Teacher Training
Here I am, Week 3, Day 8 of my Hot Power Fusion Yoga Teacher Training at CorePower Yoga, waiting to get started on another Posture Clinic. My classmates and teachers have been loving my “duvet” aka my WAYmat I’ve been bringing to class, which I normally use for Bikram Yoga classes. This is the ultimate mat to sit/lay on when you have to be on the ground in a yoga studio for three hours.
Tonight we covered all of the postures in the Hip and Spine Series, starting with Half Pigeon Pose and then went all the way through the Camel Series, ending with Rabbit Pose. By our next group session this Sunday, we will have covered all of the postures in the entire Hot Power Fusion series and it’s only Week 3. Holy cow!
Confession Time: I’ve been beating myself up badly during my teacher training experience so far. Each time we do a round of practice teaching, I’ve blanked and stuttered the whole way through it. Then I start to question if I have what it takes to be a good yoga teacher and worry I won’t remember the sequence, all of the postures in it and all of the cues in time for graduation.
Even though we didn’t practice teach in tonight’s group session, we did play a serious game of Popcorn where we all took turns saying the breath and the name of the posture along with stating the transition for the posture if there was one. I felt like I did better at our game of Popcorn tonight than I did during last night’s group session. Each time it was my turn to say the next posture in the sequence, I found myself looking at the ceiling, as if the ceiling had all the answers I needed. Sure I struggled through the exercise and my answers weren’t all perfect, but for the first time, I noticed other people in class were struggling to remember the sequence too. A definite “ah-ha!” moment. What a huge relief! I wasn’t the only one having a hard time memorizing all of the postures and cues. We talked about how we were all feeling at this point in our training. It was reassuring to know I wasn’t the only one who gets nervous during practice teaching and is worried about not having the sequence memorized yet.
It’s moments like these where I really need to step back, chill and just trust the process. I need to keep reminding myself, “it’s the practice room, not the perfect room.” Tonight was the first time I actually started to enjoy myself in teacher training because I wasn’t so busy worrying about what I didn’t know and what I didn’t have memorized.