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'I'm not an authentic yoga teacher'

Have you ever worried that your students will find out you aren’t the real deal and desert you? Have you wondered if they'd still come to your classes if they knew what you were really like behind the mask? If you’ve ever felt like this, you’re not alone.

A frightening number of yoga teachers live with 'imposter syndrome' every day. And I, my friend, am no stranger to it.

 When it comes to helping people heal with yoga, there are tonnes of effective techniques. You'll study them all in a yoga therapy training - asana, pranayama, mudra, meditation, Ayurveda and more. But what is the MOST important technique? Turns out, it might not be yoga at all.

Are you interested in Yoga Therapy? If you're a yoga teacher, you should be! Yoga Therapy is BIG. Yoga Therapists are already working in public hospitals, private clinics, psychology practices, cancer clinics, rehab centres and more. If you want to help people to manage their health - and do it safely - yoga therapy training is the way to go.

BUT. There are a lot of misconceptions about Yoga Therapy. Many people, including plenty of yoga teachers, think it's all about modifying yoga poses so that people with health issues can do them. Some think that certain yoga practices have special healing properties. That's not how it works. 

There are no prescriptions in yoga therapy.  There are no magic postures that fix back pain or special meditations that stop anxiety. The physical, psychological and behavioural causes of back pain and anxiety are different in each person. That means we need to find practices that support each person to manage their unique set of symptoms. Basically, if you're Googling 'Yoga Therapy for back pain/sciatica/anxiety etc' you're not thinking like a Yoga Therapist. 

While you can't learn Yoga Therapy from a book, there are some important texts that will help you to start thinking like a Yoga Therapist - and start helping your students to manage their health. Here's our Top 5 Books about yoga therapy. You'll learn more than just postures for good health. These books contain a wealth of information and inspiration on yoga philosophy, psychology and more. 

If you want to learn more about Yoga Therapy, or are thinking of training as a Yoga Therapist, get a head start with these great books. 

One of my early yoga teachers, Buddhist nun Anipema Chodron, gave me an important piece of advice about choosing a yoga teacher. Make sure you ask your prospective yoga teacher who THEIR teacher is. Then ask them who their teacher’s teacher is.

How many hours yoga teacher training have you done? 200hrs? 350hrs? 500hrs+? There is a seemingly endless array of post-graduate yoga teacher training options. How about a 40hr yin training? Perhaps a weekend course on how to teach kids yoga. What about prenatal, somatics, fascia, acro yoga, adjusting, alignment or a course to help you market your classes? With such a dazzling variety of trainings, there’s one question I’d like to ask. How much yoga teacher training is enough?

I’ll follow that question up with another one. How much of the training you’ve already undergone do you use in your everyday teaching? Actually, how much of it do you even remember?

What's wrong with this pose? Nothing. Nothing at all if you are super flexible. But there are many people for whom practicing this pose is unhelpful (and, depending on your spinal health, dangerous). That's why we don't include this pose (it's called Kurmasana) in our 200hr yoga teacher program. We don't teach it in our studio classes either. 

So what DO we teach?

I didn’t want to be a yoga teacher. I just wanted to learn more about the thing I loved. Yoga had made a big difference to my life at a time when everything seemed to be falling apart. I was depressed, anxious and facing many challenges that seemed insurmountable. As my yoga practice developed, my fractured, confusing existence began to evolve into a rich and full life that was filled with hope and opportunities. Once things were back on the rails, I wanted to learn how and why yoga had made such profound changes to my body, mind and relationships. After signing up for a few short workshops, I realised that teacher training would be the best way of getting a thorough and deep understanding of yoga.

I’m deeply committed to high quality yoga teaching. It’s been my life, my passion, and my reason for getting up in the morning for over 25yrs. But I’ve been listening to a number of yoga teachers in recent months who would love to undertake advanced teacher training, but find the barriers insurmountable.

Good yoga teachers never, ever stop learning, but high quality yoga teacher training isn’t accessible to everybody. That’s a problem for both the yoga teachers who are deprived of the opportunity for professional development and their students – everybody deserves access to a well trained yoga teacher. So why isn’t it happening? I've identified four key barriers to quality yoga teacher training: