It’s been almost a full year since completing my 300 hour yoga teacher training! So… why am I only now sharing my experience? Truthfully, I had this blog post written out last August but never finished it because of pregnancy symptoms and school starting up again. But now I’m soaking up mom life and getting back into the swing of things (see my previous blog post here). So here we are & I’m so excited to share my experience and reflections of my 300 hour yoga teacher training...
Where to begin? I guess I'll go literal and say that my 300 HR training began in November 2022. I was over the moon that I was about to embark on a journey that I had been looking forward to for about a year and a half. It seemed like it was going to be a long road ahead since the training went all the way through July 2023. But it ended up being quite the opposite. The training flew by in retrospect, but it felt like plenty of time to take everything and bond with my cohort of amazing ladies.
So what was the training all about?
This feels like an impossible question to answer. For those of you who have completed a 200 HR training maybe recall the "basics" - like anatomy, how to cue poses, making little sequences, beginner pranayama, etc. Well, for my 300 HR training there was certainly the structure of the "basics" but with deeper instructions and practices.
Part of this particular curriculum also included our own personal 40 hour project and leading a workshop as our final. This was a drastic change from the 200 HR training since we didn't really have any personally guided self study and our final was to teach a 15 minute sequence. Needless to say, I was so excited to dive into a yoga subject and be supported by our group through this self study.
My 40 Hour Project
Our 40 hour project was almost completely open ended! It just had to pertain to a topic in yoga - literally so vast. I decided to explore Ayurveda because I was hoping to slowly transform my everyday routines into practices that gave me more fulfillment. Well, if you know anything about Ayurveda (or even if you don’t)… just know that, like yoga, the topic and study of Ayurveda is incredibly vast. So I had to hone in on something specific and I decided on self care practices!
I felt like self care would be easy enough to incorporate into my life without getting overwhelmed. My plan was to build in 1-2 Ayurvedic self care practices each month(ish) while educating myself on as many aspects of Ayurveda as I could.
I won’t go into complete full detail here about every step of the way, but I read books, listened to podcasts, and tried out new recipes! I became genuinely happier with my day to day life. If you’re curious about everything I did (books read, podcasts listened to, etc) check out my other blog post here.
Because I was looking for an actual lifestyle shift, I knew I needed to take things slow and give myself grace when I didn’t ‘stay on schedule’ or ‘forgot to do x, y, or z in my morning routine’. And now reflecting back, ‘routine’ feels like a harsh word to describe what I was trying to implement. I think ‘rhythm’ is better suited here because not every day has to be identical- that would be so boring, right? But having a daily rhythm feels good and like there’s some wiggle room! I’m not practicing everything I was during this self study, but I’m definitely motivated to find my new Ayurvedic rhythm as a new mom!
My Workshop
Kind of like our 40 hour independent study, the topics for our workshop seemed endless! What is a yoga workshop anyways? I’m honestly struggling to sum it up in a few words because it could look like many things… BUT I’ll try my best. Yoga workshops are typically 60-120 minutes long and focus on one(ish) “topic” - you could have an asana based workshop focusing on splits or crow, you could have a workshop about different pranayama practices, maybe meditation techniques, etc!
I originally thought I would do an asana based workshop, but I ended up going with a crafty kind of workshop! At the beginning of the pandemic I got more into meditation and learned about mala necklaces. I made one myself and was inspired by that experience to make my workshop about malas and meditation. So I gathered supplies and did research. We made mini malas consisting of 27 beads and then used our finished project to do a tactile meditation.
Truthfully, it was a little bit of a flop because threading the beads proved to be quite challenging for a lot of people and I didn’t have a bead threading tool. So some people didn’t finish making theirs, but I had made extras so everyone was able to participate in the meditation.
I would 100% do a workshop like that again, but with much more polishing. :)
If you’re thinking about or considering a 300 hour training, this is your sign to put the pedal to the metal and register! You won’t regret it and your life will change for the BEST!
Yorumlar