namasteph yoga blog

I’ve just finished the fourth week of my Karuna Yoga Teacher Training. I would have been writing more about it here but it’s been kicking my ass (in a good way). I am very pleased with the training and happy that I decided to do this instead of Shiva Rea’s 200-hour program. (And heck, I can always take more modules from Shiva later.)

I’m getting a lot of the foundational stuff that I feel I did not get from Shiva’s first module…learning how to take people into and out of basic poses, which is really the most useful thing you’ll need to know as a starting teacher. We’ve also been learning a lot of yoga philosophy and history (which is frankly making my brain hurt), but it has been good to get this depth of knowledge as a backdrop to everything we’re learning.

The class is very small, only eight people (one dropped out due to scheduling issues). Everyone is exceptionally nice and no-one here is a yoga superstar. We are not expected (as in Shiva’s training) to be able to do complicated gymnastics in order to be a teacher.

I’m especially enjoying the kundalini yoga training we are getting in addition to the hatha. I really love kundalini yoga more and more, but not so much that I’d feel ready or comfortable diving into a serious 200-hour kundalini yoga training that might require me to follow the stricter aspects of the practice. With this training, I feel I could incorporate kundalini yoga without having to get full-on Sikh with it.

If there’s one thing I’d wish were different, it’s that we’re not learning adjustments until the last week. I would have preferred to be learning them all along, if just for the selfish reason that I’d like to be getting free hands-on adjustments as part of the training. Well, there’s so much to learn, and I can see that our teacher’s strength is in using language as means of adjustment.

That’s all for now…I’ve got three weeks to go…and then I can officially teach yoga. Woo hoo!