At a bare and essential minimum, a robust training course should at the very least consider, develop, and cultivate competencies such as…

The teaching has lost its way

There was a time when people spoke about yoga as something that changed their lives. They spoke of liberation, inner alignment, freedom, transformation, and even transmutation..

That has changed.

When? It’s hard to say.

… definitely though, around the time that “Athleisure” became its own distinct style of dressing

… and probably around the period where every major shopping centre “needed” hipster yoga studio in its retail mix.

.. the stories we hear now are different.

It’s about the sweat. The calories. The weight loss. The perfect handstand. The advanced yoga posture they pulled off which increased their Instagram followers tenfold. Touching your toes. Looking good in leggings. Looking good without leggings. Naked yoga. Beer Yoga. (Kill me now).

Yoga has become something you do to improve your body, rather than something that might fundamentally change your life.

The old stories were different.

They spoke about transformation.

They talked about becoming stronger, calmer, more resilient, more self-aware. They talked about how yoga changed their relationship with their bodies, their minds, and, sometimes, their lives.

You hear less of that today.

Perhaps that is because yoga has become a victim of its own success. In the modern proliferation of yoga studios, teacher trainings, boutique classes and social-media personalities, yoga has become more accessible than ever. But accessibility is not necessarily the same as quality.

The uncomfortable question is this:

Are today’s yoga teacher training programmes actually preparing people to teach yoga?

In many cases, the answer is: not adequately.

The performance of teaching

Many teacher training programmes place considerable emphasis on class choreography, sequencing and verbal cueing.

These are important skills. A teacher needs to know how to structure a class and communicate clearly. But they are only part of the job.

The danger is that teacher training can become focused on the performance of teaching rather than the practice of teaching.

A trainee learns how to stand at the front of a room, demonstrate a sequence, deliver cues and move a group of people from one posture to another.

But teaching yoga is not fundamentally about performing in front of a class.

It is about observing.

It is about understanding.

It is about adapting.

And it is about knowing when the person in front of you needs something different from the person beside them.

A yoga teacher is not simply a person who knows how to perform a series of postures. A teacher should be able to help another person acquire those postures safely and meaningfully, while using movement and breath to support a healthier body and a calmer mind.

That requires a fundamentally different skill set.

The body is not one-size-fits-all

One of the greatest shortcomings in many modern teacher trainings is insufficient attention to the individual body.