My view on teaching yoga as a career.
In general, I can imagine somehow it is still the case of what brings most people to yoga teacher training: dedication to practice and mastered certain difficult/fancy/invered postures, encouraged by teachers in class to join teacher training ".
I am not writing to encourage or discourage you if you are serious about teaching hatha yoga(refering to all schools, brand of yoga as long as practicing physically with our body is involved) to earn a living or as a career. Simply put, this is a decision you are the one to make, not others, and not even the teacher who coach you during the yoga teacher training courses.
Here I can only share with what I came across ever since I step on the yoga mat as a participant of a hatha yoga class, then the teacher's mat.
It only referring to what I've experienced, observed so far, so bear in mind that I have no intention to generalize these view points to the modern yoga scene as a whole.
Over a decade ago, in my first yoga teacher training, there're classmates who are so eager to become a yoga teacher because they wants to shift from the job that stressed them out to what they are passionate to do, i.e. yoga. There're classmates who simply enjoy learning, first and foremost, not necessarily becoming a teacher.
Back then, signing up for a teacher training program, whether it's in your hometown or abroad to follow famous teachers or school of yoga, was(or maybe still is to some extend) something demanding because not only you have to pay quite an amount but also you have to schedule whole month's time just for the training, 6 days each week, from 7am-6pm. That's why the yoga teacher trainees were either taking a month's no-pay-leave, or no need to work so can enjoy trying out new things, or freelancer who can regulate their own working schedule.
Quite a bit of commitment in terms of time and money, so expecting much in return is natural. Especially when training is completed, the urge to teach and to share what we've just newly learned is huge.
Flashback to my first yoga trip in India of 30+days boarding school style study. Before flying back home, I went to say goodbye to Swamiji with some classmates, as we used to attend the daily fire ceremony in the evening(the sacred ritual is called homa), so we went earlier afternoon to the cottage where Swamiji reside (called Swamiji kuti) . I still remembered Swamiji reminder to us about spreading the traditional wisdom of yoga, "go slow when in teaching, it takes time to fully digest what you've learned, then you will teach from your true experience."
To me, teach what I practice helps reserve energy, and it's tapping into my direct experience. It fits well with my belief to sharing what I love, passionate and enjoy doing.
Teaching is never a force-fed process. Indigestion only brings constipation. Observing how well the participants received, fine-tuning the deliverability of teaching when needed.
