students in a yoga teacher

Reasons A 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training Isn’t Enough Training

In a 200 hour yoga teacher training one can only grasp the basics  of the many many topics that are covered in the training. If the intent is just to teach yoga to friends and family in your backyard, then the two hundred hours is fine. But it is not enough to become a professional and competent yoga teacher.

Human Skills

To be a yoga teacher you need yoga skills and you need to able to see what each student needs in the moment.

My own personal experience being a yoga teacher and a student going to many yoga classes  is too many teachers just run through the instructions of poses. And most never make any personal contact (e.g. adjustments, etc) with their students.

To really be a competent yoga teacher; you need to know more than just how to instruct the poses, so a 200 hour ytt  is not enough.

Only Know One Sequence

It’s always been the practice that students do one certification class in a 200 hour yoga teacher training and then that becomes their signature sequence. From there they repeatedly teach  that class, until they grow more confident teaching.

yoga students practicing teaching to each other

And that has been the practice of how yoga teachers have come about for years. But the problem is that with the pandemic and with reality,  teachers aren’t able to adjust that sequence in any way. And this in turn complicates things because when issues come in a yoga class these teachers can only teach the set poses in their sequence. 

Students who have more than 200 hours of ytt behind them are able to improvised when issues come up (e.g. add and/or subtract new poses to a class when needed)

This is not to disparage that 200 hour yoga teacher training, it is a tremendous for  personal development.  But it is a basic prerequisite to starting a yoga teaching career, be it part-time or full-time.

So for the above reasons,  a 200 ytt is just a start and should be expanded on if one is to become a competent and experienced yoga teacher.