Yoga Teacher Training course - nearing the end

Saturday April 19th and Sunday April 20th

Yoga Teacher Training Course, Victoria London

Saturday

It is our penultimate weekend of the yoga course and we are all beginning to focus on the final assessment in three weeks time. Today is something different though - our elective presentations. This is a piece of research on anything to do with yoga which we present to the class and then take questions on.

First up is Rhea talking about Chakras and who wants to go first as she is then off straight after to the Midlands for her cousin's wedding. Rhea has emailed me a few times over the past weeks discussing her elective plan and she has been a bit worried that it won't go well. I had said I would try and ask some easy questions to get a discussion going and so fill the time. But in the end she didn't have any time issues at all and it all went really well.

But afterwards it became apparent that Elena and Rhea had different ideas about Rhea missing tomorrow as well. Elena obviously thought the wedding was today and hadn't realised that Rhea would also be missing tomorrow's Pre-assessment (mock exam). Elena was obviously not happy about this and was seemed to suggest that Rhea wasn't really ready to take the final test if she didn't do the practice version tomorrow. Rhea got quite upset about this as she has found the course pretty difficult anyway and anyhing that reduces her confidence is bad. But they are going to try and work something out next week instead.

I was up next for my elective on the theme of Buddhist and Yogic approaches to meditation and how these diferences resulting in very different ideas of each when the West came in contact with each. If nothing else, this is educational about the history of each in the West. Overall the presentation went as well as I would have hoped. Elena seemed very happy with it. But then again, I should be able to do this sort of thing well, given my educational backgroud, etc.

Next up was Tracey on "Yoga and Running", which contained a lot of really good anatomical information, and then Sarah on Complementary medicine and Eve on Yoga for lower back pain. So a very different set of topics. Overall I thought everyone did a pretty good job.

My last overnight stay in London tonight and I have a tiny room in a hotel near the Natural History museum. Not enough room to practice my class for tomorrow, but I do have time to run through it all and I am feeling ok about it.

Sunday

A last minute change of family travel plans means I won't be able to stay all day at Yoga today - after Elena's comments to Rhea, that might not be a good thing. But Elena seems ok about it and I will be first on today for our practice classes.

Elena has also got a couple of people from the February course as well as husband Rod to attend today's pre-assessment. So it promises to be a very challenging session.

I did some more work this morning on my opening sections which I think improved things and though I was nervous at the start, things did start to fall into place mid way through and I was pretty happy with the overall effect. As I had gone first, this meant that Elena would have a large number of other more-general points to make that the later participants would have to try to include or take account of. So the review of my class was quite long and detailed but I didn't feel that any of it was too bad.

I will make one or two changes to the final version, but by then, I should have actually taught a few classes and so it should be settled down quite well.

Next up was Tracey, who did a particularly tough sequence, but who is already a really good teacher and so was really good today.

By now I was beginning to get a bit tight on time but I did want to see at least one more class and so stayed to watch Sarah do hers. She was quite nervous and went very red-faced at one point, but again things settled down nicely and she did a good job. Everyone agreed that her voice is just lovely for teaching yoga (while mine isn't I'm sure)

Unfortunately, I couldn't stay to see Eve or Rhea (who had changed her plans about attending the wedding to be here today) Both are finding this last bit of the course rather tricky and it would have been good to see in that Elena would have had lots of tips for them. But my change of plans couldn't be avoided.

So now is is just three weeks till the real test and I have lots of practicing to do to be fully ready