As part of the Shades of Yoga 200 hr Level 1 Yoga Teacher Training certification, our students are required to complete two ‘self practice’ assignments per week. At Shades of Yoga we believe that it is essential that all of our students have a strong individual yoga practice, as this is the foundation of what makes a good teacher, and to be able to know how poses feel in one’s own body, is an important aspect in being able to teach it. Furthermore, the rigours of being a yoga teacher often leave very little time for one’s own yoga practice.
Shades of Yoga feels it is important to cultivate a habit of finding time to incorporate all you have learnt throughout your yoga career into your own yoga practice. This ensures that one keeps growing as a teacher, and that you are ‘walking your talk’, so to speak.
Some great tips for a productive self practice, as well as a requirement for our students assignments, are the following:
- Asses your physical body mental state before you begin
- Create objectives for your self-practice based on the above assessment
- Design your practice- always include pranayama and meditation, as well as yoga asana in your self-practice
- Observations- always take a few minutes after your self-practice to check in with yourself and take note of whether or not you achieved your aforementioned objectives
On a Shades of Yoga 200 hr Yoga Teacher Training we feel it is imperative that you are not simply going through the motions of practicing yoga. Yoga needs to be practiced with complete awareness of mind and body, both before and after and it is through this continuous self assessment that we begin to truly experience the many benefits that yoga has to offer.
Shades of Yoga is a yoga teacher training company running year-round yoga teacher training courses in Bali and Costa Rica.
