Going into my yoga teacher training I had no idea I would gain other knowledge, and skills to use outside the yoga class. Here are 5 things that I learned and gained from my yoga teacher training that have been helpful tools for my life off the mat.
- Public Speaking – One HUGE benefit I found from my first yoga teacher training was the idea of getting over that fear to public speak. After studying and practicing what you’d have to say, we all would have to get up and teach everyone in the class what we’ve learned. Now this is hugely beneficial in most career paths you choose after because it was hard to remember word by word what you were going to say when you taught the whole class so you’d have to improvise. This was a mix of nerves, being unsure if what you were saying was correct, and then having to sound confident about it. No one wants to take a yoga class where you sound like you have no idea what your doing so it was awesome experience to get out there and challenge yourself. In most careers, you’ll have to speak in front of people, either about your opinion of something the company is doing for a meeting, or if your job is to public speak like teaching or pitching sales to people. You’ll have to learn that sometimes you just have to roll with the punches, and improvise quickly.
- CONFIDENCE – going off of public speaking, CONFIDENCE. You had to sound confident, and in order to sound confident you had to BE confident. Learning how to explain poses, and then making the explanations clear and add in things that you like, and putting your style into teaching was something super important. This has helped me in my career so far because I have been able to understand directions, what has to be done, and add my own personal touch to whatever it is that I am working on and have the confidence that I am doing it correctly.
- Teamwork– Yoga teaching might seem like something more personal since its just you teaching up there, and that it is when you’re done with your training and out in the world teaching, but during the training I made so many friends that I would not have met before. We would meet outside of the training to practice, and learn from each other. We all realized we understood things from our own perspectives, and figured out each other’s strengths and weaknesses and improved on them to make us all stronger together. This is super helpful in the outside world because for problem solving issues at work, you have to know that you don’t always have all the answers, and going to other people for help, and working together can be really beneficial.
- Listening Skills– Spending a lot of time listening, and practicing was one aspect of the training. Other people would get up and practice teaching, and not only did you have to practice, but you had to really pay attention to the fine details of what they were saying without correcting them in the moment. After each person taught my trainer would go over things they could improve on, and usually when someone needs to improve on something, we all can learn from it. This allows me in the outside career paths to listen to what other people do well, or what doesn’t work, and make choices based on that. It also helps to listen to people fully and try to understand them and where they are coming from before replying or commenting.
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply” – Stephen Covey
- Patience. Patience. Can I say that again? Patience. – Yoga teaching, and learning how to create the perfect sentence of how to explain a pose, in detail, can take time. There were a lot of moments of incorrect explanations, or forgetting what pose came next in a sequence, or forgetting to do the pose on both sides. It takes time to become a polished teacher, as it takes time with anything that you do. Always have patience. In any career path, you’ll have to understand that patience is one of the most important qualities to have. You’ll have bosses you don’t necessarily like, you will not know how to do something and you’ll have to look it up, or take an extra class. You’ll have to constantly learn more throughout your career, and understand that mistakes happen and you’ll have to be patient when they do! Finding that sense of patience in your life will be a really important and awesome skill to have in any career that you follow.
-YogaKait
YogaKait 