What To Do After Your 200 Hour

So you have graduated from your 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training and are figuring out what is next, what to do with this new knowledge and credential?

Here are three simple paths to consider:

1 / Just Start Teaching, Here’s How

Starting to teach seems like an obvious one of course but sometimes it can feel a bit overwhelming especially if you haven’t taught before. We often feel safe as a student, even if we are training to teach but once it’s time for the rubber to hit the road the paths we thought would be clearly before us are not as easily observed. Finding a yoga studio to teach at or creating your own opportunities are your primary options for getting some traction and scoring your first gig.

With Yoga studios it’s all about making an impression, standing out from the other myriad teachers and landing a demo. All of that could be a whole article itself. The other option, making your own opportunities, is about the same amount of effort but may allow you to build some more confidence inside your comfort zone. Just start gathering groups of friends, family, co-workers or look for places to teach already present in your life. Community Centers, Worship Centers, at your work/office or even at home are all great options for venues either for solid ongoing teaching or just one-time small groups of familiar people so you can gain more experience. In some cases this can work so well you may not even need studios.

2 / Enjoy The New Depths Of Your Personal Practice

Some of us just want to go deeper with our practice after a training, it’s not all about teaching and career changes. Applying all of the wealth of new knowledge you have can really stretch out for some time, cultivating the experience inward and nourishing those seeds planted by the training. This is also a great time to 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 can allow forgotten content to resurface. 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 to our life especially when you start reviewing all those notes!

3 / Find A Niche Training & Prepare To Specialize

While 200 hour trainings are very comprehensive there are many areas, techniques and methodologies that they only have time to touch briefly on. The foundation they provide is extremely valuable and immediately applicable for some but for others it is simply a foundation on which to build what you feel truly called to. We may 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 and 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, adding much needed balance to one’s life. They can also become the primary pursuits and specializations of a teacher who goes deeper into what functions they serve and how to really bring others into their own inner worlds.