200-hour YTT Program Reflection

My STEP signature project was to complete a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training program. We met five days a week in the evenings for five weeks, mostly outside so that it was safe to do in-person during the COVID-19 pandemic. We learned correct alignment of yoga postures, the philosophy of yoga practice, meditation techniques, and teaching practices that would allow us to successfully share all of the benefits that yoga has to offer an individual.

There were many things in this program that changed my perspective on myself. I feel like I have a greater sense of my own responsibility for my own life and a greater sense of my own power to go after what I want. It’s very easy to see the world as full of events that happen to you rather than events that you create and this experience helped me see how much power I have over what I do, how I respond to things, and where I go from there. What I want from my life is clearer to me and I feel like the power to achieve those things is fully within my reach. I have a more intentional perspective on my actions and how they move me toward my goals, rather than just being reactive or impulsive. As a part of that perspective, I also have more kindness towards myself so that when I make a mistake, I feel more able to learn from it and move forward constructively without beating myself up about it. This could be summed up as saying that I have more love for myself which makes it easier to support my own growth and reach for what I want.

I also feel a lot more confident in my ability to do new things and lead people into a movement practice class. In some ways this program was intimidating because we started teaching in the first week which I didn’t necessarily feel ready to do but it showed me that I can do things even when I feel like it is out of my comfort zone. I had previously assumed that I had to be an expert at everything in order to be able to teach yoga or any other kind of movement class: if I can’t do a handstand then I can’t teach people how to do a handstand. This experience taught me that leadership doesn’t always correspond with expertise. Of course you need to have at least some basic knowledge but in many ways teaching and leading is about empowering others to challenge themselves and helping them along the way, even if that means that they go in a direction that you have never gone in before. I learned that I don’t need to know everything in order to help other people achieve their potential.

The first thing that empowered me to take more responsibility for my life was our weekly meditation workshops led by a guru named Steven. We worked through a lot of different ideas about how to meditate, why meditation is useful, and different ideas that can guide our meditation practice. One of the ideas we talked about was a mandala that connected our past situations to our present and our future. When we have been in a situation, we translate that through our conscious and subconscious mind which then causes an emotion that leads to our actions to create our present situation that then influences what possible future situations we will be in. The key point here is when we translate the situation through our mind where our perception of the situation can be influenced by thinking errors, limiting beliefs, or traumatic memories which together make up our thought paradigm. Our perception, not other people, is what creates the emotional reaction and eventually leads to the physical reaction to continue the cycle of events. So, our power is in changing our thought paradigm if we want to change the situation that we are in. There were a lot of techniques that we talked about over the course of the program for confronting bad habits or negative paradigms but even just the idea that I have total control over my thoughts, feelings, and actions was enlightening for me. I was empowered to take more responsibility for my responses and create the future situations that I want to be in.

The second thing that shifted my perspective on self-love was a book that we read called You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero. It has a lot of great, specific things that you can do to confront different problems that you might have within your self-perspective that is keeping you from being able to do the things that you want to do. One of the exercises in this book was to write a manifesto of what your ideal life would look like that includes where you live, who is around you, what you are doing for the world, etc. This exercise helped me envision what it is that I actually want and get really specific about what that would look like. It was kind of scary to do that but at the same time it gave me more clarity for my life goals and challenged me to really work toward them even if they were intimidating. At the end of every chapter, she has a note about loving yourself and the constant repetition of this idea showed me how vital it is to love yourself along every step of your journey. In reaching for the life that I want to have, if each step is made with love for myself then I can’t go wrong.

The third thing that gave me more confidence in teaching was the guidance of Brittany, the woman who ran the program. She was always very open and direct about everything that we needed to know and the things that we didn’t need to stress about. She gave very clear and direct feedback that really helped me clarify my own teaching and build the skills that I needed to be able to provide the kind of class that I wanted to be able to teach. Her attitude was that people will do whatever they want, so as long as you are giving everything that you have to offer and you stay authentic to yourself, you will be able to do great things for the people who want it. She talked about how we need to let of our ego in order to teach well because it should be about helping the student grow, not proving your abilities. So, if you can’t do a handstand, that doesn’t mean you can’t help your students learn how to do a handstand and if your students “surpass” you in some way, that is a good thing. Brittany always encouraged us to find our own way of teaching and be creative and her support helped me trust my judgement.

These changes mean a lot for me as a person in terms of my own journey of self-love and trust. This is something I think everyone is working on in their own way but I got a lot more tools from this experience to help me confront challenges along that journey. One thing that I firmly believe is that when you are fully your best self is when you can give the most to the world around you so even as this experience has helped me personally, those same elements of personal growth will help me in my professional future as well. As I move into the field of professional dance, a lot of my success depends on how well I can present myself and I can do that so much better if I already love and trust what I have to offer. This love and trust will help my performance and teaching as well because it allows me to step forward with more confidence in my ability to learn and do things that are new to me. The growth mindset that this fosters is useful no matter what field I go into and will help me continue to improve any skill that I am trying to learn. This program opens up new possibilities for me as a certified 200-hour yoga teacher, but it did so much more than just give me a piece of paper saying that I am certified. It gave me new tools to grow as a human being and help others along their journey too.