Which YTT is right for you?



 

I can only tell you my personal experience and hope it helps you make your decision.  I already knew my priority was to go the source and that meant traveling to India.  I wanted to be as close to the culture and origins of Yoga as possible.  Second, I wanted knowledge.  I felt pretty comfortable with the whole teaching part of the course, I wanted the content, and not just the physical anatomy of each asana, I wanted to know the philosophy behind each pose.

 

 

 

I was bound by the time of year I could travel to India, so that was an easy parameter for me to plug into the equation.  For my second YTT I wanted to learn more about Yoga Therapy;  aha!  My second parameter.  And thirdly I wanted to go to a working Yoga clinic to learn and see yoga therapy in play.  I chose Andiappan YTT in Chenai.  Guruji runs a school and clinic and offers 200 and 300 hour YTT for teachers and therapists.  To this day I remember my time there fondly and refer often to my notes taken in class.  The training I received has been invaluable to me in my personal practice and in my teaching career.

 

My third training ,which completed my 500 hours in YTT, had to be in the mountains of India, again near the source of Yoga, and I wanted more yoga philosophy and literature to be part of the training.  I researched several schools until I came across a review of Association for Meditation and Yoga in Rishikesh that praised the teacher and the course content. All my criteria were met.  Rishikesh is a holy city in the foothills of the Himalayas, the Ganges run through the city, and the YTT offered the topics I wanted to learn. As with my first and second training, this course further deepened my own practice and has given me the skills and knowledge to better guide the yoga students that share yoga with me.

 

 

Knowing how I researched my own YTT training I want to be as clear as I can when describing the YTT our school offers.  I planned the curriculum to reflect my priorities in teaching and in content.  My hope was and is to offer students an opportunity to live a yoga life style for those 2 to 3 weeks they attend the YTT course. 

 

 

 I firmly believe that  Yoga must  be experienced.  Side by side with each lecture class we offer real learning demonstrations, practicums and student teaching opportunities, from Day one of the course.

 

As Patanjali in the Sutras states one needs " right knowledge, right wisdom to practice yoga."  And, an often quoted adage by BKS Iyengar, "Words cannot convey the value of yoga – it has to be experienced."