The Ashtanga Diva

For a long time now, maybe close to two years, I’ve been toying with the idea of entering a yoga teacher training program. Because I’m already a group fitness instructor, plus a practicing yogi, many folks assume it’s but a hop-skip-and-a-jump for me to slide into teaching yoga. But several logistical things have stymied me.

First reason—yoga teacher training programs are EXPENSIVE! As they should be. While it’s a definite barrier to entry, it also shoos away the drifters and keeps it only for those who are serious students. Oh sure, there are people out there who have that kind of loose change and go into teacher training programs purely for fun. That ain’t me. At $2,000 a pop minimum, I would treat any teacher training program as something that requires my utter focus and dedication.

Second barrier—time. Training programs are typically 200 hours long. Though I can likely squeeze this into the schedule with a little wheeling and dealing with hubby, time plus the money situation definitely make the barrier taller.

The third, and perhaps the biggest reason, is the fact that I am an Ashtangi. This is my practice, my love, my passion. Naturally, I am drawn to teaching this form of yoga. Fortunately for me as a student, but unfortunately for me as a wannabe-teacher, the Ashtanga system has a non-traditional path to teaching. The usual method of becoming a yoga teacher in the U.S. is to enroll in a teacher training program where you learn various and sundry things from a book (e.g., anatomy, philosophy, some history of yoga), do some practice teaching, and then BAM. You are, on paper, a qualified yoga teacher. You don’t even have to know/demonstrate any intermediate or advanced asanas yourself.

Marichyasana D, one of the signature asanas in the Ashtanga primary series, and one of the most challenging. Not many yoga systems perform this posture.

But Ashtanga ain’t like that. Of all the different types of yoga, it’s the one that looks at a person’s practice as a path to teaching. As in, teaching Ashtanga means doing Ashtanga, not sitting in a classroom reading a book. Of course I don’t have a problem with this philosophy. I love it even. But while there are countless schools out there both blessed and not blessed by the Yoga Alliance, there is only one place that has institutionalized and codified the method of teaching Ashtanga, and that’s the K. Patthabi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute in Mysore, India.

But because it’s India, the curriculum is, from what I hear, a bit of a flux, not the rigid do-this-and-then-you’ll-get-this system of education like it is here in the States. Some teachers have gone two or three times before they get their authorization; some go for nine.

But wait, you say. There are tons of Ashtanga teachers here in the U.S. who have never been to Mysore! And you’d be right. Many of them just went through a basic Hatha/Vinyasa teacher training program. Maybe some of these programs covered Ashtanga; maybe some didn’t. They simply used the formal hatha training they received and combined it with their own personal knowledge through self-study and their own practice, and voila! An Ashtanga teacher is made!

Could that be my path? I got a very small taste of what it’s like to teach this past weekend. Teacher and good friend Virginia took me with her to an Intro to Ashtanga workshop  this past Saturday. I was to serve as her demonstration person, to demo both the postures that the students were to perform, and to show the ones that were a little too advanced for an intro class to do. Once or twice, I got up from my mat to personally guide a student into a bind and limb placement. I say “guide” because I didn’t “assist,” as in I was hands-off. Didn’t want to cause injury, you know. But it was my own personal practice that taught me a few little tips on how to best get into some of the postures, and by golly, they worked! There was a lady in her 50s who couldn’t bind in Marichyasana A, but then when I scooted over to where she was and showed her a couple of little tricks, she was able to interlace her fingers around her back. Both of us grinned at each in triumph! And I got a little warm fuzzy feeling in the pit of my uddiyana bandha.

I haven’t even mentioned the fact that a favorite teacher and fellow Ashtangi has revealed to me that she will be conducting a teacher training this fall. It’s tentative, no details yet, but it’s as if the stars are slowly but surely aligning into the perfect position to get me to jump in to teach.

Now if I could only win the lottery. And get over all the psychological reasons why I think I’d be a bad teacher…

This entry was posted on December 19, 2011 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Yoga with tags Ashtanga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.