Teachers Training Courses
When one becomes seriously involved in the yoga path it becomes natural to want to share the teachings with others.
In this tradition, following the lineage of Swami Sivananda, there are two main types of training available: on yoga and on meditation. Let's start with the latter.
Meditation Training - MTTC
The MTTC is the flagship program of the Advaita Yoga Ashrama. Swami Atma is the main teacher and one or more teachers assistants give classes, mostly regarding the hatha yoga.
Hatha Yoga
We, at the Advaita Yoga Ashrama, do not feel the need to offer yoga teachers training courses.
There already exists a great number of quality training courses in our tradition and offered by other groups.
Yoga Vidya is one such group and offers many courses in the German language. However, every summer Swami Atma leads the international yoga teacher training course which is held in English.
Other organizations we recommend for training are the SYVC (Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers), the Integral Yoga Institute, and the Bihar School of yoga. They all have their pros and cons. Up to you to study the different offerings
One Month or Two Years?
When Swami Vishu-devananda created the first yoga teachers training course in 1969 in the Bahamas his aim was to do more than just teach a set of techniques to the students. He wanted to train the students to become yogis. Thus they would teach yoga out of their own experience, according to the ancient tradition.
To achieve this he created an immersion intensive course. For six weeks, and from 6am to 10pm, the students would be involved with one or another facet of yoga: hatha yoga, but also meditation, mantra learning, chanting, service, anatomy and physiology and much more. Later on he decreased the duration of the course to four weeks for practical reasons and to respond to the hectic lifestyles of modern yogis.
Living the life of yoga for a few weeks in the company of the teacher brings about a dramatic transformation in the aspirant yogi or yogini.
The system described above is not understood by many. As yoga has been spreading in the Western world some modern ideas about education have been introduced. Instead of a short immersion intensive experience many schools created some longer courses. Usually the group meets once or twice a week, there might be a weekend intensive now and then, and most of the material seen in the four-week course is covered in the 2-year program.
At AYA we are partial to the intensive formula for the irreplaceable experience it provides but we do acknowledge that the longer courses provide ample opportunity for the students to assimilate the teaching techniques.
A little note of caution
Not all trainings are created equal.
Some groups and individual teachers have been taking advantage of the public's seemingly insatiable thirst for teaching certificates of all kinds. They have sometimes offered some courses which are really too good to be true such as offering to become a yoga teacher in a few days or, gasp, over the internet. When money making becomes the primary concern of the teacher, much is lost in the process.
Peripheral Disciplines
The yoga lifestyle touches other disciplines such as ayurveda and, at least for the German speaking students, we recommend the many courses offered by Yoga Vidya.
