How My Yoga Practice Changed Once I Became A Yoga Instructor
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I’ve been practicing yoga for the better part of the last decade, starting with a one-credit-hour class at my college’s gym center, and now practicing an entirely different physical practice. What I thought was “just stretching” then became a dehydrating practice in a 98-degree room and has transformed over the years into a yoga practice that now eludes me at times.
However, nothing informed my personal yoga practice more than completing yoga teacher training (YTT) during the fall of 2019. But since becoming a certified teacher, my practice has splintered, waned, and rebounded in ways I didn’t expect and wasn’t prepared for.
What do you learn when you become a yoga instructor?
Yoga teacher training is like many other learning settings, with reading, studying, and some quizzes, though the training I completed mainly focused on movement and repetition. Training is typically a 200-hour endeavor, but there are all types of trainings and formats for getting a certification, including online and in-person programs.
Throughout teacher training, I practiced poses and watched others practice. Watching bodies fit the archetype of a pose was integral to my learning and teaching; it helped me understand alignment, as well as learn how to adjust my language and cues to help people move through poses and sequences in class. Becoming a yoga instructor felt like a seamless continuation of being a yoga student, always learning new transitions and playing around with variations of traditional asanas (physical poses). Plus, completing my YTT program right before the onset of the pandemic prepared me for a lot of at home practice!
Teaching made practicing yoga more fun
You may notice that with any movement practice you may enjoy, your interest ebbs and flows. It can be hard to develop a steady routine with wellness and movement, and everyone’s favorite physical movement practices will differ. Yoga became a pillar of my everyday life after I completed training because I was so used to practicing often. I enjoyed the post-practice clarity whether I was sweaty from sun salutations or centered from breath work, known as pranayama.
This daily dedication and discipline was the first change in my practice since I had become a teacher. I kept reminding myself to “stay in yoga shape” and to do poses myself before trying to articulate the feeling or structure of the pose to anyone in a class. In a way, practicing often helped me continue to learn and absorb more about the benefits of yoga, like improved energy, better respiratory function, and mood regulation. As I achieved better balance in poses or could hold poses for longer periods of time, I began to weave them into my class sequences. I was careful to provide options to students to keep my classes accessible, but I found it exciting to experiment with the physical asanas, such as moving from tree pose to half pigeon or incorporating invigorating breath work during my 6am classes.
When teaching became a spectacle
Once I was teaching in front of a class in a studio, I felt my practice shift again. I felt performative because I knew I was demonstrating poses and my students were watching me. I was pressured to have perfect alignment and speak clearly, to not get out of breath even when straining in a pose, or to attempt poses I didn’t do often to show off. To be fair to myself, I’d still try to prep for my classes before arriving at the studio and remind myself that no one is perfect. But, doing yoga at the front of the room still had a bad taste to it, even if I sometimes liked the performative aspect. The downside was being watched on days when I was tired or didn’t feel my best, and I started to feel the joy of yoga fade. Teaching began to feel like pouring from an empty cup, as the proverb says, and so I stepped back to reevaluate.
Then, teaching replaced practicing
The biggest change I experienced once I became a yoga instructor was that I stopped practicing on my own. Instead of doing a daily yoga practice or making time to sit on my mat and move, I began only doing yoga during the classes I was teaching. I started to feel stiff in poses and would trip over my words because the mind-body connection had dwindled and sequences didn’t feel as familiar. I didn’t feel as genuine as when I started teaching yoga, and my body also began to stagnate in a way that only yoga could break up.
I distinctly remember how solid my home practice was during teacher training. I’d look forward to the same 15-minute series every day, and I’d be sad if I missed it. How did I get to a point that was so opposite to that thinking, where I was only moving on my mat two or three times a week?
At this point I’d been teaching for almost two years, and I decided to step away from being at the front of the room. I left the studio I was teaching in to go back to square one and just be a student. It may seem drastic to go from one end of the spectrum to the other, but pausing teaching felt like the only right way forward. How could I keep guiding students when I didn’t feel grounded myself? Yoga is a spiritual practice as much as it is physical, so I wanted to honor its purpose by stepping aside and relearning.
Realizing a teacher is always student
I recently had an “Aha!” moment with my inner struggle between wanting to teach and not being in my practice that felt like a lightbulb flickering back on after a power outage. One of my yoga teachers always says, “A teacher is always a student,” which totally makes sense. Just like therapists have their own therapists and hairstylists have their own stylists, yoga instructors have instructors, too—making everyone a student and teacher in their own right. Realizing that everyone is always learning and the yoga itself—though ancient and sacred—continually evolves was a relief. I realized I don’t need to always bring 100% to every class because no one is 100% all of the time.
Being human and knowing your shortcomings makes you a better teacher, not a lesser one. Another teacher of mine recently told me, “You become a better teacher by becoming a more dynamic human being.” Doesn’t that ring true? By practicing yoga I can be a better teacher, but I can also be better by reading and gardening and singing to my favorite songs. This new advice—thank you Alex!—has helped me find my way back onto my yoga mat with sure footing. I want to teach again because I feel like I have so much to share, from poses to metaphors to insights, gained from yoga over the last 10 years.
Like most things (everything?) teaching and practicing yoga has been cyclical. I didn’t feel the pull, I practiced it everyday, I felt bitter towards it, I felt shy about it, I went across the ocean to find my practice again, and here I am. The best advice I have is to continue to show up for yourself, whatever your practice looks like. And, to find a way to keep learning and informing yourself wherever that may lead.