‘I’m not very happy in my job and want to do something else. I’m very flexible – maybe I’ll try to be a yoga teacher’.
Back in the day, it was the teacher who suggested to the appropriate student that they should study to become a yoga teacher; it was a process of recommendation, and was not considered to be a pathway to a career. They would teach on top of their usual job.
However, looking back, I remember that I myself only joined a yoga class for the stretch. I was very stiff and inflexible, and at the beginning felt I didn’t need all the philosophy – I just needed to stretch my body!
So it was a shock when Sri Paul, upon entering my first class and greeting me, said, ‘This will change your life!’ Through his excellent teaching, real yoga pierced the skin of the physical to reveal the fruit within!
If anyone had said at the time ‘You will be teaching within 10 years’, I would have thought it was nonsense – I had no inclination to teach.
It was only the fact that people asked me – and when I moved to Cumbria, and they were looking for a yoga teacher in Shap (where I lived!), my husband said, ‘You could do that’, or, ‘You should do that’. I had studied to teacher level, but as I said, I had no desire to teach.
After over thirty years of teaching, I’m still at it, and learning in greater and greater depth.
So if someone today feels they want to do a teacher training course – for whatever reason – it can really turn their life around, and they can be of great service to others. For it is said that you teach best what you need to learn yourself!
Also that you get the students you deserve.(Thank you to my wonderful students – I see a piece of me reflected in each of you.)
Different teachers will teach different students in different ways – ‘horses for courses’ as they say.
Welcome all – the more the merrier. Yes – the more the merrier!