I always dreamed about being a movement teacher😌 I loved dancing when I was a kid, and I always admired everyone, who shared and taught me how to move♥️
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So taking another yoga teacher training was a no brainer for me. The only question was with whom!
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And I secretly knew where I wanted to go, but it sounded too expensive. Especially because I was not sure, if I will be able to earn enough money by teaching yoga to get back what I invested. Oh how limited was my thinking!!!
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The decision to go to @bryceyoga was the best one in a long long time for me🤷♀️
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I am not sure if I will be able to describe exactly why I loved it so much, but I will try to write how our days looked and what I went through, how I felt and what I learned.
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The training started on the 1. of June 2018. However on the first day, there was no yoga yet. We met in the evening for the welcome circle, where we sat in this big circle in the yoga room, all nervous and excited to start this journey. I felt, like I want to run away – there were 47 people I didn’t know, and I thought there is no way I will ever get to know the names of half of them! I already knew my roommate, because we wrote few emails to each other and she was one of the people I’ve been “stalking” on Instagram for few months already. But oh man, was my social anxiety triggered hard on the first few days.
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Every day we had a strict regime: waking up at 6:30 so we could make it into the yoga room at 7:00. We would have a morning pranayama practice and kirtan (singing!! which I thought I will totally hate and I loved it! I find my voice terrible, but once it’s hidden with other 47 voices it felt actually nice to use it…) and then the 2-hours long practice would happen. The intensity and topic of the morning practice was changing every day. In the middle of the training, the morning practice followed the way of sequencing we were being taught, and we would meticulously dissect those classes right after breakfast.
We started practice teaching immediately at the beginning of the training. Bri or Dice would give us a pose, explain the cues we were supposed to use, and then we practiced it on a partner. Partners changed all the time, so at the end of the training, we really get to know every freaking person! 😂
They just knew how to work people so they cooperate, and brought the whole group together in a very special way. We became this huge big family, even though we knew each other only for 19 days.
Anyway, after the morning classes, we would have an hour long lunch break. All the breaks for food, we would spend together. Learning more about each other, or later (especially the super hard second week) gossiping and bad-mouthing our teachers😅 But no seriously, some people were pissed! The training was really intense, we had almost zero free time, because we would have home-work every day. There was always something that was happening. If there wouldn’t be so much physical practice in the mornings and every other day, or even more, in the evenings, my body would crash from all that stress hormones being accumulated. Fortunately, physical exercise helps to metabolite those. But I still had problems to fall asleep every night and I would wake up earlier than the alarm even though my body needed more sleep.
After the lunch, we often had philosophy class. Again one of the things, I wasn’t especially looking forward to have. BUT, Mathieu’s approach to yoga philosophy is so refreshing, that I liked it too! I mean yes, I would suffer from food coma approaching hard all the time. But he knew how to catch the attention of a listener. And now I can tell you the names of all the chakras🙈 Even if for someone not as “spiritual” as me, he was able to explain the yoga traditions, all the eight limbs and everything you really should know as a yoga teacher, yogi, or just a nice person maybe. I might even read the Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra at the end…
Another class we had in the afternoon was yoga business. That might sound as a oxymoron for some people, but if you want to live in a modern society and be a yoga teacher at the same time and survive and be happy at the same time, you need to do more than just teach yoga. At least that was the message from Bri and I agree 100%. I used to teach 2-3 classes per week in a studio at the same time working full time, and I was dead and depleted during that time a lot. I don’t understand how can a regular yoga teacher in a big city live a normal life from what they are being payed. So their only option is to teach huge amount of classes, commute hours to do so every day. No time to eat, or have a vacation – because guess what, you are not being paid during your vacation OR when you are sick! So the only way to survive, is to not be only a yoga teacher. And these classes were exactly about that. About how to earn a living, while sharing yoga.
Then we would have some more asana and practice teaching until the evening practice, that happened to be several times restorative or yin with Mathieu or hip hop with Emily, or acro yoga fun with Dean<3
What needs to be mentioned here, were the small things, like incredible meditation with visualization with Dice, after which everyone cried like a baby, and then we shared our thoughts with a partner, and then had a coconut to recover. Bri sharing and opening so much to us, that I never felt connected more to anyone else. And at the same time being tough at us, while always having a good reason for that, so we would push ourselves outside of our comfort zone and do unexpected things. Plus she taught me how not to be afraid of doing handstands in the middle of the room, so I will be forever grateful for that too. Mathieu’s laugh when you least expected it and all the wisdom bombs he would drop from time to time. Chocolate and icecream surprises, birthday cakes every third day and mostly the last week, when suddenly I felt like I don’t want to leave ever…
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To sum up first week was getting know each other, games and fun. Second was pure and hard work. While third one was about becoming a yoga teacher and saying good bye to your newly acquired family..
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I gained so much more confidence to teach in this training. The biggest emphasis in the asana study was on our understanding of body, alignment and joint neutrality. All the cues and sequencing we learned were extremely logical, which I enjoyed a lot. Every time we were given a cue, the teachers made sure we understood why this cue should be used now. The same applied to adjustments we learned. The sequencing was just mind blowing. I never prepared my classes before, although I always had a structure from my previous TT. But honestly the Bryce Yoga sequencing is much more fun. And most importantly, now I know how to recharge when there is no time or energy for a full asana practice using the breath work (pranayama).
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Thank you Bri, Dice, Mathieu, Emily, Dean and my three beautiful check-in buddies and everyone!
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PS: If you are interested in this YTT and have more questions about it, or even if you want to ask me anything, feel free to comment or write me an email, I would be happy to reply!
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The training was by Bryce Yoga (the institution doesn’t exist anymore) and the teachers lead their separate teacher trainings now:
Briohny Smyth (US), Dice Iida Klein (US) and Mathieu Boldron (FR).
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People mentioned in this blog that are definitely worth to follow and to take classes with (online or if you have the chance in person):
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