To be or not to be... a yoga teacher?
You ask, I answer
I get so often asked about tips on becoming a yoga teacher after the classes that sometimes I wonder if there are only beginners, yoga teachers-to-be, and nothing in between.
Don't get me wrong. It's a good thing that there are so many yoga teachers and yoga practitioners who want to contribute to spreading yoga to the whole world.
My point is directed at our "fight or flight" conditioning by contemporary society. We live to compete, compare, survive, perform, thrive, reach goals, and become "successful." (Where success is not being happy, healthy, centered, and having a meaningful job but an equation of money, power, fame, and ego).
We are sometimes so conditioned to think that the "best" living is to study, get a good job, marry, buy a car, house, raise children, go on exotic holidays, and so on, continuing on the ladder, that we bring that mindset in the yoga world too. There always have to be more.
The paradox of the story is that yoga used to be a teaching to transcend and defeat the ego, to help you discover your full potential, develop a higher state of consciousness, and connect to a supreme power.
Yet, we turned that spiritual teaching into an ego-monsters-making machine.
Yoga is not a game where you get more points if you beat the next level. You can enjoy the benefits of regular practice without being validated as a yoga teacher. It is not an exam to pass on to prove you are good!
It's ok to practice yoga (whichever of its aspects) and to be enough for you.
Being disciplined and consistent in your practice doesn't mean you have to bring it to the "next level" and take teacher training.
Taking yoga teacher training doesn't oblige you to start giving classes, or the investment in recourses would have otherwise been for nothing.
Making a living from yoga retreats or teacher training doesn't necessarily make you more "successful" than other teachers who teach from the heart but haven't turned yoga into a profitable business yet.
You can be a good yoga teacher without owning a studio to prove so.
You can be passionate about your yoga job and still rely on other job/s to pay the bills.
But if you feel passionate about contributing to a community's well-being with the tools of yoga, please go for whatever resonates with you! The world needs you!
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