How Yoga Teacher Training Changed My Life

Why yoga teacher training?

When I mentioned I wanted to do yoga teacher training to my parents they asked why. Why yoga, of all things? At this point in my life I already had my personal training and group fitness certification. I had attended countless workshops on teaching spin classes, zumba, kettlebells and more.

But yoga?

I’m not even very good at yoga. I am not zen nor flexible, calm nor nurturing, making me an unlikely yoga teacher.

But I knew in my heart I had to do yoga teacher training. By the time I finally signed up it had already been on my brain for four years.

I was craving something hands on. To become a certified personal trainer all you have to do is study and pass a test. That’s it. You don’t interact with another person. You don’t correct their form. Nothing.

I was drawn to yoga teacher training because it felt more hands on and personal. Because it’s a portable fitness modality, all you really need is your body and space… okay and preferably a mat too. And maybe most of all because yoga is not easy for me. By becoming a yoga teacher I wanted to inspire others that you don’t need to be flexible or zen. You just have to be open to the practice.

Sometimes I still feel like a sham of a yoga teacher when I can’t pop up into wheel pose or hold my crow. But I also know now yoga and being a good yoga teacher is about so much more.

The transformation

The actual experience of yoga teacher training didn’t feel very transformational to me. Yes, I learned A LOT in a short period of time. I bonded with a group of incredible yogis. And I was in an awkward transitional phase of my life — I had just lost my job and was waiting to hear if I was accepted into grad school.

Afterwards I didn’t have anything epic or deep to say about the experience. I came, I saw, I did like 5,197 chaturungas. But I didn’t feel transformed or changed.

The transformation happened after.

I’ll always remember the holy moly moment when I was teaching my first class for the first Holistic Happening event. I looked out at a bunch of yogis listening to my every word. I grew up performing, a singer, actor, dancer until I was 22 and decided my heart was no longer in it anymore. Performing has always been my happy place.

Through teaching yoga I’ve been able to return to that place in a whole new way.

This didn’t surprise me, it’s why I wanted to pursue group fitness after college in the first place. My quest to become a group fitness instructor fizzled and burned out, fast. I auditioned at what felt like every studio in New York City and received no after no. I took a hint and gave up.

My journey as a yoga teacher has been different. Now I’m finally getting to do it. Finally getting to teach. At my own events. Through partnerships with Modells, Athleta, Sweetgreen and Arianna Huffington’s pop-up shop. I’ve been teaching at CorePower Yoga for almost a year now and will soon be teaching at Y7 as well. I cried the first time I saw my name on the schedule at a studio. It felt like my longtime dream was finally coming true.

I could not have predicted that me, the least zen human ever, would find more success as a yoga teacher than I did teaching bootcamp or spin or cardio dance classes. I have heard many people talking about manifestation and common beliefs like angel number 1111, positive affirmation might lead one to success. But this is the first time I am experiencing the power of positivity and hard work.

 

Fast-forward to now

I type up this blog post in the middle of a crazy day of teaching. Rooftop yoga in the morning. Teaching my final demo at y7 in the afternoon. And finishing off the day teaching sculpt at Corepower in the evening.

I pinch myself that this is my life. I’m getting paid to jump around to Katy Perry and lead people through vinyasa flows to Drake.

Even though yoga teacher training didn’t feel like this huge, emotional, whirlwind of transformation, it has changed my life in the long run because teaching yoga changed my life.

Yoga teacher training unlocked the ability to teach yoga. I mean duh, I wasn’t going to call myself a yoga teacher without doing yoga teacher training. Making that decision to attend, saying yes to that gut feeling, unlocked all of this.

It unlocked confidence. A word I would never, ever use to describe myself but has now been used by others to describe my teaching.

It unlocked my unique voice. And taught me that it’s my uniqueness, my loudness, my passion, that sets me apart as a yoga teacher.

It unlocked a new way of looking at myself. I spent years not wanting people to see me without make-up. Now I teach wearing nothing but water proof mascara. And I don’t care. At first I taught wearing a tank-top on, worried that people would think I was trying to be sexy in just a sports bra. Now I don’t care if my belly is bloated, I teach in just a sports bra because teaching in 90 degree heat is hard, y’all.

It unlocked the performer that’s always been in me. She spent much of college silenced. Self-conscious. Quiet and scared. But I found the stage, the venue, for me.

✨

So maybe the four-weeks I spent in yoga teacher training didn’t change my life immediately. But in the long run that experience changed everything.