How Not to Sign Up for a 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training

Yoga is trending. It’s fashionable to post yoga selfies on Instagram. Yogis are making brands of their names. Yoga pants are being sold for $100 a pop. People are tattooing the symbol for Om on their foreheads. Everyone’s going for their 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training or signing up for retreats.

Yoga. It’s a thing. It’s a good thing. But it’s not a new thing.

Yoga is at least a 5,000 year old practice. In fact some researchers are finding significant evidence that supports yoga’s history may go back as far as 10,000.

 

 

I’m in the middle of a 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training at Buddha Nest Yoga, in Groton, Massachusetts.

Why?

To deepen my practice and to share my love of yoga with the world of course!

You have quite a few options these days if you’re looking to take a Yoga Teacher Training, depending on your location, logistics and financial situation.

In a perfect world, I would have traveled to Costa Rica for a 6 week intensive study by the ocean!

(Right!? Yes, please!)

The snags… oh, I dunno… my relationship, my job, my bills, my home, my responsibilities…  The fact that I still don’t have a passport.…

I can’t just hit PAUSE.

As UN-yogic as it is, I envy anyone who gets the opportunity to walk away from the daily grind for 6 weeks in order to pursue a killer bod, enlightenment, awesome vegan cuisine, sloths, reggae and the Pura Vida lifestyle.  (This is only second to my insane baby envy.)

My reality is slightly different, but the situation I’ve found myself in is still pretty amazing!

For me, the location couldn’t be better. Buddha Nest is only 5 miles from my home.  It doesn’t get more convenient than that.

The studio is located in a historic building in the center of Groton. The building is called Boynton Meadows and was home to the town’s blacksmith back in the day. I dig the history. Buddha Nest shares the building with Bliss Bakery and some residents that live in apartments upstairs.

 

(Buddha Nest Yoga – Groton, MA)

The logistics can’t be beat. We’re meeting one weekend a month, over the course of seven months, from October 2016 to May 2017. Granted these weekends are long and require a full Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Fortunately, I was able to work this out with my job, and my yoga training is very celebrated by my boss and co-workers. 

My Guy is also incredibly supportive of my practice. When your man puts off the Patriots game by 4 hours, because he’s waiting for you to get home from yoga to watch it with you, that’s love.

Finally the financial aspect. Yoga Teacher Training is not cheap. It averages $3,000+. I have my Mother and Father to thank for funding this. They offered. I accepted. They get free yoga for the rest of their lives! I am so very grateful that they are doing this for me. It means the world. Had this not been the case, it would have been several years until I was able to start thinking of pursuing this on my own.

Patience can be a weaker quality of mine. Although it turned into a great situation for me this time around, I would not advise others to choose their teacher training the way I did.

Once my parents offered to foot the bill for my training, I couldn’t start fast enough and began scouring the internet. I’d already waited years and wanted to start as soon as possible.

I more or less blindly signed up to do my training at Buddha Nest.

I contacted Anne, the owner and teacher that would lead the training. She had one spot left. Training started in just a few weeks.

The first time I walked into Buddha Nest and met Anne, was the same morning I signed the contract for the training.

Big NO NO!

You don’t meet the person training you, visit their studio and sign a contract binding you to pay them almost $3,000, all in the same morning.  I hadn’t even taken one of her classes yet!

(At least I looked up reviews and testimonials first!)

The stars aligned.
Everything worked out so spooky good!
All is well!

 

 

Word to the wiser than me though… don’t do this! Take your time. Shop around. Make sure you’re doing the right thing and you pick the right training. It is worth holding out for.

Thankfully, Anne is incredible and she really knows her stuff! I feel 110% confident that she is providing us with all the tools and then some, to become quality and successful yoga teachers.

Buddha Nest is another home now.

Had I actually done the un-rushed research I should have, I believe I would have still wound up there. Sometimes things just feel like fate in the best possible way and turn out wonderfully. This has been one of those times in my life.

Namaste!