I can’t believe my yoga teacher training is over already. The four weeks flew by in a whirlwind of practice, lectures, and studying. After being immersed in the training for a month I woke up early Monday morning not knowing what to do with myself. No class to go to? I got up and did a Yoga Works sequence at home similar to what we used to do every morning. I miss having a steady 2-hour morning asana class. I miss having people around me whose eyes don’t glaze over when I start talking about the finer points of Adho Mukha Svanasana wrist alignment.

The training was a great experience and I already miss it, but it was kind of refreshing to go to my usual yoga class this weekend. I felt like a naughty child doing all the things we were taught not to do: Reverse Warrior, Vira I -> Vira II transitions, linking lots of poses on one side before doing the other. But some of these things are really fun! In my own practice I love doing crazy linking sequences. But I digress…

The Yoga Works training curriculum was really good, well planned, and it was exactly what I had hoped for. There was a strong focus on learning alignment points, anatomy, sequencing, injury prevention, and teaching principles and techniques. My own practice improved, and I had several ”aha!” moments almost every day. 200 hours of training sounds like a lot, but it really is barely enough to cover the basics. I feel like I have learnt a lot, but also that I just got started as a yoga student. Isn’t there a saying, “the more you know, the more you know that you don’t know”?

Yoga Works has made a few choices that you should be aware of if you are considering the Yoga Works teacher training:

• Yoga Works style = Ashtanga flow/vinyasa + Iyengar alignment emphasis.
• Strong focus on alignment and Yoga Works teaching principles.
• Mandatory anatomy weekend (which was immensely helpful!).
• Practice teaching segments are rolled into the lecture almost every day, but there is no full-length class practice teaching. I think their theory is that once you’re out in the real world you’ll figure this out pretty quickly if you have the right foundation.
• A good chunk of time is spent on the Yoga Sutras, yoga history, and Ayurveda, but the main focus of the training is teaching asanas.

In addition to the Yoga Works manual these books were on our reading list:

Anatomy and Asana by Susi Hately Aldous
The Heart of Yoga by T.K.V. Desikachar
Yoga Mind, Body & Spirit by Donna Farhi
Light on Yoga by B.K.S Iyengar
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Sri Swami Satchidananda

If you’re just getting into teaching this is a great foundation course! However, if you’ve been teaching for a while and you’re looking for a more philosophical focus, you might consider other options.