Endings and Beginnings Part 1: Subtle Yoga Advanced Wellness 500 hour Yoga Teacher Training Program
The final presentation wasn’t my best work.
After presenting my powerpoint on Yoga for Resilience and Self-Regulation, I waited anxiously for my fellow teachers to share feedback, comments, or questions with me. I knew I had worked very hard on my final presentation, but I also knew I had missed the mark. In hindsight, I made some pretty big mistakes. Still, I am reminded that to be human is to make mistakes.
I got some beautiful feedback from fellow teachers, particularly around how my powerpoint was clear and easy to follow. How I took a difficult topic and made it accessible for the others. When it came time for my teacher to give feedback, I felt ready to receive the constructive criticism.
For my final presentation, I did a deep dive into the neuroscience of resilience, which one of my fellow teachers reassured me is a “very challenging subject”. I chose this topic because it is near and dear to my heart. After 4 years of Somatic Therapy with Shannon O’Neill, I think about myself through the lens of the nervous system. And after studying with Kristine Kaoverii Weber for both my 200 hour and 500 hour yoga teacher trainings, I see yoga as a vehicle for healing and optimizing the human nervous system.
Still, however much I believe I know about the nervous system today based on my yoga studies, Somatic Therapy, and Chiropractic Assistant training, I have barely scratched the surface on this topic. There are people, and my yoga teacher is one of them, who have been studying this topic for years. I have chiropractor friends who have been through three and a half years of chiropractic school, who work with the nervous system for a living, who feel they are just beginning to grasp the topic. So, perhaps I was a bit ambitious to take this on for my final presentation.
What’s done is done, and I learned some valuable lessons from my own and others’ final presentations. I learned that in a circle of experienced yoga professionals, what makes a presentation successful is as much the practice elements as the research. I learned that authenticity and speaking from one’s personal truth have tremendous value. And I learned that my personal practice is the foundation upon which I build my identity as a teacher. Reflecting on it now, I believe these are lessons that I learned through out the monthly training weekends in the last 9 months. Our final presentations merely drove home these lessons for me.
After 9 months with my fellow yoga professionals, our training has drawn to a close. We ended with a dharma circle and ceremony, during which we all shared our positive impressions of one another. There was a lot of joy and appreciation, as well as tears shed. The ceremony helped me to make peace with our training ending.
With this ending, I see many new beginnings in my own yoga practice and teaching. I have redesigned a personal yoga practice based on what I learned in this program. I am continuing to work with a business coach at Mountain Bizworks to help me define my target customers and develop my marketing plan. I have a new plan for my business website, and will be sharing more about this in the coming months…
Through my participation in the 500 hour teacher training, I have made new contacts that I can call on who are in a similar place in their yoga teaching. I have tremendous gratitude to Subtle Yoga, to Kristine Kaoverii Weber, and to all of the fellow students who just graduated from the Subtle Yoga Advanced Wellness 500 hour Yoga Teacher Training program.
