Namaste to all of our students past and present and welcome to those of you who we are yet to meet! The team at Himalaya Yoga Valley Centre are excited to get posting about all things yoga and yoga teacher training related.
We finished up an incredible season in Goa and at the moment we are in Thailand with our April TTC (Teacher Training Course) group and what a fantastic group of trainees we have! Having graduated hundreds of trainees at our school it never ceases to amaze me how unique each group is and how much each individual trainee has to offer on their own path to becoming teachers.
We are nearing the end of week one and trainees have just began to work on adjusting each other and leading the morning meditation, chanting and pranayama classes in pairs. At the end of this week the trainees will start teaching the yoga sequence they have been practicing to each other in pairs.
It is a huge leap from student to teacher and one that the whole team get a serious buzz from being a part of. After a short time teaching in pairs the trainees move on to teaching smaller groups and finally the whole class! The entire training and progression of the student’s is deeply rewarding and humbling but all of the teachers agree that our greatest reward is on that last week; being at the back of the classroom and watching a trainee teach a class with confidence and integrity and then thinking back to day one…huge transformation in such a short time!
During week one of our training our students immerse themselves fully into a deep ashtanga practice under the guidance of yogacharya Lalit- Lalitji is our school director and lead yoga teacher. From day one there is a really strong focus on deepening the students practice of the modified primary series and an equally strong focus on precise alignment and integrity within each posture. A lot of old habits and misalignment get ironed out at this early stage with the aim to have our teachers as great examples of integrity for their own students when they go on to teach.
Lalit has studied with some of India’s finest yoga masters including those from the Iyengar tradition. He blends a dynamic Ashtanga practice with Iyengar alignment techniques and they serve as a wonderful compliment to each other. It’s amazing to see how the body opens up when postures are practiced in the correct alignment. We start to see a softening and deepening when the joints and limbs are stacked properly, hyperextensions are corrected, weight is distributed evenly and the body stops resisting because it begins to feel secure at an organic level.
No doubt this first week is really intense for our students. There is a lot of physical and mental sweating taking place! As trainees who are going on to be teachers they have a lot to learn and not just in the field of asana. Yoga asana is a core component of our training but there is so much more to learn as well. Honouring our masters before us and the traditional practice of yoga as a unified system means we teach much more than just the physical aspects of yoga.
Alongside the traditional practices such as meditation, kriyas, chanting, pranayama trainees are also learning about Yoga Philosophy, Ayurveda, Anatomy, Ethics, Yoga business, Classroom management, sequencing and of course teaching yoga 🙂 We take peoples dream of becoming yoga teachers very seriously indeed and our curriculum is teaching outcome focused. Trainees spend a significant amount of time on teaching practicums. It can be a big leap for the students but this is where the magic always happens right outside our comfort zone! So yes it is an intense first week but a really rewarding one too for both the teachers and students.
Onwards and upwards yogis and yoginis!
Our next post will be on the art of adjusting keep an eye out for it
xxx Much love from Koh Samui xxx
