Yoga certifications won't make you ready
These past weeks, I often thought about the common belief that one more certification will finally make one feel ready. Ready to teach. Ready to stop feeling like a fraud. Ready to say out loud “I’m a yoga teacher”. So many (new) yoga teachers sign up for another workshop, another training, another coaching, stacking certificates like proof of competence. I don’t believe in that and I share my reflections below.
Last month, I did an 84-postures asana workshop with Simon Borg-Olivier, in my hometown. And you know what happened after day 1? My brain did what I’ve come to recognize as its standard response to new learnings challenging my previously acquired knowledge: it went 404, “page not found”. Too much new information colliding with previous ones and that general thought “OMG, have I been teaching wrong the whole time?”.
Trainings can confuse you at first.
On day 2 of that workshop, I met a yoga teacher who will start teaching yoga in the city of Zurich, where I also teach. As we sat together for lunch, she explained that since her 200H YTTC “she didn’t really teach yoga regularly, only friends and family from time to time”, which is why she signed up for this workshop. And might do another one soon. Why? She hoped to refresh her knowledge, maybe acquire some new insights and so, feel ready to start teaching in a studio for the first time.
As she shared that with me, I realised that many new yoga teachers collect certifications first, hoping to silence their inner Imposter Syndrome. I’m not throwing stones here, I did that too when I started. However now, with countless teaching hours down the road, I realise that, for me, it’s quite the opposite that actually happens. Yup, every new training doesn’t make me feel more ready, or legit. It makes me feel “less certain” in a way. Not because my previous trainings were bad. It simply opens up more questions than actually gives answers.
Am I sometimes cueing on autopilot? Does it still serve my teaching? What do I really mean when I say X? What is breath, exactly? Who to believe?
Cuddle the learnings first, don’t hoard them.
When I did my 300H teacher training in Rishikesh in 2024, we were welcomed with a speech that could be summarized as:
A workshop is not a collecting exercise. It’s not a shopping trip where you leave with a new cue, a new sequence, a new transition to add to your teaching toolkit next Tuesday. If you try to teach what you just learned before you’ve done anything else with it, you’re skipping the part that actually matters. You’re invited to cuddle the experience, not collect it.
“Cuddling what, eh?!” you might think. They didn’t say more about it back then but my interpretation of that introduction since then is: to feel whatever you are learning in your own body first. Meaning, bring it into your own practice first. Let it sit there long enough to either integrate or reveal itself as not quite right for you. Then, consider if that could be of service to the yogi*nis you hold space for, why and how? Only after that, if it still holds up, does it belong in your teaching. Isn’t that what authenticity and an embodied practice asks from us?
But “feeling first” is sometimes the hardest part.
I know that many teach 1-2 weeks next to a full schedule, be it at home and/or at work. And that they don’t take the time to practice themselves regularly. So do I have another tip for them? In this case, I don’t. Except: reintroduce your self-practice in your life. Remember, we are practitioners first. And so, I know how hard the “feel first” advice feel. Even for the ones who practice regularly, ask yourself how strong the connection to your body is? Does your mind allow it?
Simon Borg-Olivier shared rightefully I think that many “modern people”, it isn’t always easy because we are so disconnected from our bodily needs and stuck in thinking minds that compare first before feeling first. And how do we define feeling in this case?
Feeling requires unlearning. It’s not about the intensity of the asanas on the body or the amount of sweat on your mat. A synonym could be awareness on the different layers, focusing on one in one practice, then the other and eventually as a whole:
maybe you start on the physical layer and observe what happens when you apply that new knowledge on your bones, muscles, organs.
notice your energy, your breath body. During and after your practice, how is your vitality, your natural breath?
Connect to your mental and emotional layer. What thoughts are present automatically on the mat and after practice? Any feelings coming up?
What to do instead…
It’s actually up to you 😉 But if you’re interested in my perspective, my experience says: if you’re a newer teacher and you’re eyeing your fourth certification this year, hoping it’s the one that finally makes you feel ready, I’d offer this instead: gift yourself time on your mat with the external inputs you already have. Feel what you learned in your own body first and cultivate that self-practice awareness on various layers. That is how you will turn external input in “live and internal experience” and be able to figure out whether what you learned makes sense to you. Only then, let your teaching change slowly, in the direction your own practice is actually pulling you, rather than in the direction of whatever the newest certificate says you should be doing.
PS: Similarly to how to integrate workshop inputs before teaching them, I’ve developed a guided journal for new teachers who are stuck between graduation and teaching. Allowing you to have a place to actually sit with what you’re learning before you hold space for others, uncovering your uniqueness as a yoga teacher and what you feel ready to teach to the world. If you’re part of this Substack community, you get 10% off, simply write me or leave me a comment below. I’d genuinely love to hear what comes up for you in it.
