Who inspired you to start teaching and why?
My first teaching experience had nothing to do with inspiration. I had been practicing Ashtanga yoga for about two years when my teachers (Brad Ramsey and Gary Lopedota) told me they were going to India to study with Sri Pattabhi Jois for an open-ended period of time and would be closing the yoga studio. This was quite distressing to me as I was attached to the practice and the studio since it was half a block from my house. “You can’t close this place down,” I pleaded. “I love this place. I need this place.” “Okay,” said Brad, “you teach.”
Thus began my career as a yoga teacher – with on-the-job training. Brad and Gary eventually returned from India and I assisted Brad with classes for the next year. Then Brad announced he was moving to Maui and was turning over the studio to me. There I was, three years into the practice, suddenly thrust into the role of studio owner and primary teacher.
My overwhelming feelings of inadequacy as a yoga teacher inspired me to make my first trip to India in 1982 to study with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. It was then that Guruji and I really got to know each other. I had studied with him previously in the States, but until I went to India I was still just “that man” to him. Over the course of three months I came to realize the depth of Guruji’s knowledge, experience and commitment. He had unwavering faith in the practice, and although he was a strict teacher, he was also kind and funny. By the end of my three month stay in Mysore I was convinced that my dharma was to be a yoga teacher.
I asked Guruji if it would be possible to get some kind of certification from him to teach yoga. He reluctantly consented and provided me with an official document certifying me to teach, if I could cover the $25 cost. With certificate in hand I returned home and began teaching with a new sense of validation, although it would take years to feel any real sense of competence.
— Tim Miller, Owner, Ashtanga Yoga Shala, Encinitas, California, ashtangayogacenter.com
When did you take the next step beyond practicing yoga, to teaching it and how did you know the time was right to begin teaching?
Since childhood, self-inquiry and meditation have been part of my life. Without knowing these terms, I was naturally drawn to these yoga practices. I didn’t plan to teach a form of Hatha yoga. It began in a magical way as did the ancient Hatha yoga. In 1980, while I was in meditation, kriyavati siddhi, spontaneous Hatha yoga guided by kundalini, began to move through my body. I was teaching yoga philosophy and meditation prior to this. When students came for meditation sessions, they would often witness kriyavati. Many began to request that I teach this energy-guided yogaflow of asana, pranayama and mudra. For over 27 years kriyavati has continued to guide the evolution of TriYoga.
We have heard the saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” It can also be said, “When the teacher is ready, the students will appear.” Since childhood I’ve been prepared for sharing yoga. It is my dharma, my destiny. As the inner experiences deepened, students came to study. At first I taught daily classes, later evolving to workshops, retreats and finally to teacher trainings. It has been a systematic progression.
Ultimately teaching should come from a place where one is deeply inspired. Sharing from personal experience within a structured yoga training course will be invaluable to the yoga seeker. When one begins to teach, the learning never ceases. Whatever yoga knowledge we have, it is only a drop in the ocean of yoga knowledge. As a student or teacher, one must continue regular practice with dedication to this ageless truth. Only then can one truly inspire another to yoga.
— Kali Ray, Founder, TriYoga, triyoga.com
What is the most rewarding aspect of training teachers?
People from different backgrounds and cultures come and become unified as yogis over time. As time passes from the start of training to the end, our students realize their weaknesses, and through the discipline of yoga, they find their own strength.
Watching students grow and gain happiness is the most fulfilling feeling I could achieve from training. As their teacher, their success and happiness adds to my overall bliss.
Through knowledge, experience and self-realization, wisdom is achieved. Age is not a factor when it comes to learning yoga. Our rigorous training takes much determination to achieve mental strength and flexibility. Strength and flexibility then leads to the balance of one’s mind, body and overall lifestyle. I enjoy my journey with my students in my life.
— Rajashree Choudhury, Bikram Yoga College of India, bikramyoga.com
What suggestions do you make for students who want to take a teacher training to deepen their own practice?
Teacher training presents an opportunity for deep transformation but can also simply be a technical course.
There is an old adage in yoga called the triangle of learning which points out that the most potent learning has three legs: the practices and techniques, the inner knowledge and understanding, and the experience and intention. All three are necessary to have a complete experience and to go deeper.
Some yoga traditions emphasize sticking to one thing and digging your well in one place until you hit water. Others say the bee flies to many flowers, emphasizing diversity and drawing on many sources. In our opinion, diversity is the fabric of life, and learning to acquire and use the myriad of tools of yoga is the most potent approach. City center-based courses and residential courses are both valuable options. White Lotus is partial to the ancient tradition of residential courses where you can live as well as learn and have the added synergy of total immersion, nature and community.
— Ganga White, author of Yoga Beyond Belief , White Lotus Foundation, Santa Barbara, California, whitelotus.org
How do you continue your own education as a teacher?
Having and running a business is an ongoing challenge and an opportunity for continual growth. It is easy to get wrapped up in the vacuum of the business, and the struggle of doing the right thing. Working with employees and teachers gives me the opportunity to practice self-reflection on a regular basis. For example, I have faced situations such as one that occurred with one of the first teachers I trained. After going into business together, we later become bitter rivals, which lasted for 10 years. Recently, we were able to apologize and come to a reconciliation.
Because I constantly offer people in my network tools to make their lives better, it keeps me seeking, growing and questioning how I can improve my own life and try things out for myself, such as the power of creative visualization and techniques in The Secret. I read the Bhagavad-Gita, about subjects like the chakra and how to be kind in business.
In the way that my own practice has evolved, karma yoga has become more important to me. My current passion is helping animal organizations, local rescue groups, the One World Heart Foundation and the Humane Society. I’ve always been interested in helping animals since I was very young, and now I find the practice beyond the physical, karma yoga, helps to open the heart and experience divine light.
— Beth Shaw, Founder and Director, Yoga Fit, yogafit.com
What do you feel is the importance of seva (service)for yoga teachers in training?
The skills that yoga teaches are very helpful in daily living. These skills give people different options for how to respond in their lives instead of reacting. For example, a 19-year-old gang member who took up yoga once told me that when he gets mad, instead of reaching for the guns, he now breathes, and then has the moment to make a different, and nonviolent, choice.
It is important for a yoga teacher to earn income from their yoga teaching, but it is also important to teach for the love of it and to make a difference in the world. This type of work encourages the teacher to step out of the scrabble of making a buck. Teachers should teach for the love of yoga, because they want to turn people onto the life-transforming skills of yoga.
One requirement for teachers to obtain Forrest Yoga teacher certification is to teach community service classes to people who either don’t have easy access to yoga, or cannot afford to pay for yoga. I encourage teachers to find a worthy cause to donate their skills, such as A Place Called Home (in Los Angeles), programs providing yoga in shelters and rehab facilities (such as YogaHope) and programs teaching yoga in prisons. This is all part of my mission of “Mending the Hoop of the People,” working with people to reconnect to their spirit and live in an authentic way.
— Ana Forrest, Creator of Forrest Yoga, forrestyoga.com
What advice do you give someone choosing a teacher training program?
First of all, when considering a teacher training program, take a class, workshop, or retreat with the teacher or at the studio. Don’t just pay over the phone for a teacher training course, more people do that than you think. An important element of registering for a program, although it may seem unyogic to think about, is how do I get out of the course? Many people don’t think to ask about a school or program’s refund policy, but ask, and get it in writing so you know the policy in case you have to leave early, which can often happen as a result of life circumstances.
When choosing a particular tradition and even a teacher trainer within that tradition, look for what calls you, what you feel connected to. You will know; something inside you will say, “Go, this is it.” Once you walk into a particular class, you will connect with something that was said. A posture, relaxation, mudra, mantra or the chanting will speak to you; then you know that’s where you’re supposed to be. After having an experience that you will want to share with others, then do that teacher training.
Within a tradition, find the right teacher for you by attending their class. You may think you like Kundalini yoga, for example, and you take a class, but then you take teacher training somewhere else, and the teacher has a very different personality. Sometimes it is a teacher’s style or personality and sometimes it’s karma that brings students and teachers together.
Yogi Bhajan used to tell us, ‘your students are present because they were pre-sent to you.’ Whatever students come to my teacher training program are supposed to be there with me.
— Shakta Kaur Kezios, Interim President/CEO, Yoga Alliance, Owner, Director Kundalini Yoga in the Loop, shaktakaur.com
What advice would you give to beginning teachers?
The first and most important thing is to find the yoga of what it’s like to really teach, meaning you have to be attentive the whole time you are in class, the whole time that you are actually helping these people with their practices. Really watch the people in front of you. Observe what they’re doing. Try to teach to that rather than teaching to some rote memorization you made before you walked into that class.
It is important to plan your classes and to have a loose idea of what you might be able to go through during the period of time that you’re there. One has to be willing to change horses in midstream to move in a different direction if need be.
Remember that we all make mistakes as yoga teachers. Don’t get stuck or hammered by those. Instead, just try to pick yourself up and think about it later after class. Consider what you might have done that could have gone better and remember it. At the same time make plans as to where you’re going to go in the future with these people.
Be willing to really observe how other people teach. Not so much which poses they teach, but the art of teaching, what it’s like, and what the teacher’s rhythm and their form are like when they’re in front of people.
— Manouso Manos, Advanced Senior Iyengar certification. Goecities.com/abodeofiyengaryoga
What do you see as one of the greatest challenges
facing yoga teachers today?
I think the biggest challenge facing yoga teachers involves getting clearer and clearer about what yoga means, so that they are being true to the Teaching, and then teaching that to the best of their ability and continuing to update their teaching as their understanding matures.
The implied meaning behind the word yoga is “union with the Infinite.” It’s a statement about the way things are. And that’s a pretty mind-blowing statement once you begin to get an inkling of what it means.
Yoga is not actually a process of self-transformation. It’s not just a sophisticated form of exercise, not just a philosophy, not just theory and in its most fundamental sense it is not about transforming yourself or becoming different. It’s more radical than that! It’s saying that unity is the already-existing fact. It’s not a future state. It’s the ‘what is, already.’ And it’s true whether you are aware of it or not. But by becoming aware of it, so that you live your life in harmony with the unity of Infinity, then – naturally enough – what you do will be congruent with life, not at odds with life, and because you are no longer treating life as the enemy you will start experiencing the magic.
Getting clear about what yoga means will change the way you think about yourself and others, and it will completely overhaul your worldview. You’ll become different, not by working hard to transform yourself, but by relaxing inside and letting yourself be what you already are. The world is hungry, ripe for a radical overhaul, for an accurate assessment of the glorious Event we find ourselves in.
— Erich Schiffmann, Author: Yoga, the Spirit and Path of Moving into Stillness, Teacher and Teacher Trainer, Exhale, Venice, California, movingintostillness.com
What is the most challenging aspect of training teachers?
It is a challenge to awaken in a teacher the ability to read their students, see what is happening and adapt creatively without being limited or teaching from a formula. Teachers must adapt the tools they will share with the students and teach what will serve the students, what is relevant for them.
It is also important for the teacher to not just fall into a routine. I encourage teachers to keep their teaching alive and fresh. Once a teacher has been teaching five, 10, or more years, there is a danger that they may stop paying attention and rely on a formula. It is challenging to keep it fresh when a yoga teacher starts turning the love of their own practice into a career, trying to make a living. To stay fresh, practice as if every session is the very first one, a new discovery, like it’s the first kiss.
Teaching safely and not hurting oneself is important for teachers to remember. It is controversial when I say this, but when you practice when you teach, you are more likely to be injured, and you are paying attention to your students, rather than your own practice. Teach when you teach and practice when you practice.
— Gary Kraftsow, Founder, American Viniyoga Institute, Viniyoga.com
