Rather than the next couple of posts purely being about what my 200 hour training covered I really would like to give you some insight into how I chose my training, what happened on it, how I felt during it and how I feel now I’ve graduated. These are the kind of posts I found really helpful while doing my research so maybe it will help someone else too
Once I had decided to do my training I was suddenly thrown into the world of online yoga teacher training research. Should I do a 200hr course or a 500hr course, intensive or long term, abroad or in London. I was completely overwhelmed! Part of me really wanted to run away to Thailand for a month but unfortunately that just wasn’t possible financially or practically with my job. So I decided to write down the key things I wanted in my training and use these as my criteria for narrowing all the courses down.
• The ability to teach as soon as I had graduated
• A course where I had the time to immerse myself in the reading and coursework required without feeling really stressed
• An element of the intensive courses so I could think only about yoga for a week or so but then based in a sensible location to fit in with my work
• Based in London at weekends
• Ideally about six months long so I would be qualified as soon as possible
• Being taught how to sequence and teach my own classes rather than a set sequence
Using these criteria and after much deliberation I narrowed my choices down to Yoga London, Yoga Campus, Yoga Academy and Sally Parkes Laxmi Yoga. The Yoga London course was six months and only at weekends but unfortunately didn’t have the weeks intensive built in which I was really after. I also just felt that this company felt too corporate for me. This is not in any way a bad thing but I wanted a more personal approach to my training. Yoga Campus looked like a really interesting course, it covered all the angles I wanted, wasn’t tied to any particular strict style of yoga and had good contact time with a variety of mentors. The problem here though was the course was 18 months and even though it was primarily weekends and included the weeks intensive I was after, 18 months was just too long for me. I was increasingly feeling like I needed another avenue in my life I didn’t feel I could wait that long. It was a similar stumbling block I came up against with Yoga Academy, I loved the sound of the course, the fact it was based in Kent (my home county) with a week in Spain but unfortunately it is a two year course and structured over four seven day intensives and I just couldn’t take that much time off of work. I then looked at Sally Parkes Laxmi Yoga training and course curriculum. I really liked that this was a course that covered the basics of hatha and vinyasa practice as well as the history and subtle anatomy of yoga, a heavy focus on anatomy and a week in Spain! Coming from a creative job where my most recent science qualification was a B in GCSE double science I really wanted to ensure I knew what the body was doing. I did some research as to where course graduates were teaching and looked into whether the dates clashed with any prior commitments and they didn’t!
I’d read a lot of advice to meet your course leader before signing up and to hopefully manage to take a class with them and I would really recommend this. I took a half day off work and went to meet Sally at the Om Yoga Show. Here we were able to have a chat and I was able to take a class by Sally and chat to some of the graduates on her stand. This was invaluable as it helped me put a personality to the course and Sally and I really clicked. I got home knackered but so excited after that Friday afternoon and signed up on the Saturday morning!
I would reiterate to anyone trying to choose a training course though, decide what is important to you, stick to this, research research research and meet your tutor. The online searches are so overwhelming and I really think putting a face to a training is so important. After all it’s a lot of cash and a big commitment.