How Does Yoga Teacher Training Change You?

Hi, I'm Angelica. I'm going to be answering all your questions about yoga teacher training and being a yoga teacher. Today's question is, how does yoga teacher training change you? I'm so glad that you're here. I appreciate you so much for watching. You have really no idea. It is so much work to do YouTube and TikToks and Instagram Reels, and oftentimes we look at numbers and we're like, wow, nobody watched this, and it can be really sad and frustrating. So I'm really grateful that you're here. I put a lot of heart and soul into creating content for you. If you want me to create specific content or you want me to answer a question that you have, please just drop it below in the comments. I'm happy to answer any question with a video that is a legitimate question and it's not Fam, I would love if you would hit the subscribe button and subscribe to the channel, share the video, like it, just do one action on the video that really helps it to grow. So if you're watching this and you just take one action, that will help my channel tremendously and you will help me so much and it's completely free. I have a really great book called The Ultimate Guide to Yoga Teacher Training that will help you tremendously when you are deciding on a yoga teacher training. There's a lot of really good information in there and you can find that in the description below. Yoga teacher training will only change you if you want to be changed. I have noticed over the years that people come to yoga teacher training and they think that it's going to be a cure for all of their problems. The first thing that I want to let you know is that yoga teacher training does not replace therapy and counseling. If you need to go to talk therapy because you've gone through extreme amounts of trauma, I'm not mad at you. I did too. But I also went to therapy for 15 years in conjunction with doing yoga. I did both together. A yoga teacher is not a therapist. A yoga teacher training is not a therapist. If they purport themselves to being a therapist, that's unethical unless they really are a therapist. And I only know one yoga teacher that's actually a therapist. Most of the yoga teachers that I know, out of the thousands of people that I know that teach yoga, are not therapists. I have met a lot of very unethical yoga teachers who will try to give counseling to people, and I think that's a mistake. I think that in the end, that really actually injures people more. I've had students who have wanted me to be their therapist and have been angry when I suggested that they go to counseling, but that's the best thing to do because those people are qualified to counsel people. No, I actually have worked in social work. I work with people who had been in the state mental hospital for psychiatric and mental health issues like schizophrenia, bipolar, some of the people who were suffering the most. And I do have some background in that, but I don't— that's not why I teach yoga. And I don't prefer to help people with those issues in the yogic environment. That's not what yoga was created for. And so if you're coming to yoga teacher training and you're thinking that it's going to solve all of your mental health issues, that is inaccurate. And you're setting yourself up to feel very disappointed when you finish training. If you use your yoga teacher training to transform your life, the experience that's going to be the most impactful is learning about the chakras and learning about the energy centers of the body and how the different energy centers of the body work. What they control, and how to use those energy centers to make your life more enjoyable. That is going to be the most impactful part of yoga teacher training. And for my students, they tell me that that is the most impactful part of yoga teacher training for them. That's the area that has created the most change for them and opened their eyes to developing in a way that is going to make them feel really good about themselves and their lives. So the chakras would be really the best way to do that. I use— in my yoga teacher training, I use a book called Eastern Body, Western Mind. It's mind-blowing. I have a whole chakra journey in my yoga teacher training where people go through each chakra every single week. And I do that both in-person and online trainings. I do in-person training in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have one coming up in the spring. You can find the information on that below in the description. And then also my online yoga teacher training that I do privately one-on-one. The next thing that's going to really impact you in yoga teacher training is your physical transformation. Yeah, wherever you start, you will be physically somewhere completely different at the end of training. And it doesn't matter what you come in like. People have this false belief that they have to have practiced yoga for a really long time or be really good at the poses before they can yoga teach— do yoga teacher training. And that's actually not true at all. It's actually just the opposite. Yoga teacher training will teach you what you need to know to teach a class, and it will teach you postures and how you can improve on your postures. The reality is, and I tell this to everybody who walks in the door on the first day of yoga teacher training, you already, after week 1, know more than most people who are going to a yoga class. You already are an expert in that area compared to other people. Now, are you an expert compared to somebody that's been doing it for 40 years? No, but you haven't been doing it for 40 years. You still have something to offer. You can't get to 40 years unless you spend the first year or the first week or the first day learning how to be a yoga teacher. You can't get to 40 years if you don't do the first day. So don't feel like you can't be a yoga teacher if you can't do all the poses. You're going to learn that in yoga teacher training. You're going to see your body transform and do things that it has never done before. Now, not everybody is going to be able to do scorpion handstand by the end of teacher training. In fact, most people won't be able to, and don't feel like you have to. You don't have to be perfect at it. You don't have to learn how to do all the poses to teach. You just have to learn how to teach the poses, and these are very different skill sets that I think that people don't understand. Teaching is different than doing. The most important thing that yoga teacher training is going to change for you is that you're going to realize that this is the beginning of a lifelong journey. Yoga teacher training is just the beginning of a lifelong journey. You are not going to learn everything about a thousands-of-year-old philosophy and practice in 200 hours. And in fact, most yoga teacher trainings don't even give you the full 200 hours, which is something you should check before you sign up. If a training is saying you're going to finish in a week or 2 weeks, it's not possible physically to do 200 hours worth of work in 2 weeks. So that right there is suspect. But remember that, you know, people will come into my yoga teacher training. I've had people come in and they believe that they're going to learn every single thing that they need to know about yoga, everything about yoga, and they're going to know everything. And I've had people be really angry angry with me that they didn't learn everything about yoga in a 200-hour teacher training. But that's unrealistic. You cannot learn thousands of years of material in 200 hours. So lower that expectation, manage your expectation right away, and know that you're on a journey that's going to take you through your entire life. And for those of us that have Type A personalities, this is actually an incredible comfort because you no longer have to worry about being perfect at something. You can just be. Thank you so much for joining me today. I absolutely appreciate you. If you would do me the huge favor of just doing one of these things, subscribing, liking, commenting, all of those things help my channel to grow and it helps me to reach more people. My mission is to help as many people become certified yoga teachers as possible and help them to choose the right teacher training for them. Because I believe that through the practice of yoga, we together can make this a much happier world. So if you would help me with that mission, I would absolutely appreciate it. I have tons of resources below in the description. Check out any of my books. And if you'd like to join my yoga teacher training, I would love to meet you. Have a wonderful day. Mwah! And thank you so much for watching.