in 5 Easy Steps :
1. Great Yoga Teachers
RECOGNIZE THAT AN ASHTANGA YOGA TEACHER TRAINING CLASS is not just a room with yoga students in it.
Make your yoga class a memorable experience, lighting, music, Satsang, tea, mix it up. Create a nice environment.?
However, the most important element in any yoga class is energy. No energy, no students, no class. It doesn’t matter how flexible you are, how well you can demonstrate advanced postures (which the majority of students don’t like you doing by the way), your students will not come back if you do not have passion.
Be passionate about giving a great yoga experienced. Be motivational, inspirational, and excited to be teaching your yoga class, every day, it is a blessing.
Energy is infectious good energy brings good energy
More energy equals more students; it’s simple. Correct dialogue means that you do not have to demonstrate any postures. Spend your time teaching encouraging, adjusting, this is exactly what your yoga students expect from yoga teachers.
2. Great yoga teachers practice yoga in their mind body and spirit.
This means that they demonstrate what they teach, by their actions.
To have a flexible body you must have a flexible mind…
...Great yoga teachers are FLEXIBLE IN ATTITUDE?♀️
You will find that your students are all practice yoga at different levels. Some advanced, some yoga beginners, some in the middle. Students with different levels of ability, ambition, and desire all come together in one of your yoga classes. A great yoga teacher must have the flexibility in their class to let things go.
YOU WOULD BE AMAZED at how many yoga teachers with attitude and ego there are teaching today.
At some point, these yoga teachers have done a yoga teacher training course and actually learned nothing from it. Some too many teachers get frustrated in their own class when a student is struggling with a posture. This is not yoga teaching. This is The Army.?
A great yoga teacher will give student space encouragement & rest if they need it
YOGA IS ABOUT LETTING GO, Releasing tension, releasing anxiety, not holding on to unrealistic expectations of your students, and therefore increasing tension within the class.
Appreciate every student and if someone needs Savasana, let them. Don’t make anything of it. Don’t say anything just give them a nod and let them know that you care.?
Seems like common sense yea, unfortunately, good sense is not that common. It is important students feel some autonomy and the freedom to take a breather if needed. Yoga is about freedom and having a great yoga class experience.?♀️
3. Great yoga teachers are not dogmatic
Nothing kills the enjoyment of anything as quickly as dogma. Dogma is doing something for no reason, other than because that is what someone else said. Who is that someone else, I’ve often wondered? Recognize that there’s more than one way to do things.
FOR EXAMPLE, why always start with the right side? Nobody allowed in class once the class started, why? Things happen, students run late, traffic, weather ETC. The excuse that you will hear from dogmatic teachers that use these rules, is because they say it disturbs the class.
No, it does not. Not if your yoga students have a great yoga teacher that is teaching a well-practiced sequence and that has a great command of yoga class dialogue.
During your RYT 200 hours YogaFX Yoga Teacher Training in Bali, we will teach you how to be always prepared for the unexpected moments during a class. We will even put you through mock scenarios of the many things that will occur during your class. You will get to experience real-life yoga teaching and all of its mysteries. ?
We will not ask to teach a yoga class full of students…
…that do not represent a real life yoga teaching scenario
Another dogma is the insistence of sitting up stiff back for meditation. There are many many variations in mediation techniques.
There is not a one size fits all when it comes to meditation. Impossible. A great yoga teacher is one that is completely connected to their yoga students. During the class a great yoga teacher will actually take the students by the hand, open their minds and touch a heart.?
This is yoga. A complete mind body spirit connection meditation. Our YogaFX Teacher Training course will show you how.?
4. All Great Yoga Teachers Have Go-To Yoga Class
There is nothing worse than waiting for an unprepared not very well-trained yoga teacher to find the next posture and the correct instructional dialogue.
That said some styles of yoga can come across as formulaic and have the same routine. It is therefore so important to appreciate that a good yoga class always always always comes down to being a great yoga teacher. A great teacher can teach triangle 10 times in the same class and make it fun enjoyable and educational.??
Every yoga class is different even if you teach the same postures
In each yoga class that you teach there are many always changing variables.
You feel different, your students feel different, there are new students, there are advanced students, your mind is different, your body feels different. And the same is true for your students.
Everyday is Different in some way
We will teach you your Go-To yoga sequences, your brilliant yoga dialogue, and your amazing 20 Yoga keyword secrets that will fit into any style of yoga.
We will teach you how to blend different parts of your Go-To sequence, how to add and take out postures to vary your class. Sometimes during your class, you will see and feel the class momentum change and can add, and sometimes do, make sequence modifications during the practice.?
In order to have the confidence to do this you must most importantly first have a solid foundation yoga sequence. Makes sense right?
Once you have mastered your yoga sequence and your correct yoga dialogue, you will have the confidence to shine above the rest. You will have the freedom to be creative in many different ways.?
For example, starting and ending differently, emphasize different parts, talk about different aspects of yoga – do ..something that creates a unique experience. Yoga teaching is great.
5. Great yoga teachers concentrate on teaching a great yoga class…
…and not traveling around on a flying carpet in the lotus position.
To be a great yoga teacher does of course mean that you have to be proficient, knowledgeable, and have excellent yoga sequence training and dialogue skills.
However, to be a great yoga teacher does not mean that you have to be a suitable candidate for the Cirque De Solei. It does not mean that your students expect excellence (in asana ability) or perfection.?♀️
Great yoga teachers should not be focused on themselves and how many likes in their next Instagram post?
Our YogaFX teaching experience has taught us that teachers that continually focus on their own practice tend to be a demonstrating style of the teacher. This means that they TEACH BY DEMONSTRATION, not through their clear understanding of posture alignment or dialogue.
This demonstration only style of teaching is suitable on yoga retreats where the students really have no desire to become a great yoga teachers. If your desire is to become a great yoga teacher, demonstration style of teaching is exhausting, exclusionary, overwhelming unattainable for most yoga students.
It leads to more repetitive stress injuries for the teacher, and promotes to a more unsafe teaching environment for the yoga students as the teacher sits at the front of the class performing their own demonstrations.
It is impossible for a demonstrating style of teacher to see each and every student
A great yoga teacher will always be with their students. Connected mind body spirit, either walking through their class or on an elevated podium. From this style of teaching the yoga teacher can see every student from the front of the class to the back of the class. It is from these vantage points that a great yoga teacher will be able to see and correct posture alignments. A great yoga teacher will able to use their skillful dialogue to focus upon the areas within the posture that require emphasis. This is an all-inclusive style of yoga teaching.
A great yoga teacher walking through the class or on a podium can watch the yoga beginner, making sure that they are always getting the attention love and support that they need.?
Your students want a great experience, not a teacher who can do way more than them, and who makes them feel stupid, unworthy, or inadequate.
A great yoga teacher will encourage their students to become more strong, more flexible, more confident in their mind-body, and spirit than themselves
Do not teach yoga with ego
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What you do next will determine whether you become one of the world’s greatest yoga teachers or not.
