Yoga Teacher Training: Why I Chose CorePower Yoga

Friends! Tomorrow I begin Yoga Teacher Training at CorePower Yoga. I had been thinking about doing a yoga teacher training for a while, and now seemed like the perfect time to jump in. For those interested in the YTT journey, I will be sharing a blog here weekly about what I’m learning and other reflections.

In this first one, I am sharing about why I decided to do teacher training at CorePower. There are lots of teacher training programs out there and below are some guiding questions I used in deciding on a training. I began practicing at CorePower about a year ago and started going regularly in the past few months. Before that, I was practicing at 105f in Chicago, but I wanted to practice somewhere closer to where I lived, so I made the switch to CorePower. Now, onto teacher training considerations.

1. Do I like how the studio teaches? In thinking about teacher training, I wanted to train and be trained at a place I enjoyed practicing and CorePower fit the bill. I researched other schools, and some were solely schools where you go to learn the philosophy, poses, etc, but you could not necessarily take classes with the instructors before your training to see if you vibed with them. At CPY, you could decide from a number of studios in the city to do the training, so I decided on my home studio, which is cool because I have taken classes with those leading teacher training and can continue to take classes with them through the training. I think this will benefit me in the long run as I will be able to see how my teacher training instructors implement what we learn in training in class settings.

2. Is the schedule flexible? This was huge for me because I have full-time job and needed a training schedule that would work with my job schedule. CPY training meets three days a week for 3 hours at a time. For my studio, that translates to 7pm-10pm Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 1pm-4pm on Saturdays. With this, I would be able to make it to training, even if I needed to stay late at the office. I also already had some travel planned for the summer, and they were willing to make accommodations to ensure I would be able to finish the training on time. You are allowed to miss three sessions, and do make up sessions and homework. Of course, not missing is best, but if you have travel planned, it's not something that should keep you from signing up for this training.

3. Is this affordable? Figuring out if this was something I could pay for was obviously a biggie. CPY works with you and offers payment plans that work best for you. They are a seriously accommodating company.

4. Is this a good investment? CorePower is a chain of yoga studios across the United States, and I saw this as a plus. Most places, generally, prefer to hire folks who have been trained by them if they have some sort of training program. In thinking about possible payback on this investment, I thought it was a good way to open the door to teaching at one of the largest yoga studio chains in the US without closing the door to teaching at smaller studios or doing my own thing.

5. Is this a 200-Hour training certified with Yoga Alliance? Think of Yoga Alliance as the governing body of yoga worldwide: it sets standards to ensure that yoga is taught safely. I looked at job requirements for yoga instructors at CPY and non-CPY studios, and they all required that teachers had completed a Yoga Alliance certified training. It is a certification that carries weight in the yoga business circle, so, of course, I wanted to do a training that would give me the necessary credentials to get hired.

6. Will I get to actually practice teaching? This might seem like a silly question, but I've taken a lot of courseS that have taught me how to theoretically do something (yay UChicago!) without teaching me how to practically do something. I wanted to make sure that by the end of the course I would have spent a substantial amount of time *actually* doing the thing I was there to learn.

In the meantime, in between time, keep up with my adventures on Instagram, @thestylegrad. Photo by my favorite, Kiran Misra; find her work here.