It's perfectly reasonable to complete yoga teacher training, even if you don't plan to teach yoga. Many people take part in yoga teacher training for personal growth or to learn alignment techniques. With so many options available, it can be difficult to decide which Yoga teacher training is right for you. Everyone in a teacher training course is there for the same purpose - to learn.
If you're considering turning your passion for yoga into a profession, there are a few things you should know before enrolling in a yoga teacher training course. Yoga teacher training is a humbling experience, regardless of how advanced students think they are when they start. When I asked a colleague about her doubts about becoming a yoga teacher, she said: “I am a middle aged banker and mother of two children. The most important thing is that students have an established, solid, dedicated and passionate yoga practice before beginning a yoga teacher training program.” You'll learn about the poses and the anatomy and physiology of these poses, but that's only one of eight areas that yoga instructor training will cover.
There is much criticism in the world of yoga about the number of people who become yoga teachers without sufficient knowledge of what they are doing. It's hard to pay a teacher well when only a few students show up for a class and the studio has to pay overhead expenses in addition to the teacher's salary. Although a yoga teacher's salary varies depending on location and experience, you can easily find an estimate of the “class fee” for a teacher from your experience.This doesn't mean that teachers practicing yoga are only interested in making money. Rather, it means that teachers practicing yoga are very committed to their yoga practice now and foresee a consistent and evolving yoga practice for years to come.
This was probably my favorite part of training yoga teachers, and the part that I learned the most from. So for people like me, YTT ends up being an expensive way to complement and improve your personal practice; or if you decide to continue teaching, there are too many yoga teachers and not enough jobs.One of the most common misconceptions I hear is that you need to be able to do advanced yoga poses to become a yoga instructor. In reality, most people who are willing to spend a couple of thousand dollars training a yoga instructor are excited to walk alongside you on the yogic path. But even though Yoga Alliance is very popular and well known in the industry, it's not really necessary to complete your yoga education with a school that is part of Yoga Alliance.
