"learning experience" written by petval
posted on 25th February 2008
Rating: 
Visit: PRAGUE YOGA TEACHER TRAINING & CERTIFICATION
I decided to take this course to further develop my knowledge and teaching skills as I already had been teaching yoga for a year before this course started. I have been following path of yoga for about 6 years and last 3.5 of them of more intensive Iyengar practice, going to workshops with different teachers, learning whenever and whereever I could as there are no good opportunities in the city I live in. I also took a training which was organized by one of the Czech yoga institutions couple of month prior to this teacher training but the quality was poor and I was hugely disappointed by the shallowness. I endured it just to have some sort of certificate that I can show if someone asks about it. We call it "needed evil" in Czech. My motivation to learn more was not satisfied so I decided to take this teacher training and I am glad I did. I applied to the long term course and I recommend you to do the same as there is just too much to conceive it in the short time frame. This would be a great miss, no doubt about that! You will have time to experience the longer-term transformative changes resulting from your own regular yoga practice (asanas, pranayama and meditation). The deep understanding springs from this which applies to you and will also apply to your future students. We had a very interesting group of students who all were very nice people and we became close to each other as the sessions progressed. We made quite a diverse group of people with different backgrounds, interests, age etc. But it was both funny and enlightning to see that we all were struggling with the very same problems only coming to similar or same solutions or changes in our lifes. Monica is a great teacher who taught us a lot. I never saw such a care of individual student needs. She always emphasized safety and individual approach to students, their former or present injuries, we discussed a lots of variations for different contraindications, and this was a great learning opportunity. Other teachers were also very good. The mix of theory and practice was balanced, the recommended books list is worth reading even if you decide not to apply. I liked that the course covered all the current main styles - ashtanga vinyasa, vinyasa flow, Iyengar, yin yoga, pregnancy yoga and probably some other. There was no rivalry between the styles although we students were practicing different styles of course but Monica had led the course in a very supportive, open minded and tolerant way that we learned from each other tremendously, understanding and being aware of the common yoga core behind the differences of the styles. Some people realized they need to know more technical/anatomical/alignment stuff, some people realized they need to reduce their technical/anatomical/aligment orientation in their teaching style and balance it with the loving-kindness and compassion. If you are looking for something that will deepen your understanding of yoga apply for it but don't expect anything in advance - just let it happen and see where it takes you. I like where it took me.
