Nine Signs You Are Ready For Yoga Teacher Training

You may be ready for Yoga Teacher Training and not even know it yet. For one thing, you’ve clicked on this blog so you must be a little bit curious. Let’s see if any of these signs apply to you…

1. You’re passionate about yoga

You’re at that point where the hashtag #yogaeverydamnday is actually your life. Somehow you started with one or two classes per week and ended up with six or even seven. Your day doesn’t feel right unless it starts or ends with yoga, and you prioritise it over other activities. You end up talking to your friends about yoga a lot and offering them tips on how it can benefit them. Yoga teacher training is the natural next step for you.

2. You’ve started to ask questions about what you’re doing

There comes a point, in your yoga journey, when you have mastered basic asanas and understand the cues your yoga teacher is giving you in terms of body alignment, breath and drishti (focal point). But suddenly you want to know more about why you are doing a certain pose, what its Sanskrit name means, and the philosophy behind it. Many people undertake yoga teacher training course purely to deepen their practice rather than actually teach and if you need to know more about what you’re doing, you’re ready to train.

3. You don’t think you’re good enough to train as a teacher

This is essentially what happened to me. I was in the addiction phase of yoga where I was trying to practise every day, come what may, and I was watching a group of trainee yoga teachers chattering gleefully after their morning practice, wishing I could join them and embark on something so obviously rewarding. Luckily I had two teachers who asked me if I would like to do it, and when I said I thought I wasn’t good enough, reassured me that I was.

It turned out that there is no ‘good enough’, there is just a passion for yoga and learning everything you can about it. Many people make the mistake, myself included, that you have to be able to perform Instagram-worthy asanas whilst teetering on a rock to be able to qualify. A good yoga teacher-training course, like the one I completed at Sampoorna Yoga School, makes you realise that the ability to perform poses is not the point of yoga. It is to know and understand yourself better – physically, emotionally and spiritually – so that you may help others know and understand themselves better too.

4. You are at a crossroads in your life

Perhaps you have just left university and you are thinking about what to do next, or you are unhappy in your job or career path so far. You may be at any stage of your life but you know that change needs to happen. Yoga teacher training will give you the space to focus on yourself, to explore your true nature and find out what you really want. I left a senior position in publishing and after the training, opted to become a freelance writer and editor. It gave me the time to reflect on what I didn’t want in my life and a clearer path opened up before me.

5. You want to live a more authentic life

Your current yoga practice has given you a glimpse of your true self and you are starting to question the way you’ve been living your life. You may simply want to live a healthier way and want to know more about the benefits of a yoga lifestyle, or you may be thinking about more profound changes, such as how you interact with other people. For myself, I had worked in a toxic corporate environment for a long time and I was aware that it had forced me to become someone I wasn’t. I’d also been drinking a lot more to cope with the stress and wanted to take control of it. There is no doubt in my mind that yoga helped me to stop drinking, adopt a freelance life and rediscover a person I used to be years before.

6. Yoga has already helped you in your life

You may have originally sought the comfort of the mat while in a toxic job or relationship, or to help you recover from grief or heartbreak. You know that you couldn’t have got through any of it without your practice and you want to find out how yoga really works to free the body from emotional trauma. Ultimately you want to help other people free themselves too – you just want to know how.

7. You want to find your tribe

During your yoga teacher training you will find a community of people who are as passionate about yoga as you are, and you will share an extraordinary journey with them. Because the training is an intense emotional, physical and spiritual experience, you will establish strong bonds with your group, sometimes ones that last a lifetime.

8. You are ready make a positive change in the world

Teaching yoga is one of the most rewarding ways to be part of a community. Your work inspires and helps other people to find joy and love within themselves which in turn benefits everyone around them. You are like a human pebble in a pond, causing ripples to radiate out to the wider community. You can make a difference.

9. The universe is telling you to do it

When I embarked on my yoga teacher training at Sampoorna, there were so many signs around me, telling me I should do it. I found myself unexpectedly back in Goa after leaving a long-term job, attending drop-in classes at a world-renowned yoga school, surrounded by people who asked me on a daily basis why I wasn’t doing the yoga teacher training. I met a woman from Germany who’d given up her big job in a city who told me I should look at jobs as a return on investment, and ask myself what the real cost was to myself to live that life. Reader, I never looked back.

Lisa Edwards is a freelance writer, editor and certified yoga teacher, who completed her 200-hour yoga teacher training at Sampoorna Yoga school, Goa, India, in 2019. Sampoorna Yoga courses – RYT-200, RYT-300 and RYT-500 – are registered with Yoga Alliance, USA.