Top 4 Steps to Staying Up-To-Date & Relevant
A Personal Experience
One of the main things that yoga teaches us is that things change. Change is the only constant in this world. Of course this is true for the yoga and fitness industry as well.
The industry changes in many ways. Our knowledge of the human body continues to evolve. We continue to grow in our understanding of the best methodologies to teach and guide our students. Lastly, as instructors, we continue to evolve and change with experience. This growth and change is healthy and important. If we, as yoga and fitness instructors, do not stay up-to-date in our training then we get left behind. Our ‘knowledge’ becomes dated and we run the chance of injuring our students and becoming irrelevant.
I am sad to say, that I know instructors who have taken their 200-hour yoga teacher training several years ago and haven’t done any other continued education since. Training to become a yoga and/or fitness instructor is a lot like taking a shower. You don’t shower once in your life and then you are clean forever… you have to continue to take showers! You also don’t do one training and then you are an instructor forever…. You have to continue to learn, evolve and grow!
Now, for my personal experience with continued education. I want to share my personal philosophy on how I continue with my education and the top 4 things that I do on a regular basis.
Of course I understand that yoga teachers aren’t the richest people in the world… I struggled pay cheque-to-pay cheque for many years. Luckily there are some wonderful and relatively cost effective ways to do continued education. For more resources on that, check back for next weeks blog.
1. Keep Up Your Own Practice – I know this seems obvious but it can be very challenging to do. A unique and helpful way to expand your knowledge is to take class from many different lineages of yoga and different types of fitness/movement. This keeps our knowledge fresh and helps to keep us motivated. Also, doing your own personal practice alone is SO helpful. I can’t express enough how much I learn when I just get into my body and move. One other important tip, try to take from instructors that have a LOT of training and experience. Don’t assume that every other teacher knows more than you. I hear a lot of nonsense from instructors in class, so if you hear something in class that you aren’t sure of, do some research before you automatically believe it as truth. Ask your mentor, another teacher that has a lot of experience and education, or look online at resources that you trust (like Yoga International).
2. Read – There are so many informative and inspirational books on yoga these days. Taking your time to dive into a good book can expand your mind in many ways. Any book by the following people will be a wealth of knowledge, a few of my favourite authors; Micheal Stone, Donna Farhi, Leslie Kaminoff, T.K.V. Desikachar, Ray Long, and Gary Kraftsow.
3. Take weekend workshops whenever possible – If you are luck enough to live in a city with weekend workshops then take advantage of this! Here in Vancouver we have several workshops every weekend, I feel so blessed to have this resource available to me.
4. Every few years take a BIG training – My personal goal is to do a BIG training every other year. Of course big is relative but for me that usually means a least a month or two of continued education. For the last two years my wonderful hubby has bought me trips down to the States for my birthday to do trainings with some of my favourite teachers. And I’m now researching what training I’m going to do next!
I hope you found this information helpful and informative.
Do you have any questions that I can help with? Always feel free to reach out to me… I’m here to help in any way I can!
