Yoga Teacher Training – Week 4

New friends, new adventures

By now, we are all well accustomed to the Monday morning ritual. During class in the Yoga hall, a group of new arrivals walk in for their welcome tour. At first, we all joked about being animals in a zoo. Now in week 4, we see them as new potential friends and can’t wait for lunch to go meet them all properly.

It has been an interesting experience being filled with brief sadness as friends we’ve made leave, but then being filled with excitement as others arrive every week. New friends to swim in the creek with, have evenings singing and dancing in the yoga hall with and amazing creative people who share their talents with impromptu workshops. Some of these people we will be connected with forever. Others will live in our memories, being part of the story in the chapter of “Barbie goes to YTT”.

From scaredy cats to roaring lions

After breaking the seal of teaching our own classes last week, we are now well and truly doggy paddling in the deep end. We have been divided into groups of 3 and are now teaching the classes in groups. Each group has 2 morning classes and 3 afternoon classes to teach over the next couple of weeks. Scary!

The morning sequence is taught at 5am, which means gentle chill vibes, and a sequence we are all well accustomed to. Perfect for our groggy 4:30am brains.  

The afternoon class is where the fun begins, and we have been creating our own sequences and getting the chance to teach different sections of the class. My favorite would have to be the beginning, there’s something about a synchronized OM and a collection of eager faces that really does it for me! This is also where we get the chance to teach poses that we love, and also the ones we struggle with. As teachers, it has been especially helpful to learn our strengths and weaknesses.

Knowledge is power

Our theory classes in week four seemed to be the best – the sweet stuff they have been withholding from us until now. We got a little deeper into yogic philosophy, learnt about yoga for pregnancy and finally received our Vinyasa licence!

We have been living at the Krishna Village, kind of flying under the radar. Bits and pieces of Krishna philosophy come up at times but it has all seemed a bit confusing. “Why did the lotus flower grow out of Vishnu’s belly button?”, “You mean the blue guy and his girlfriend are actually the same person?” Our upcoming week 5 philosophy assessment gives us a perfect excuse to dig a little deeper and get more of an understanding of the amazing culture which has taken care of us for the last 4 weeks.

Although a one hour lecture on pregnancy yoga doesn’t qualify us as pregnancy yoga teachers, we did do some postures with pillows and blankets under our shirts. We got an understanding of how to adjust our bodies to protect our pillow babies in a variety of postures. Now we are all very aware of which postures are unsafe for pregnancy and can be mindful of that if we ever need to adjust a class.  It was a very lovely class that left us feeling a little more mindful and loving.

Friday was the day we had all been waiting on the edge of our seat for: the day we learned about Vinyasa sequencing. We are now able to incorporate flows into our afternoon classes – watch out week 5: YTT sequencing creativity is coming at you full steam ahead!!

Moon Salutations

To perfectly end a great week, the moon showered us with her energy for the full moon on Saturday night. The Krishna Village seemed to buzz with vibrations as everybody honored the moon in their own way. Some climbed Mount Warning for a cacao ceremony, others went swimming in the creek, multiple crystal altars were charging in the moonlight and even some poi twirling popped up throughout the camp grounds. We all soaked up the moons yummy goodness, ready and charged for the next week to begin.