HOW TO BECOME A YOGA TEACHER | MY STORY +TIPS

Transcript

so I'm finally making this video after receiving tons and tons and tons of messages from you guys I think this is the question that I get asked the most often out of everything and that's how did I become a yoga teacher and I know that there are so many of you out there who have a heart to teach yoga and especially wanting to teach yoga to people living in differently abled bodies and oh my gosh this makes me so excited that the yoga industry is moving in this direction that there are so many people who want to make yoga more inclusive and accessible for everybody so if that's what your desire is I just want to say that I am so happy you're here and I'm so happy but this is something that you want to do so I'm kind of just gonna share my personal journey in this video and what I really hope that you take away from this is that there is always more than one way of achieving a goal so if you have a desire to teach yoga no matter what physical limitations you might be living with yourself no matter what obstacles you might be facing in your own life right now there is always a way there are always more than one way of doing something so if this is your goal to teach yoga there are so many different ways to go about achieving this goal so to start for those of you who don't know me already my name is Rachel I'm a yoga teacher and I specialize in yoga for people living with chronic pain and chronic illness and this is because I've been living with chronic illness since 2010 which is around the time that I started practicing yoga um I started practicing yoga at home I looked up poses online and just kind of started doing yoga on my own in my bedroom didn't even own a pair of yoga pants didn't own a yoga mat just did it right on the carpet in my like old gym shorts from high school so that was how I got started with yoga just like googling yoga poses and just being present with my breath although I was in the poses and yeah that's how I got started I was looking for a practice that would focus more on breathing like an exercise that would focus more on breathing because at the time I was really struggling with symptoms from I had a chest wall malformation called pectus excavatum pectus excavatum where my sternum caved in so my lungs were squished and I didn't know that this was what was happening at the time I had had it my whole life so it just you never had caused problems for me before but then I was like 18 years old started having problems with it um started having shortness of breath and I thought I was just out of shape I was like looking for I was looking for exercises to help me be able to breathe better and to so that I could still do the other exercises that I like doing that shot well I didn't really like running but I did it because I felt like I should um so yeah that's how I got started practicing yoga and from there I just I really fell in love with the practice I love everything about yoga I love the physical aspect I love the meditative aspect where you're really focusing in the present moment I love all the philosophy and just the just the poetry of yoga is just so beautiful to me and I absolutely fell in love with it and so I just I became kind of obsessive about it and it it really changed my life I feel like Yoga has made me a more compassionate person it's made me a more centered person or grounded person and yeah I just absolutely am in love with this practice and the more I studied it the more I started talking to people about it and people could see like the difference I was making in my life it helped me to regain my strength after I had surgery to correct that pectus excavatum problem it helped me to rebuild my strength then I just I developed fibromyalgia developed a whole bunch of symptoms and just chronic pain and chronic fatigue and yoga has really been what has gotten me through all of those hard times with my chronic illnesses and it's really helped me to stay present in the moment and to really just accept myself for exactly who I am and to accept my body for where it is in the present moment so I think I had it in my head for the longest time that in order to be a yoga teacher I would have to go and do like a 200 hour and yoga teacher training at a yoga studio and or else I'd have to go to India and study with a guru and I would have to be able to do a handstand because if I couldn't do a handstand how could I ever be a yoga teacher and yeah it just felt like it was never gonna happen for me because I was dealing with chronic illness I there weren't any studios in my town that's hot yoga teacher training program and I had chronic illness so it wasn't like I was gonna be able to travel and go places and do that I wasn't I wasn't gonna be able to do a handstand so that meant I couldn't be a yoga teacher so there were just all of these things that I felt like we're standing in the way but then like it just happened for me like it was a desire of my heart and I feel like we'll never have a desire if we're not meant to fulfill it like that's just I believe like you'll never be given the desire unless you're meant to fulfill it so it just started happening for me like doors started opening I was able to complete my training programs a hundred percent online and just things worked out for me in a way that I could still take care of my body and I could still stay true to myself and be authentic and I didn't have to do handstands or crazy things and so yeah it was it just all worked out and I'm so so grateful for that so as I deepened my yoga practice the people around me were really noticing the effect it was having my life and they started asking me to teach them things they started asking me for advice so you asking me for tips and there were even people who wanted me to do like little yoga sessions with them and so I was like teaching yoga I tell my friends and family I started teaching classes in the park and this is all even before I got certified it just kind of like happened where it was like all of a sudden I was just teaching yoga like and I think that happens to a lot of yoga teachers that the opportunity to teach is going to present itself to you but before you will ever even feel like you're ready um I know like I definitely didn't feel ready but sometimes like hey know the universe just arranges itself and things start happening and you just gotta go with the flow you know and just trust that everything happens in divine timing um so yeah I started teaching yoga to my friends and family started having yoga classes in the park and then I started my youtube channel and because I I had just fallen in love with yoga so much and at that time like the yoga that I had needed wasn't available online so I had to create my own yoga practices and do my own yoga practices because it when I would go online and I would like search Yoga for chronic pain or Yoga for fibromyalgia or yoga for chronic fatigue even those classes that were supposedly designed for these issues were too challenging for me I could not do them so I ended up having to design my own yoga sequences to suit my body and to suit my physical needs so when I decided to start my youtube channel it was because I knew that there was a need for this I knew that there were other people like me in the world who needed this gentle more like inviting more relaxed style of yoga that wasn't intimidating that allowed for props and modifications and you know not being so like restricted to the traditional asanas so I knew that there was a space in the yoga world for this I knew that there was a need for this so that's why I created Sleepy santosha because I knew there were other people like me who would need these practices again this is all before I got certified but I feel like and this is something that my teacher has always said is that whenever you're teaching from your own direct experience you can never be wrong so that's another that's another nugget I want to leave you guys with is that if you're teaching from your own direct experience your authenticity and your truth is always going to be the thing that touches people the most you know I mean it's going to be that connection that you have to your own personal practice and sharing that with your students is always going to be the most powerful thing and I think that goes for more than just yoga I think our authenticity is the greatest gift that we can give this world so a couple of years after I started teaching yoga on YouTube I came across this online yoga teacher training called the yoga for all training it's a six-week course taught by amber Karnes and Diane Bondi and I feel like I just got so much out of this training I absolutely loved it even though I was already teaching a pretty gentle accessible style of yoga I felt like this training helped me to take that to a whole new level of just inclusivity so it really focuses on making yoga accessible for all different kinds of bodies so they really give you lots of different pose modifications like there are just so many amazing creative ideas that they have that I would have never thought of and so I felt like that was a really really cool aspect of the training and they also really focused on health at every size health for everybody because we're all so unique and individual and I felt like that focus on making yoga poses accessible for people living in larger bodies and making the poses just more comfortable and spacious for people living in larger bodies was a part of the training that I really benefited from because even though drawing from your own personal experience is really really powerful there are going to be certain things that we can't draw from personal experience on so like for me I'm living in a slim tall body I've had a slim tall body my whole entire life so I can't draw from my first-hand experience to help people who are living in larger bodies so this training really helped me to understand what someone living in that type of body might need in a yoga pose so now I feel like I'm able to offer a more diverse a more diverse set of options for them with yoga poses and yoga props and all that so that was a part of the training that I really really benefited from and yeah just focusing on the words that we use the way that we sequence our classes and just making things more gentle and kind and focusing on the yogic principle of ahimsa of doing no harm and really empowering their students to make their own choices about their own bodies so I just really really love this training so much if you are interested in doing something like this if you want to see if it's something that's right for you I'll leave some link in the description box below it's a six week course but I mean it's all about accessibility right so they give you a full year to complete it so you can go at your own pace as you need to I would say that if you're interested in this course you probably would want to have at least some kind of experience with yoga probably not great first super super beginners you'll want to make sure that you have just a basic understanding of yoga asana and a basic understanding of sanskrit but i'd say that it's great for beginner yoga teachers and seasoned yoga teachers so yeah I'll just leave that information in the description box if you're interested so after I completed that six-week course with Diane and amber I decided to do a 200 hour yoga teacher training with Brett Larkin and she has a pretty big YouTube channel here so if you want to look her up I would recommend her her classes are more active than mine but I really love her Kundalini classes I really love her style of yoga - one of the reasons I chose her as my teacher is because Brett talks a lot in her classes and I felt like I'm a very quiet person naturally um so I felt like taking this course with her helped me to kind of balance out and kind of helped me to find my voice and to feel more confident in speaking and giving instructions and so yeah I kind of felt like she balanced me out in that aspect but this course was a 200 hour course so it took place over the span of like a full semester I'm so like four months and oh my god this course was life-changing for me and I don't say that lightly like for real it has been life-changing for me it focused a lot on I want to say like a huge huge chunk of it probably like 50% of what we learned was all about Anatomy but not like not like boring Anatomy not like boring textbook Anatomy it's all Anatomy in relationship to yoga and how the body works and it just made me fall in love with my own body like it just deepened my sense of appreciation for this vessel that I get to live in like it was just so beautiful for me to study this and to learn everything about the body and how it relates to yoga we studied the chakras and we studied a little bit about Tantra and just like energetic things and studying the energetic body and we studied the fasho which was super cool and just there was so much in this course and I honestly feel like I could revisit the content over and over again and just keep learning from keep learning from it just like every time I rewatched the videos I pick up something new like it's just so so cool like everything she teaches in this course is so cool so just like the yoga for all training Brett's training is done completely online and so again you can go at your own pace the course itself takes place over the semester so I would recommend if you if you decided to do it to try and keep up with the group because we meet every week to discuss the coursework so it's just helpful to be able to like get that discussion and to connect with the community of your yoga teacher training group but after the semester is over you get a full year to turn in your exam and your practicum if this is something you're interested in doing I would encourage you to keep in mind that this is a more active style of so Brett teaches a more vinyasa style of yoga she's very beginner friendly but it is a more active style of yoga so if like right now your personal practice looks like bad yoga and restorative yoga this training probably won't be right for you just because you're gonna be practicing more vinyasa styles of poses throughout the throughout the course and then your final exam your practicum where you teach a sample class it has to be taught in the vinyasa styles so you wouldn't be able to submit a restorative class for your final exam so I would just tell you to keep that in mind I'll leave a link in the description box for Brett's training if you're interested in learning more about it I would highly highly recommend both of these trainings they have been so influential in my life just in general and as a yoga teacher so I can't recommend them enough so at this point in my journey I am teaching a hundred percent online so I don't teach in a yoga studio or anything like that everything I do is from home so I record my classes here at home and then I upload them to YouTube or to my website where I have a monthly membership program which I'll leave a link to in the description box below in case you want to go peek around a little bit so yeah this is worked really well for me it gives me a lot of freedom I can work whenever I'm feeling up to it and just balance my energy and my symptoms so I really really love the freedom this gives me so I just want to reiterate to you that there's always more than one way of doing something and if you have it in your heart to be a yoga teacher there are ways for you to make that possible if you want to be a yoga teacher but you're not quite sure if you're ready to commit to a yoga teacher training the best thing you can do is to keep deepening your personal yoga practice so make sure your practice yoga every single day make sure you're reading everything you can about yoga practice different styles of yoga try things you've never done before make sure you're meditating and just make time for your practice because it's that personal experience that is going to be the foundation of what you end up teaching it's going to give you inspiration to teach so yeah I hope that this video is helpful for you guys please let me know in the comments below if you have any questions I am definitely open to sharing with you guys so leave them below and I will talk to you guys again see