Goals and Benefits of Completing a 300-Hour Yoga Teacher Training
Goals and Benefits of Completing a 300-Hour Yoga Teacher Training
Both aspiring yoga teachers and current yoga teachers have the opportunity to learn more about their craft with an advanced yoga teacher training course. Perhaps you are ready to become a yoga teacher or would like to sharpen your existing skills. The time is right to explore your options.
Goals of a 300-hr Advanced Yoga Teacher Training
By completing a 300-hour (300-RYT) course, you will increase your overall teaching skill level. Thorough education on detailed asana techniques and extensive pranayama and meditative methods prepare you for teaching at a higher level, and to a more diverse audience. Part of the coursework includes hours spent honing your teaching skills with the guidance of the course's mentors.
There is also an exploration into topics that are often just touched upon in a traditional 200-hour training, such as chanting, kriyas, meditation, and yoga nidra.
You will complete an in-depth study of anatomy and physiology, including energy systems such as chakras and nadis. This knowledge applies to teaching advanced asana, functional mobility, and flexibility to your students. Understanding anatomy prepares you for safe and effective cueing while teaching a class.
The 300-RYT yoga teacher training dives into the study of traditional yogic principles. Philosophies and texts, like the Yoga Sutras and Bhagavad Gita, may be examined in depth. Modern-day ethical practices and service to others is explored as well. These topics reflect the long history of yoga's meaning.
The advanced yoga teacher trainings also provide elective hours. You may choose to explore your personal yoga passion more deeply with additional readings. You may opt to attend yoga classes to reconnect with your journey by becoming a student again. Or, choose to explore yoga specialties that are new to widen your experiences.
Benefits of a 300-hour Advanced Yoga Teacher Training
Becoming a yoga teacher sometimes blurs the lines between your time as a student and your new time as a guide. However, by studying yoga traditions, you will be reminded of how your practice came to be. Your yoga practice will be reborn with a new perspective.
You can discover a niche yoga practice. Learning about different styles and teachings allows you to bring that specialty into your community. A yoga niche does not have to be your sole focus while teaching, although it certainly can be. Unique skills set you apart and expose your students to novel ideas.
Perhaps your knowledge will encourage you to explore your entrepreneurial side. Your advanced credentials and specialized knowledge are a solid framework for creating your own yoga business. If this isn't your calling, your experience in the 300-hour advanced yoga teacher training still grants you advanced credentials to enrich your resume.
The completion of a 300-hour (300-RYT) training allows you to serve the unique needs of your community. You will be prepared to teach all levels of students and those with diverse needs or perceived limitations. Your classes and teachings will be safe, accessible, and of excellent service to your community.
The road to becoming a "teacher of teachers" begins with advanced yoga trainings. For millennia, the yogic life was learned from texts, traditions, and teachings passed from teacher to student. To carry on this responsibility by becoming a mentor and supporting future teachers, Yoga Alliance advises that you complete an advanced teacher training and accumulate a significant amount of hours practicing your craft. An experienced yoga teacher that has completed the 200-hour and the 300-hour RYT courses can become the lead trainer for new yoga teachers after registration.
Perhaps you are ready for something new in your yoga practice, but are unsure of what that is? A 300-hour course is the opportunity for your next step to appear.
Check out Prema Yoga Institute for Online Advanced Yoga Teacher Trainings
While you’re here, we’d love to invite you to check out Prema Yoga Institute, which is longer limited to New York City and is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022.
PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
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Enrolling in Advanced Yoga Teacher Training to Guide Other Teachers
Enrolling in Advanced Yoga Teacher Training to Guide Other Teachers
The yoga teaching journey is different for everyone, and some practicing students choose to switch hats by becoming teachers themselves, perhaps with an RYT-200 program. However, the fundamental RYT-200 yoga teacher training is only the beginning and opens the door for advanced yoga training.
From there, new yoga teachers may teach classes, offer clinics, or provide community classes. Some new yoga teachers choose to take a few continuing education yoga teacher courses, and some dig deep into advanced YTT programs and specialties.
The tradition of yoga is alive and needs to pass on carefully. There are dozens of reasons to further your education, and maybe the most important is serving your community by helping the next generation of yoga teachers.
Exploring Advanced Yoga Teacher Trainings
The road to mastery and future leadership in your yoga community starts with your education.
It’s a great idea to continue expanding your knowledge to build your instructional skillset. A deeper understanding of asana, pranayama, and anatomy boosts your credentials and make you a more knowledgeable yoga teacher. Not to mention, your client’s health and safety will also benefit from such mastery of the craft.
Furthering your yoga teacher training allows you to explore the ancient roots in depth. To honor such a tradition, be sure to look for teachers that always cite and give credit to their teachers – as well as to the traditions of South Asia.
Advanced yoga teacher training also permits an intense immersion into the culture of yoga. This concentrated focus strengthens your commitment and serves as a reminder of why yoga is essential.
Explore a favorite calling of your yoga practice with an Advanced YTT course. Your passion is profoundly personal and gratifying, and studying yields rewards for yourself as you become a qualified expert.
After completing your chosen advanced yoga teacher training, and working in your specialty, you are poised to bring your energy to your students or shift into guiding other yoga teachers into the deeper layers of yoga.
Becoming a Teacher Trainer
When you graduate from Advanced YTT programs and build on that training with more experience, you become qualified to help other yoga teachers learn. It's the ultimate expression of the student becoming the teacher.
The opportunities are endless as well. Perhaps you feel a calling to teach a complete RYT-300 or RYT-500 course. Certainly, you will need to complete those courses before attempting to lead one, and the Yoga Alliance has developed more rigorous criteria for becoming a teacher trainer that require these certifications.
Or would you like to specialize? Every characteristic of the yoga tradition needs qualified and educated leaders. Becoming a master of pranayama, anatomy, meditation, or asana takes years of practice paired with higher education on the topic, and may qualify you to become a continuing education professional (“YACEP”) through Yoga Alliance.
Mentorship is another benefit of becoming an advanced yoga teacher. This relationship between coach and pupil runs both ways. You guide traditions, safety, asana, inclusivity, and experiences, and your mentee has just as much to teach you in return.
How to find Advanced Yoga Teacher Trainings (Advanced YTT)
The variety of advanced teacher trainings available may seem overwhelming. What aspect of yoga fuels you? Choose a program that suits your passions and immerses you in these aspects. Follow your instincts!
These days, we no longer need to travel or commute for the advanced yoga teacher training program of our dreams; as many are now available online. For example, Prema Yoga Institute, is longer limited to New York City and is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022.
Prema Yoga Institute is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
If you found this information useful, visit our Blog often or subscribe to our Mailing List for similar content.
How Studying Functional Anatomy Can Inform Your Yoga Teaching
How Studying Functional Anatomy Can Inform Your Yoga Teaching
Studying functional anatomy can help inform your yoga teaching to create safer, more inclusive sequences and classes.
Merging functional anatomy with yoga will allow you to view your practice from a new perspective, and is beneficial for you as a yoga teacher and for your students.
The Fundamentals of Functional Anatomy
To better understand how functional anatomy can inform you as a yoga teacher, let’s start by taking a look at some of the fundamentals of functional anatomy.
Traditional methods of studying anatomy focus on what happens to the skeleton during muscle contractions. Functional anatomy brings another dimension to muscle movement. As the human form carries out routine actions, like walking, lifting, and sitting, functional anatomy examines all muscles and their relationship – a truly yogic perspective.
How does one muscle work with the surrounding bones and joints during flexion and extension? Functional anatomy has the answers!
The elbow joint is a great example. Anatomy tells us that the bicep contracts and shortens, flexing the elbow and bringing the forearm closer to the body. It's a straightforward analysis. When viewed through functional anatomy, the bicep contraction flexes the elbow, and the tricep becomes longer as it engages. This action of the tricep slows down the flexing of the elbow as it interacts with the bicep.
As the elbow extends and opens, the tricep engages and shortens to straighten the arm. The bicep balances this action with dynamic elongation.
You may also hear terms such as “concentric” in the fitness realm, which is a contraction that shortens the muscle. Eccentric contractions create elongation in partnership with the concentric action. Isometric contractions increase the force of a muscle without changing its length.
When learning about functional anatomy, you learn how to adjust your guidance for all body types, experiences, injuries, and emotions that your students experience. Advanced trainings can focus on the biodiversity of human anatomy – to ultimately create a more inclusive wellness space in your yoga classes.
Merging Yoga and Functional Anatomy
Modern, transnational yoga can too often about the poses, not the people. Sequencing, flowing, and cues involve where to point feet, where to gaze, and how to deepen into a shape. The focus can unfortunately shift to how the human form looks, not feels.
When a yoga teacher uses functional anatomy to guide a yoga student into a posture, the student's experience and awareness become the focus. The quest for the textbook version of a pose is gone, and how a pose feels takes priority.
Functional anatomy is more than just allowing a student to individualize their practice by adjusting shapes according to personal anatomy and range of motion. It serves to strengthen and stabilize the body for daily movements.
For example, many people sit at desks for their jobs, which often results in a muscular imbalance between the front and back of the body. The mere act of sitting and rising from a desk may also strengthen the quadriceps over time, leaving the hamstrings unbalanced. A traditional yoga cueing for chair pose may be to sink lower, further strengthening the front body. Functional yoga seeks the position to stabilize the entire body and build strength and awareness where there may be gaps in perception. In the case of chair pose, this might mean lifting upwards to better feel engaged.
The Benefits of Functional Anatomy for Yoga Students
Teaching yoga with the understanding of functional anatomy benefits your students by encouraging svadyaya – or self-study.
When the yoga student does not feel obliged to fit their bodies into a certain shape, but rather to feel through interoception what their body needs, they gain confidence. It's human nature to compare our bodies and watch the mirrors to see what others are doing. These ingrained habits vanish as the student can move with feeling and according to their physical and emotional structure.
Yoga teaching infused with functional anatomy may also be safer. For one, students can learn to connect with themselves in a safe emotional space, strengthening the bond between student and teacher. Yoga-related injuries may also be reduced as the focus shifts from flexibility alone towards practicality. And even existing injuries and stiff joints may benefit from this holistic approach to movement.
With functional anatomy knowledge, teachers and students alike discover that the differences that make us unique will not exclude us from any part of a meaningful and beneficial yoga practice.
Interested in Studying Functional Anatomy As Part of Advanced Yoga Teacher Training?
If this article has piqued your interest in functional anatomy, we’d love to invite you to Prema Yoga Institute’s Functional Anatomy Training.
The Functional Anatomy Training is now available online and teaches how to:
Develop your confidence teaching to all different types of bodies
Think critically about biases that often go overlooked in anatomy and movement science
Gain support and education to skillfully move away from a "one size fits all" type of teaching
Learn to better see and "Read" bodies in order to better meet your student's varying needs
Interface more effectively with doctors and health care professionals
Advance your teaching towards a Yoga Therapy Certification
And more (click here for details)
Additionally, The Functional Anatomy Training counts as 50 CE Credits with Yoga Alliance OR towards your RYT500 at Prema Yoga Institute.
Visit Prema Yoga Institute to learn more about our training, which is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022!
PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
If you found this information useful, visit our Blog often or subscribe to our Mailing List for similar content.