Teacher Training
Tonight, we started off our second yoga teacher training group session by practicing a full Hot Power Fusion class together, lead by Jill with extra hands-on assists from Sunny. This was the first HPF class I felt 100% comfortable in because I personally knew every single person in the class. By now, the sequence is familiar to me because I took a bunch of HPF classes before training started. In class tonight, I was able to relax and really enjoy the flow. I purposely set up my mat in the back row because I didn’t care about seeing myself in the mirror. Instead, I closed my eyes when I could and let Jill’s cues guide me through the class.
After the yoga portion of class, we dove into the monstrous Teacher Training Handbook. We started off by covering the components of a solid and well balanced yoga class. This included defining important yoga terms such as asana (physical yoga postures), prana (breath), vinyasa (flow), tapas (heat), drishti (gaze), dharana (focus) and uddiyana bandha (admoninal lock). We also talked about alignment and safety, establishing a rhythm and the importance of having fun. It is yoga after all! Since this is a Hot Power Fusion yoga teacher training (CorePower Yoga’s version of Hot Yoga), we also talked about why adding heat is important to the HPF sequence.
For the last part of class, we began our first posture clinic. During the posture clinic, we went through the first few postures in the Standing Series: Stand At Attention/ Samasthiti, Mountain Pose/Tadasana, Standing Backbend Pose/Anuvittasana and Standing Forward Fold Pose/Uttanasana. As part of learning the postures, we’re not only learn the English name for each, but we’re also learning the Sankrit name as well. Kind of tough, but they sound so pretty when said correctly. As we covered each posture, each of us took turns being cued by each other into the posture from the previous posture in the sequence. We also covered cues we could use in class and talked about how we could help correct misalignments and modifications for each posture.
Apparently there’s a formula for cueing postures – who knew? Whenever a posture is cued in class, the teacher should always start with the breath (inhale or exhale), the name of the posture they’re cueing and then give the actual cue. Another way to remember the formula is to first state a verb, then a body part, followed by the direction you want the person to go in.
I have to admit after completing the second night of yoga teacher training, I left the studio feeling a little overwhelmed. Am I going to be able to memorize all of this in the next eight weeks?