Category: Teacher Training

Siân’s Yoga Teacher Training Journey

Posted on by Yogafurie

When Siân decided to take the Yoga & Hot Yoga Teacher Training course at Yogafurie, she had never taught and wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to. But less than two months after finishing the course last October she opened her own studio near her home in Cornwall, where she now teaches four lessons a week.

The ten-month course has given her a whole new career, and brought hot yoga to her area of Cornwall. ‘I absolutely love teaching so much,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t have predicted it as it seemed very daunting, and I have never taught before. I just knew I wanted to find out more and see where it would lead me.’

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Oranges, lemons and Yoga

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Each morning, my three-year-old son and I squeeze some citrus fruits for our morning drinks. He has an orange and usually a couple of satsumas as well. I have a lemon and a lime. I cut them in half and we smell the different fruits. For the orange, he says “Yum!”. For the lemon and lime, he says “Yuk!”. Then we put them down and look at the segmented patterns in each, how they all have lots of pockets of juice built around the pith inside. I like doing this, because it shows him that things can be the same, but different. I think that’s a great way for little ones to realise that people can also be treated with the same respect, even though they’re different.

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Are you ready for Yoga and Hot Yoga teacher training?

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Being a Yoga or Hot Yoga teacher (or both) really is a great lifestyle. You get to do work that you love and truly believe in. Your work directly helps other people. They feel good and they let you know. You’re surrounded by others who also love their work with a passion. This is all really rare in much of today’s employment.

But it’s still work. And because you care deeply, it can be hard work. So, are you ready? Here are four questions to ask yourself to help find out.

If you’re even considering training, then Yoga has already had a big impact in your life. Yoga has come to you through teachers: imagine being the channel bringing big life shifts to others. Teaching Yoga is a big responsibility.

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Reflections for Anahata chakra, your heart chakra

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Anahata means sound produced without touching parts together. An unplayed musical instrument is capable of producing any melody. Anahata is a reference to the pure potential that is the force behind any creative act. Love is seen as the most creative thing of all, because it limits negativity and destruction.

We do creative things out of desire. It’s not always out of love. What’s the difference, and what’s the relationship between love and desire? The difference is that doing something out of love is doing it for the benefit of all. Recognising interdependence is an Anahata experience. For instance, with 7 billion or so people alive now, it’s no longer possible to treat the natural world as a set of resources. It’s becoming essential to participate in the life-supporting processes of the Earth, instead of just assuming they function regardless of what we do.

But desire is the access point. Through practice, we create the space to be with desires, rather than act them out. We get to understand our motives and the issues (real or imagined) that we’re trying to address. Acting out the desire is just one response: pausing for a moment means we might find a different response, such as a root-cause fix. In other words, we get beneath the wants to the real needs, we get from the mind’s desire to the heart’s desire.

Ultimately, love is usually the heart’s desire, and the actions borne out of love usually lead to the greater good.

People say that love is vulnerable. I tend to feel that love is courageous. It’s even possible that love doesn’t give a damn about anything except love! So, we can’t talk about love without talking about fear. Fear is the opposite of love in a lot of ways, because love includes and embraces, whereas fear excludes and repels.

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What to Expect as a Yoga for Cancer Teacher

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A Guest Article by Morven Hamilton

When I completed my teacher training as a yoga for cancer teacher in 2011, I had not previously worked with cancer survivors and I had never had a cancer patient in my class. My grandmother had had breast cancer and had overcome it in her 60s, and then again in her 70s, but I was living many hundreds of miles away and was too young to realise the gravity of her illness.

yoga for cancer

So, there I was, in front of my first group feeling very excited about what was about to ensue. Despite my inexperience and naivety I was 100% committed to the practice and absolutely sure that yoga can help anyone to overcome their difficulty and come to terms with their situation. I was on a quest to share the power of yoga with people who were suffering, and that quest had led me to Penny Brohn Cancer Care in Bristol as their resident teacher.

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The Flexibly Challenged Yogi

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Something that has always bugged me when I try to convince people to come to a yoga class with me is when they say, “I’d be no good at yoga, I’m not very flexible.” To which I’d reply, “neither am I!” I’ve always had short hamstrings (probably not helped by my historic love for outdoor running and lack of enthusiasm for a cool down). I also have tight hips (can’t think of a good reason for this – too much TV watching perhaps?) I also have a slight anterior pelvic tilt which basically means my bum sticks out a bit, probably caused by too much sitting.

flexibly challenged

Ten months ago, I decided to train to become a yoga teacher. I’ve always loved how yoga keeps me physically fit and calms my mind down, so I thought ‘why not?!’ So day one of yoga teacher training arrives: as you can probably imagine, I was bottom of the class in the flexibility ratings. Surrounded by a sea of bendy Wendy’s, I was facing a tough uphill struggle to be able to keep up with the others and do all the poses ‘correctly’. Luckily Ed, our wise trainer, told us, “There is no correct pose. It’s not about touching your toes. That may come with practice, but it’s about staying with your breath and being in the present moment.” Well, this was music to my ears! I didn’t need to look like all those super bendy girls on Instagram; where I got to in each pose was perfect for me (even if it was on top of a mountain of
blocks!) I also learnt that it’s incredibly unhelpful to compare yourself to others. So I stopped worrying and just tried my best.

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New Yoga and Hot Yoga teachers: Marketing 101

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So, you’ve graduated…well done! Your teacher training was probably a roller-coaster ride, and the most rewarding thing you ever did. Now it’s time to knuckle down, teach some classes and find your feet as a teacher. Where do you start? In this blog, Ed (Yogafurie teacher and owner) gives you some useful information about what you can do and what you can expect to find.

Yoga inversionsSet Objectives

Start by thinking about what you want to achieve, in the short term and for the future. Is it enough to just cover your costs, or do you want/ need an income from your classes?

A diligent new teacher will probably spend an hour or two planning each class, and might even practice it a couple of times themselves before delivering it. You can easily put 4 hours work into a single class. This kind of effort will pay off – the quality of your classes will be high, and people will appreciate that. Of course, you might (or might not) feel you need some financial benefit from all the work. It’s important to think about this.

Lots of people are teaching really just for the experience, and to maintain the momentum they built up in teacher training. If this is your goal then you might be willing to compromise on the financial reward for a while. Do be clear about what you want, as it will also affect how you market yourself.

And marketing is important. Your teacher training course hopefully made you a confident and knowledgeable teacher. There is more you need to know if you hope to attract and engage a population of students.

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Not A Yoga Kind Of Guy

Posted on by Yogafurie

I never thought of myself as a ‘Yoga kind of Guy’, whatever that means. Everything about me or at least the things which I identified with were fun, cool and if they were a bit edgy that was all the better. I’ll be honest if it made me look cool well that made it better still. Skateboarding, snowboarding, mountain biking, riding motorcycle’s and the life styles that went with them were my thing and still are, but you can feel pretty banged up after over quarter of a century of that. One way or anther I ended up at a Hot Yoga class taken by some guy called Ed. It sounded kind of extreme, so you can see the hook. I dabbled in it, nothing serious, but this he did say one thing that stuck in my head, “those other things will pull you apart but Yoga will put you back together”. Despite those words of wisdom I still just kind of ended up drifting off, because after all… I was not really a yoga kind of guy.

yoga kind of guy

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What Makes You Happy

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Throughout my life I have always lived by the motto ‘do what makes you happy’.

It was something my parents said to me when I was 18 and choosing which degree to take for University, and it has stuck with me and served me well. Consequently, I have had a few different careers, lived in a number of cities, and taken a few long career breaks to pursue my passion for travel and experiencing new cultures.

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Have You Ever Wondered What If…

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Have you ever wondered what you would do if you could reset, would you change anything?

I am 42, mother of 2 and full-time accountant. And some days it works beautifully, but most of the time it is pretty full on, I wish for less stress, a healthier balance and more quality time for me and the family……

So, at the end of 2017 I started to think about some of the things that made me (and my family) happy, and I thought what if?

What if I could find something that helped me balance my stress and health (back pain, tiredness, PMT)?

What if I could find something that I may be able to use for a new career?

What if I find something I am passionate about and would make me jump out of bed for work!!

So, I just did it and in Jan 2018 I joined the teacher training at Yogafurie, not knowing where it would take me but excited to see……

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