* 3 Options For After Your 200 hour Yoga Training
| WRITTEN BY TJ MAHER
| FOUNDER & LEAD TEACHER @ YUJMU
| Reading Time ~5 Min.
So you’ve graduated from your 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training and are figuring out what is next. What to do with this new knowledge and credential that you’ve worked so hard for and hopefully had a lot of fun with in the process.
We will take a look at 3 options you have. They may seem a bit obvious at first but we find that the obvious things are sometimes the things we overlook first. Lets dive in and see how you can actually implement these options so you don’t get stuck like we see happen sometimes to new graduates.
1 | Start Teaching Today
Yup this seems like the most obvious one of course but sometimes it can feel quite overwhelming, especially if you haven’t taught before. Your training would have prepared you with practice teaching but often we feel safer as a student. So how can you make this transition without getting stuck?
One great way to begin is to start small by organizing some friends, family or coworkers who you feel comfortable around. Put together a class at home with just 3-4 people and get those first few teaching sessions done. You may have even already done this in your training, do it again and again, only now you are a fully certified teacher doing it :D
Gathering groups of friends, co-workers or looking for places to teach already present in your life is a great springboard that may turn out to be all you need. Community Centers, Worship Centers, at your work/office or even at home are all great options either for solid ongoing teaching or just one-time small groups of familiar people so you can gain more experience.
Next you can to set your mind on a yoga studio to teach at or creating your own ongoing opportunities in your own space.
With Yoga studios its all about making an impression, standing out from the other myriad teachers and landing a demo. As a former studio manager I can tell you the demo is everything so go above & beyond and be as focused & relaxed on the day as you can.
Also remember studios are trying to make money, so if you can bring in students for them they will want to work with you.
You may get rejected, thats ok, contact them to setup another demo in a month or two.
Finally on studios,
write down and utilize the feedback they give you, sometimes they will tell you exactly how to land the gig with them if you just listen.
Above all just jump in and get yourself teaching right away if teaching is what you want to do. The longer you wait after your training the harder it will be to initiate. Its never impossible to jump if you wait but you will have momentum after the training and everything will still be fresh in your mind and body.
2 | Enjoy Your New Practice
For some teaching was never the purpose of the training and that is just as valid. Some just want to go deeper with our practice, its not all about teaching and career changes.
Applying all of the wealth of new knowledge you have can really stretch out for some time. Trainings are massive sources of new information that takes times to process even after graduating.
Cultivating the inward experience and nourishing those seeds planted by the training is an important focus for your practice to blossom.
This is also a great time to just observe your life and see what the training has changed about your perception and feelings of how you live and what your priorities are.
Trainings can often give us far more info than our brains can process during the experience
and so having extended time after to let things sink in and forgotten things to resurface can be very rewarding, try journaling to help this along.
In addition it takes time for new habits to form and there can be a lot of potential to apply new healthy practices and ways of thinking into our life especially when you start reviewing all those notes!
3 | Find Your Specialization
While 200 hour trainings are very comprehensive there are many areas, techniques, style, branches and methodologies that they only have time to briefly touch upon.
The foundation they provide is extremely valuable and immediately applicable for some but for others it may feel more like a foundation on which to build what you feel truly called to. In some cases we know beforehand what niche really interests us in the long term and
in other cases we encounter something for the first time during our 200 hour and want to continue down that path.
There are countless niche trainings out there and each has many interesting ways to flourish in your life, amidst your other skills and practices.
Yin Yoga and Meditation are just such a pair of more specialized areas of self learning that can be explored to infinite depths.
In particular they explore the more calming, soothing side of things, refining perception of the mind and body. These practices are excellent supplements to countless other practices in Yoga and other fields.
Adding much needed balance to one’s life they can become the primary pursuits and specializations of a teacher by going deep into what functions they serve and how to really bring others into their own inner worlds.
Whatever you choose to do just continue to learn and educate yourself through texts, teachings and above all practice.
If you are interested in pursuing a specialization in Yin Yoga we got you covered with our
100 hour Yin Yoga Teacher Training, plus you can now go even deeper with our NEW 200 hour Teacher Training fully specializing in YIN YOGA.
Best of all is there are no prerequisites for either our 100 or 200 hour offerings. There are always beginner attendees who have never trained or taught before. We bring you through a carefully designed curriculum to create confident effective Yin Yoga teachers regardless your starting point when you come in.
Take a look at upcoming training options on our homepage.
Want to hear what our graduates & trainees are saying they received from the YUJMU Yin Yoga Teacher Training?
Check Out Our Testimonials Page