The final yoga exam

I can’t quite yet believe it but I’ve done it!! I’m officially a yoga teacher! I have worked hard for it but most importantly I put my heart and soul into as it’s something that I’ve wanted to do for so long. This is I think why this exam was slightly different from any exams I have taken before…

The final exam took place during a 4 day retreat with my teacher Claire Weatherley, 3 of my fellow teacher trainees and 6 other yoga students of Claire’s. We arrived on the Saturday afternoon, knowing that exams would take place on Sunday and Monday so the first couple of days were spent revising, being incredibly nervous and worrying about what the exam would be like!

All of our written course work had been submitted so it was just a written test and the practical exam which consisted of teaching a 90-minute class to a few of Claire’s regular students while she was watching, taking notes and firing questions (“which muscle is working here”, “how do you say this in Sanskrit”, “what would you do if…” type of questions).

As I had been teaching my class since February I felt relatively confident with the teaching part but of course it’s always different in an exam situation… Adjusting students in the yoga poses was probably the thing I was worried about the most – especially as these were real people who had paid to be on the retreat and not just fellow teacher trainees who wouldn’t mind so much if the adjustment weren’t quite right or made them fall over… The students were all brilliant though, really understanding and also a little nervous for us which was really sweet.

We had all put together our own lesson plans, chose pranayama techniques that we would teach, a little introduction and either a reading or music at the end of the class. In my class I taught a few mudras (hand gestures) as that is something I am quite interested in at the moment. Of course there were bits and pieces that didn’t quite go to plan but all in all it went well, the students enjoyed it and all four teacher trainees passed so we could then really enjoy the rest of the retreat!

The weather wasn’t great but we could still enjoy some lovely walks along the beach, lots of yoga sessions, daily meditation and of course beautiful, fresh vegetarian food (as this has been my second yoga retreat in four weeks, I actually didn’t mind not having meat this time but was still looking forward to some non veggie sushi when I came home!!)

Everyone on the retreat was really lovely and it was great that there was a mixture of different levels, some already qualified yoga teachers, some regular yoga students and us teacher trainees of course! For me this is how Claire’s teacher training course really stands out from the rest of them. We had been practicing with real students from day 1 which is not usually done in other teacher training courses that I have researched before.

At the end of the day what we really want to learn is teaching “real” people which is more difficult than teaching more advanced students so I feel that we really benefited from this experience. We were kind of thrown in the deep end as it’s quite nerve wracking at first to adjust real students who paid to be in the class but we got more and more confident and it all worked out well in the end! Everybody and every body is different which you really only understand when you start teaching at the end of the day!

Learning all these amazingly advanced poses is great but what I really wanted to learn was how to teach a well balanced class and I feel that I have definitely learned that! What I have to do now is go out and teach and find my own voice and style which I think develops over time.

So what’s next? I’m still continuing to teach my weekly yoga classes in New Malden but I’m now actually charging for them and am really happy that people still turn up! I’m also starting another class in September and will do a kid’s yoga course in August which I’m really excited about! I love practicing with my children and would love to do a class which would involve both the parents and the kids so we’ll see what happens… I’m trying not to plan too much as I’m absolutely sure that things will fall into place as they should…