Teacher Training
We started off our Group Session tonight talking about the two books we were assigned to read during our yoga teacher training, Journey Into Power: How to Sculpt Your Ideal Body, Free Your True Self and Transform Your Life With Yoga by Baron Baptiste and Hot Yoga by Marilyn Barnett.
After our discussion, we each received a special gift, our take home exam – all nine pages of it! Thank goodness this would be an open book exam and due in a week. I would need to be crafty with finding some extra time in my week to work on my exam before next Wednesday’s due date. I already have a full plate with working full-time during the day, taking yoga classes during the week to meet my graduation requirement, journaling about each of those classes, attending the Group Sessions and journaling about each of those as well, putting together the makeup om work assignment for when I missed the one Group Session in March and finish researching and writing the final essay assignment that’s due next week as well. Holy cowabunga I have a lot of work to do!
Taking off all of Week Five from going to any yoga classes really set me back in reaching my 60 yoga class goal before graduation. Now, even with doing double doses of yoga on some days and going to class consistently throughout the week, I’d be lucky to finish all 60 classes within the 14-day grace period after graduation. Thank goodness we were given an extra two weeks to take classes because I’m going to need them.
Even though the CorePower Yoga teacher training program is considered part-time and takes place after work hours, it’s still proved to be a HUGE time commitment. My whole time during the program has been one big balancing act of time management and project prioritization. I wish I could say I didn’t have to work during training so I could completely focus on all of the awesome things I’ve been learning, but that’s not my reality. Since I have to work for a living, I needed to manage both my workday and my yoga nights effectively in order to get everything that’s expected of me done, all without burning myself out or getting myself sick. Luckily neither one of those things has happened to me during training. I’m bummed I had to take a whole week off from taking yoga classes, but I needed to take the extra time to catch my breath and regain my sanity. It’s okay, I know I’ll get it all done. Getting to that point has been a bit challenging. I’ll get there and will be so proud of myself when I do.
After talking about the final take home exam, we jumped right into practice teaching. For the first round, we practiced with a partner. Instead of teaching the whole Hot Power Fusion sequence, each of us only practice taught the part we would be teaching for the Bring A Beginner Guest Day on Sunday. I would be teaching from the Triangle Flow, Tree and all through Core up until Downward Facing Dog.
The second round of practice teaching was with all of us together as a group, going through the entire HPF sequence, with each us teaching the part we would be teaching on Sunday. For both rounds of practice teaching, we received feedback from both the partner we were practicing with and each of the training coaches. During our second round of practice teaching, I felt more confident with how I was leading the class. I did a pretty good job maintaining a nice, steady flow during my section by not only cueing the inhales and exhales between each of the postures, but also doing them with everyone in class as I cued them. For the most part, I remembered most of the cues for my section.
The part I struggled with the most was what to say during the core workout. During core portion, I demonstrated each of the exercises for everyone in class but then as everyone was doing the exercises, I couldn’t really think of what to say. I know HPF teachers often give words of encouragement during this portion of class because it’s tough. Core tends to be most people’s least favorite part of class, mine included! Coming up with more dialogue for core was the biggest piece of feedback for me in both rounds of practice teaching. When I went home to practice before Sunday, I wrote down a list of possible cues I could use for core.
By the end of our Group Session tonight, I felt pretty good about how far I’ve come with my practice teaching, but I still had plenty of practicing ahead of me over the next few days. I did well, but I wanted to do my best on Sunday.