This month our featured offering is part of a series of discussions offered by Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher, John Schumacher. Each quarter John hosts a free discussion at his Unity Woods Yoga Center in Bethesda, Maryland. This month the topic of discussion is the prevalence of Yoga Teacher Trainings and how to navigate these potentially murky waters. John references his own journey to become a teacher as well as a rather egregious example of a 5 hour workshop he came across which claimed to teach you everything there is to know about yoga and yoga therapy. John’s examples remind us of how precious this gift of yoga is as it offers us an avenue for self-discovery.
In John’s most recent newsletter, he mentions the Yoga Sutra “sa tu dirghakala nairantarya satkara asevitah drdhabhumih: Long, uninterrupted, alert practice is the firm foundation for restraining the fluctuations of the mind (I:14).” This ultimately is the path of first the student and then the teacher. Some may be able to train to become teachers in a weekend, but the true teachers will make the practice and teachings of yoga a lifelong pursuit. May these teachers, like John, help guide us all on our own path of self discovery towards peace.
Listen to John’s Introduction to the Discussion
Listen to the Student’s Question and Answer Portion
For more of John’s quarterly discussions, please visit his iHanuman teacher page. For downloads of his live yoga classes, please visit the iHanuman Download Store.
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After 11 years of increasingly intense yoga practice, with some wonderful teachers, and a few not so wonderful, I have been looking at Yoga Teacher Training Programs as a means to deepen my practice and learn more than asana technique. I feel that teaching itself would be an enriching and exciting experience that might give me the opportunity to download some of the joy, release and discovery I have been blessed to receive through yoga. But I have not found the right fit, yet. Thank you John Schumacher for so eloquently reinforcing this view. The view that Yoga is a personal journey, that may lead to teaching. But that “becoming a teacher” is not the point. “Being” a Yogini who teaches others with compassion and commitment, is. PREM.
this is so helpful that I ask my trainers to listen to it!