Yoga is a lifelong journey
Yoga training starts when you decide to do it. Your teacher training path starts at this moment. One of the primary goals of any yoga teacher is to inspire themselves, and their students, from this point forward along this continuous path. When you decide to start you have already started. The challenge we face is the perception that once we make the decision, the starting place will be at some other point in time. If you set a course for this route, the moment you make the decision you are on the path. If your perception is that there is a wait time after you have made the decision, then you are still on the journey – but you are already finding ways to jump away from it. We simply need to commit to the pathway of practicing. If we want to take the next step then we must commit to the path of teaching.
Right from the start. Even if you have no intention of teaching individuals or classes, it is essential to see yourself as the teacher. Everybody is a teacher. Everybody is a student. All of the time. Everything that happens in life is a lesson to learn and a lesson to teach. When you decide to take the next step on your yoga path; it almost always includes teacher training because that is the most natural, and indeed logical step. This step is your
foundation for a more expansive yoga journey.
On The Path. Just do it and be it
As Yoga teacher trainings become more popular in the western culture a new commodified approach is emerging. The student picks a training program and a date to start. The program starts and eventually it finishes. Some come prepared for the training and some do not. Either way the focus is on a curriculum and a set number of hours. When the hours are over, you are done. The whole process is presented as something that is owned and can be bought and sold. In the history of yoga philosophy, and practice, this is a new and potentially debilitating trend. The very nature of the practice depends on an open-ended commitment to the path wherever it takes you. It is, though, a productive thing to have requirements for teachers to have a set number of hours, subjects covered and compliance to some standards before safely teaching public classes. However, this is a very small part of the larger subject.
The illusion seems real
I assure you that it is not about how many hours you have studied in an immersion program. It’s about how deeply you immerse yourself into the journey. Today there is too much focus on the limiting view of a teacher’s potential role in the world community. It’s a good thing that time is just an elaborate illusion. The commidified model does serve us well in the time based, money based, ego based and goal orientated external world we find ourselves in. However, our mission is to balance this current external reality with the long-term needs of all teachers and students of yoga and life. Of course the danger is that we just create another celebrity culture with yoga teachers. That is a subject for another post.
When you decide to start you have started and you won’t finish
There is no finish date. It is a lifelong practice. It may change forms multiple times on your journey but the path is a constant. Traditionally you start on the teaching path when you or your teacher makes the realization that it is the next natural step for you in your Yoga life. The moment is now for you. A big part of that realization is that you will accept this as a life long journey and that you are just getting started. When we commit to the expansiveness of it all, then we are in the best position to live in the present moment. We start our teacher training as soon as this becomes clear to us. The clarity may only be for a moment and the construct of indecision and doubt may then quickly cloud our space. But the clarity is still there and always will be, just like the true nature of the Self. Our compassion for that Self and others will keep us coming back to this place of stillness and realization. It is imperative that every yoga training program and teacher meets you in this space.
Evolation yoga accomplishes this by offering you immersion, modular and extended approaches to make the next step on your journey as accessible and inclusive as possible. This also addresses the difficult scheduling needs of today’s yoga practitioners. You can spend four weeks with us in an immersion course, spread your training over two separate two week periods, work with us to create a more flexible program to suit your needs or enjoy a combination of all these approaches.
Immersion Program
Immersion means that you will spend some, and maybe all, of your training time attending a scheduled immersion training where yoga is your whole world for 12 – 14 hours per day for many consecutive days.
Modular Program
Modular means you are able to attend multiple immersion modules (usually a week long) at different points in time. You can attend the required 4 or you can just keep coming year after year.
Extended Program
Extended means the initial steps in the training may go on for weeks, months or years. When we are open to this possibility then we have truly committed to the long term path. You may teach at any point in that timeline but only when you are ready. Once you start on the evolation yoga teacher training path you will be able to attend any scheduled training time we offer any time you choose. You will be required to accomplish a minimum of 200 contact hours throughout your training on your own timeline. Part of your training will be during scheduled immersions and part will be on an individually scheduled basis.
Start when it feels right and you never have to think about completion. Its all about being on the path.
Mark Drost
Mark was born and raised by two incredible parents, one powerful sister and 5 unique brothers in Hamburg and Buffalo, New York. Though it is beyond his comprehension to communicate the full scope of Love in the I AM PRESENCE he has spent much of his life sharing his experience with others. Mark, the founder of evolation yoga and One World Still, has been studying the history and philosophy of yoga and meditation for his entire adult life. Mark's personal meditation practice of more than 30 years has fully informed his work with his current non-profit project. He currently resides at the Oasis in Santa Barbara, California with his amazing wife Zefea and two spirit children Indira and Ravi.