Teaching yoga requires a tremendous amount of passion and focus. It also requires you to be very committed to the craft of teaching. Perhaps the most important qualities, however, are emotional stability, stamina, and patience. The truth is, not everyone is ready to become a yoga teacher. Are you? Let’s find out!
You are practicing yoga regularly (at least 3 times a week)
If you’re not practicing regularly, you’re not ready to be a teacher yet. Consistency is everything in yoga. Less important than how often you are practicing is that there is some consistency. Is it 3 times a week? 5 times a week? Once a day in the morning? This is a good sign that you’re ready to go deeper.
Meditation is a central part of your life
Yoga was invented to help people get into deeper meditation. As you can imagine, meditation is a part of any Yoga teacher’s life. If you meditate, you’re already on the right path. As long as you can maintain this desire to continue deepening your meditation, you’ll constantly feel inspired by the path of yoga. If you don’t maintain this practice, again your career will very quickly start to feel like a job.
Can you master the simple poses?
Just because you want to be a Yoga teacher, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to know and master all the poses. Sure, knowing some of them will be very helpful. But that doesn’t mean you have to master all the advanced poses to become a teacher. Great teachers constantly are focusing on mastering the basic, foundational poses. There is no such thing as perfect, in a great teacher’s mind.
You love to connect with people
As a yoga teacher, you will connect with many people on a very special level. Everyone is going to yoga to get something out of it that no other physical exercise class can offer. At yoga, people open up and let go. They have questions and they trust you. They might share things with you that they don`t share with anyone else. You will be your students` therapist, psychologist, doctor, priest, best friend, and life coach. If you don`t have a general openness and interest in people and their lives, you`ll find being a yoga teacher very tiring and draining. If you are a sympathetic person anyway and love connecting with people on a special level, this will be easy peasy for you.
You feel like you MUST share your passion with others
If you’re a person that doesn’t hold information or passions from others, then you may be good as a yoga teacher. Sharing and communicating is very important if you want to become a teacher, so this will be a step in the right direction. If you don’t have this passion, it will start to feel like any other job very quickly, and you’ll burn out.
You enjoy learning
A great yoga teacher is always learning and improving their craft. If learning is a pleasure to you, it can lead you to some pretty magnificent results in the long-term. The challenge is that you’re constantly learning about your own body, how it works and how each part of our body is integrated into the yoga poses. If you are turned on by learning about your own body, teaching yoga is right for you.
You are surrounded by open-minded people
The people around you will inevitably rub off on you. An open-mind is mandatory to continually stay inspired, and to continue exploring your true purpose as a teacher. By surrounding yourself with open-minded people, you are eliminating problems before they arise. Your path will be more supported, always. Nothing is worse than being surrounded by people who don’t understand and support your life’s work.
You are ready to make some changes in your life. Mainly, discipline
Yoga is a path of discipline. Naturally, being a Yoga teacher does require you to make some changes. If you are up for that, then you are ready to pursue this path. Great yoga teachers don’t teach from theory but from their actual life-experience. To know the path, you must become the path, as they say.
Yes, becoming a yoga teacher is a challenge, but no path is more rewarding. It’s a unique lifestyle and one that inspires consistent variety and growth if you are up for it. At the East West Yoga Institute, we train students from all over the world to become successful yoga teachers. We combine real Indian teachers with popular western teachers, so students can experience the real depth of the practice, along with the practical information involved in building a yoga career.
Namaste.
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