It took me 10,000 hours and cost around $50,000 to learn everything an excellent yoga teacher should know.
My first 200-hour, in an ashram in India, had a huge impact on my life because I learned a ton about yoga philosophy and the yogic worldview. On the other hand, I learned almost nothing about the human body or teaching a yoga class to a room full of people. So then I bought an anatomy program on top, but that turned out to be suitable for university students of medicine, not yoga teachers. It wasn’t practical in any way. I signed up for another 200-hour teacher training to close the gaps and learned a ton about alignment. The program was the gold standard at the time. But a few years later I found out that the whole system of precise universal alignment that I had learned was completely outdated. I had to throw all of my cues out the window and start over. On and on it went.
I may have made bad choices, and I may have been unlucky. But from talking to hundreds of fellow yoga teachers and to my own students with previous YTT experience I know that my yoga odyssey is not an unfortunate exception. It’s the sad standard.
Finding a really good yoga teacher training is difficult because from the outside it seems like every Yoga Alliance-accredited program teaches you the same things. Yoga asana, yoga anatomy, yoga philosophy, yoga history etc. (That’s because they all have to comply with the same standards to get their accreditation.) But in reality, there are huge differences between yoga teacher training programs. No two trainings are alike.
The number one differentiator for any training is, of course, the lead trainer. Every YTT leader has a unique yoga journey, and a distinct set of interests, skills, knowledge, and personality traits. All these aspects influence your own training experience. In a sense, you’re not signing up for a specific program as much as you’re signing up to study with a specific teacher.
Nonetheless, I do think that it’s important to evaluate the quality of a yoga teacher training independent of the lead trainer. And in this lesson I’d like to explain how that works. I’ve put together a list with 10 hallmarks of an excellent yoga teacher training. I call these quality markers the 10 non-negotiables. I strongly recommend that you don’t sign up for a foundational yoga teacher training until you’re confident that it checks all the boxes (no matter how confident the teacher seems).
1. You learn to teach yoga in a way that embraces human uniqueness
Real humans don’t have the model skeleton from the anatomy book. Different people have different body proportions, bone structures, and medical histories. All of that affects our yoga practice. The same pose can look and feel very different for different students. (Your arm anatomy alone changes where your hands want to go in every pose you do.) As a teacher, you want to know how to embrace this uniqueness. What you don’t want is a set of standard one-size-fits-all cues because they won’t work for many of your students. Unfortunately, those kinds of cues are still widely used in studios across the world. Also by YTT leaders. So be careful.
Tip: Attend or watch a class with the potential lead trainer and pay close attention to how they cue poses and if they give options and modifications for different bodies.
2. You learn yoga philosophy beyond clichés, and how to apply it in daily life
Unfortunately, many Western teacher trainings treat philosophy as a box they have to check. At least that’s my personal experience. In some of the trainings I took the yoga philosophy lessons were basically Wikipedia articles read out loud. As you can imagine, that’s boring and not very helpful. The other thing that I’ve experienced and heard from my students who took another training before joining Movement Wisdom is that their philosophy teachers were dogmatic and taught what they believed as the one and only right way. For many students this dogmatic approach will clash with their personal beliefs, or just feel like it’s over the top.
I appreciate when teachers have a strong point of view. And I 100% believe that more teachers should make an effort to dive deep into yoga philosophy and work against the “workoutification” of yoga. But I recommend that especially for your first 200-hour training you find a teacher who explains the concepts of yoga philosophy and the history of yoga in a way that invites your own thoughts and reflections, rather than presenting yoga as a strict system of rules and truths that you simply have to accept. (What ahimsa really means is a good example of a concept that gets flattened into a slogan when nobody digs into it.)
Tip: Don’t be shy. Ask your potential YTT leader how they think about the philosophical and spiritual aspects of yoga, and how yoga has changed the way they live their life. If your teacher cares, they’ll light up and be glad you asked a question they’d like to hear more often from their students.
3. You learn to create your own safe and creative sequences for yoga classes
A lot of yoga schools give you a set of sequences but don’t teach you the principles that empower you to create your own classes from scratch. That makes life easy at first, but it’s a huge handicap for your career. Until you know how to create a really good yoga class from scratch you will always depend on other teachers, random Pinterest posts or AI chatbots to prepare your classes.
Creating your own classes is not just fun. It’s a way to show your students that you care, that you know what you’re doing, and that they won’t ever get bored coming to your classes. It’ll give you a huge leg up when it comes to attracting private students who expect to pay for customized classes. And it also enables you to plan unique yoga experiences like workshop days or retreats.
4. You learn to teach more than one style of yoga
Every style of yoga that you can teach opens different doors. The more versatile your teaching, the more slots you can fill for studios, the more options you can give private clients, the more reasons you can give your regular students to come back for more. Plus, if you understand more than one style of yoga deeply, this understanding sharpens your thinking and gives you new ways to contrast and compare, to mix and match, to explain and expand your teaching. (The same shape held in a Yin class and a Yang class does two completely different things to a body, and knowing why is the kind of insight that only comes from studying both.)
Tip: When you see a training that promises you a list of various different styles, make sure that you’ll actually learn to teach those styles (vs. just getting a brief overview).
5. You learn the ins and outs of 100+ common yoga poses
Most yoga teacher trainings cover only the most basic poses, and not with enough detail. If you really want to understand yoga and become a capable teacher, then you need to learn the ins and outs, actions, energetics, alignment, anatomy, variations, modifications and intentions behind at least 100 common yoga poses. (Here’s what that level of detail looks like for a single pose.)
Tip: You want to find a training that includes poses that feel challenging or even impossible to you right now. You may unlock them during your training, or not. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that as a teacher you don’t limit yourself to poses you have mastered. Doing a pose and teaching it are two very different things. So don’t be afraid!
6. You learn to prevent injuries in your students and how to adjust for limitations
Most of us have some physical restriction that we bring with us every time we go to yoga. This could be a nagging low back, chronic tightness, a shoulder with limited range of motion or an old knee injury that never fully healed. As a practitioner you want to understand a) how yoga can help, and b) how your practice should adjust to whatever limitation you’re dealing with.
And as a teacher you want to have a basic but solid understanding of the most common injuries and issues in yoga. Your students will ask about those things sooner or later and you want to have a competent answer. Nobody expects you to know everything a doctor would know. But a really good yoga teacher should understand common injury patterns, how to spot the risk factors, and what to offer somebody instead of the full pose. (Chaturanga is the pose where this shows up most often, and it’s worth seeing how much there is to say about one shoulder.)
7. You learn to read student bodies and give skillful physical and non-physical assists
Some programs skip assists altogether, because they can go wrong and because not everybody wants to be touched. Others teach outdated assists that can be uncomfortable and even cause injuries. (I still have a knee injury from my very first YTT, where the teacher decided to “help” me go deeper into Lotus Pose by leaning on me with the entire weight of his body.) What you want to find is a training that teaches you both verbal and physical assists, what’s safe, what isn’t and why, and also how to observe students so you know who would benefit and from what kind of assist.
Tip: It may seem like assisting is a skill that you can only learn in an in-person training. But that’s not true. With good instructions you can learn any technique in an online environment. In some ways online is actually a lot better because you are guaranteed a front row seat and you have the option to rewatch instructions multiple times.
8. You learn how to use props in your practice and your teaching
Props have an image problem in yoga, and a lot of trainings quietly reinforce it by treating them as beginner equipment. So you learn to put a block under your hand in Triangle and nothing else.
In my opinion props are absolutely amazing for all kinds of poses and for practitioners of all levels. The primary use case is to make poses more accessible or comfortable. Can’t sit up straight cross-legged? Get a blanket. Can’t reach the floor in a forward fold? Use blocks. Want a deeper backbend? Try a bolster. But they also open up unusual variations of standard poses, and in many cases they can be used to make a pose feel more challenging rather than less. (This class is built entirely on that idea, if you want to feel it rather than read about it.)
So you want to find a training that teaches you how to use blocks, straps, bolsters, blankets and walls properly. Being skillful with props will set you apart from most regular yoga teachers, and it’s exactly what studios want if they’re serious about inclusive classes.
9. You learn how to take yoga beyond stretching
Most yoga teacher trainings include breathwork and pranayama in their curriculum. But what’s behind the labels? Usually a handful of common practices like Ujjayi breath or short meditations to open or close a class. Nothing wrong with that! But there is so much more to explore. In the yoga tradition, pranayama and meditation are just as important (if not more important) than yoga asana. So if your goal is to really tap into the power of yoga and become a versatile practitioner and an excellent teacher, then you should find a course that introduces you to a broad range of subtle body practices and techniques.
Different students like very different styles of breathwork and meditation. So if you only know two or three and those just aren’t a good fit for your students, they’ll probably give up and think that “this stuff is just not for me.” The bigger your repertoire the better you can serve your students (and yourself). Kapalabhati is a good example of a technique that lands hard for some people and does nothing for others.
10. You learn to inspire students by weaving themes into your classes
Most programs hand you a worksheet with a list of themes on it. I do that in my training too. So far so good. What you want to find out is if the training also teaches you how to come up with your own themes and how to weave a theme into your class.
The importance of this aspect of teaching yoga cannot be overstated. A good theme that feels meaningful to you and your students, and that connects to the sequence you’re teaching, turns a yoga class into a real experience that leaves an impression. And on the other hand, if all you do is teach another Root to Rise class repeating clichés that students have heard a gazillion times already … let’s just say they won’t be impressed.
Good luck with your search
I hope this overview of the 10 hallmarks of excellent yoga teacher trainings helps you filter through the 100 gazillion training options that exist. I’ve called these hallmarks the non-negotiables because if your training falls short in even one of these aspects, you will graduate and not have a complete yoga education. That’s not the end of the world, especially if you don’t plan to teach yoga professionally. But if you do want to teach and set yourself up for success (or at least have the option in case you’re not sure yet), then sifting through various options to find the needle in the haystack is worthwhile, even if it can be a little annoying.
And, you may have expected this by now, here’s a little plug: join us at Movement Wisdom. Our training meets all the expectations that I’ve just set up for you. Your search can be over right now, right here.
If you’re interested to learn more about how to go about choosing your 200-hour YTT, then check out this guide. And if you’re skeptical about online trainings, read this article.
I’d love to welcome you at the Movement Wisdom School of Yoga very soon!
Love, Jess
