I consider myself a student first, always. In fact, I really love when I don’t know stuff. I like being a beginner, a student, a constant seeker to learn more, grow and help others. So I was really excited to start my 300hr yoga teacher training and I just finished it a few months ago. I wanted to share a review for those who are interested. Without further ado, here we go!
What does 300hr mean? So there are three types of yoga teacher designations. There’s a 200 hour yoga teacher training program, which is what you need to do initially, and then following that, you can take a 300 hour program which would make you a 500hr yoga teacher. Alternatively, and this is something I see far less frequently, you can take a 500 hour yoga teacher training program.
All are welcome in Asheville
Where’d it take place and how did you find out about it? I did the training at Asheville Yoga Center in Asheville, North Carolina. If you’ve read my book Namaslay, you know my mom is an OG Cool Girl. She was into health food and yoga and eastern medicine before they were considered hipster cool things. Way back in the 90s, she stumbled upon Asheville Yoga Center and has been singing its praises for literal years. We live in Connecticut, so it was’t like a quick hop, skip and a jump away, but when I was researching programs, I was drawn to this one for a few reasons. The first is that my mom spoke really highly of it, and she’s a great judge of quality places and pointed out that the center attracts some really well-known instructors, so I felt like the teaching would be top of the line. Secondly, the schedule format was ideal for my own work schedule. Basically, you had to pick one 5 day module, one 4 day module, one 3 day module, and then eight other modules of any length (minimum 2.5 days). You had 2 years to complete it, but with I chose to do it all within eight months (more on that in a sec). This format worked for my schedule which is jam packed with travel.
What did you look for when choosing a training? I first looked at the quality of instruction. I’d heard of a number of the teachers. Many of them were published authors, or pillars in the yoga community as health and wellness professionals. The next thing I looked at was scheduling. I liked that I could pick whichever modules fit my schedule, which was an obvious up side. The downside to that is that you don’t get the intimate feel of an intensive, which is the style of Yoga Teacher Trainings that I lead, and the style I’ve taken in the past when I got my 200hr. There wasn’t a camaraderie because each module had no less than 45 people in it, and you rarely saw the same people twice. There was also no graduation ceremony or anything. On your last training module, they hand out a certificate and they get on with the lesson. So it was a little lackluster, but at the end of the day, the graduation/camaraderie wasn’t as important as the quality of instruction and the scheduling, in my opinion.
What was the focus? My 200hr yoga teacher training was Ashtanga-based, so it was extremely physical with a quite a lot of attention to alignment and philosophy. However, I was excited to see that Asheville Yoga Center’s 300hr training was more therapeutic in nature because it felt like a good balance for me, especially because I have been focused on strength building and fitness for the last few years. The catch here is that you can’t really call it “therapeutic” because Yoga Alliance has put the kibosh on that (not sure why, maybe legal reasons? You can’t call a yoga teacher training curriculum anything that refers to therapy or healing, unless it is Yoga Therapy, which is an entirely different thing and meant for clinical therapists….). Anyway, the modules I took were all about the more subtler aspects of yoga. I’m talking kundalini, lots of anatomy (in which all classes spoke to the importance of using weights to build strength to support our musculature), restorative, yin, multiple trauma modules, yoga nidra, and more.
In Restorative Teacher Training
What went well?
I had the pleasure of learning so much from some really fantastic teachers. The ones that stood out in this training were:
Shala Worsley - Absolute brilliant yoga teacher. Her cueing is bananas, her tone of voice is magic, and her knowledge on yin and ayurveda knows no limits. She’s great.
Michael Johnson - A Sanskrit master with absolutely zero ego, he taught a meditation module that left me wanting more and more and more. I would fly back to take a class with him.
Joe Taft - He taught one of the most comprehensive anatomy therapeutics modules ever. He knows so much about the body and explains it in the most simple, easy-to-understand fashion. He was fantastic.
The program directors Ashley and Heather are fantastic to work with. They respond in an exceptionally timely fashion.
Asheville itself is a very cool little city. It feels like a little hippie Vermont city plopped right in the middle of the south. Like it almost feels like it doesn’t belong when you look at the other towns as you drive in from Charlotte. There are two huge, and I mean massive Confederate Flags that fly over I40 as you drive into Asheville, and at least for me they have a racist connotation, and it really makes you feel like you are not in the north anymore. But the second you drive into Asheville, it feels just like home. There are pride stickers everywhere, and signs out front of many businesses that say all are welcome. I regularly dined at Green Sage Cafe, Bone and Broth, and had a few meals at The Market Place. I had a few acai bowls at Clean Juice (fantastic). Great coffee at Liberty House as well. I worked out at all three of the Gold’s Gyms they have there (I prefer the one on Henderson, though, as it’s newer). I also worked out at Beer City CrossFit and found them to be exceptionally warm and welcoming. For groceries, I went to both Whole Foods (the one on S Tunnel is better), and discovered Earth Fare towards the end in West Asheville, which I preferred over both the Whole Foods.
Notes from a Therapeutics Class
What was tough? Honestly, nearly all of it was tough, haha. No, just kidding…sort of. Let’s see here.
The travel was an absolute nightmare. I was flying in pretty much every weekend between April and June this past spring and it was just crazy. I knocked my right SI joint out due to so much sitting, and wound up with really bad low back and sciatica pain from that. Depending on which airport I departed from, my travel days were generally about an hour and a half to the departing airport, followed by a two hour flight and then a two hour drive from Charlotte to Asheville. It was just a tremendous amount of sitting that negatively impacted my health.
In addition, the cost was outrageous for me due to the travel and accommodations that were involved. I easily paid over $10,000 between the training itself. The cost for that varies because you pay by module - but I would say minimum is about $3500 or so for the training itself, but then you have to take into consideration car rentals, gas, hotels and AirBnB’s, and FOOD. Oh, the food was crazy. I rented a house the last month I was there because it was cheaper than getting hotel rooms every weekend for the 30 days, but I’d buy food, wouldn’t use it all in a weekend and then come back the following week to find it rotten. Womp.
Ok I want to preface this next part by saying this isn’t really AYC’s fault, as there isn’t a cohesive yoga teacher training team that works together for the 300hr training, but the fact that there wasn’t a cohesive teaching team was tough for me personally. Many of the teachers are guest teachers and contracted out for the modules. And there’s for sure value in that, but one of the downsides to that is major contradiction between teachers and it happened a number of times, which was frustrating from a student perspective. I took two anatomy modules, and the two teachers completely contradicted each other (one said alignment and integration is key in order to prevent and avoid injury for students, whereas the other literally said people should be able to do chaturanga any old way they want to - even lower than 90 degrees with the elbows, even if the webbed part of the hands lift up as the elbows go out to the side - and said alignment isn’t really a thing we as teachers should worry about. This is something I wholeheartedly disagree with. Like I find myself getting worked up all over again by this particular class even as I type this). Anyway, I think it’s important for people to generally be on the same page when it’s under one program. I understand little disagreements here and there - for example, in the Yoga Teacher Training Intensives YBC® offers, my staff and I will sometimes disagree on various things, like if you would include closed hip and open hip warriors in a practice (I would, one other person wouldn’t), but we always offer our own perspective on it and talk about why it makes sense for us while completely staying respectful of the other’s perspective. In the aforementioned situation, it felt like there was a complete disconnect.
A number of teachers cracked jokes or made blanket statements about teaching yoga online, and that, as you can imagine, really rubbed me the wrong way. I understand and wholeheartedly agree that nothing compares to an in-person experience with a yoga teacher. You will absolutely learn more that way. But to say that there is “no value in teaching yoga online,” and that you “shouldn’t give your services away for free,” really bothered me because it’s not taking into account the fact that some people live in a place where there isn’t a studio. Others have studios nearby but the studio prices are out of budget. Others are dealing with trauma or mental health issues which prevent them from leaving the house. Another teacher said, “real yoga is not taught in a studio”….as she literally sat in a studio teaching us… So there were a couple mind-blowing remarks from a few teachers here and there that just made me absolutely crazy. To make blanket statements about the legitimacy of teaching yoga online is, in my opinion, ignorant to what people are dealing with, and hurtful to those of us who have worked very hard to create quality content for people who, for whatever reason, can’t get to a studio.
Charlotte Airport
Tips:
Car Rental: I rented my cars from Hertz and I highly recommend their service. It costs nothing to download the app and become a Gold Member, which just means you get to breeze past all the lines in the car rental area (just across the street from the Charlotte airport) and you’ll see your name on a sign with the zone from which you choose a car. I got some excellent cars using the cheapest option, and never had an issue. Further, you can rack up points with every rental and I got a free car one weekend due to the points system, so definitely take advantage!
Flights: I always book my flights through the SkyScanner app, which I like because it scans nearly every site out there looking for the least expensive flights. I also use points via my MileagePlus credit card, and you can then redeem those points for airline miles.
Working out in Asheville: Gold’s Gym sells a week long pass for $45, and most CrossFits will let you workout for free once.
Questions and Answers from the ‘Gram: I asked you on Instagram if you had any specific questions, and I’ll list them here.
What were the big differences between the 200 and 300 hour curriculums that you took? Well my 200hr was an Ashtanga intensive with Mark Ansari, direct student of Patthabi Jois. It was 30 days in Thailand and unbelievably intense. Quite possibly one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. 5:00am meditation, full practice, done by 7:30am for breakfast, lectures til noon, class again from 1pm til 7pm for dinner. It was nuts. But, despite how hard it was, it was exceptionally well run, and I felt so accomplished by the end. I also had a little tribe of 25 others who completed the training with me and we stayed in touch for years. This 300hr yoga teacher training was module based, meaning I only went to Asheville for the modules. I rarely saw the same people twice, and didn’t develop much of a connection with those I did see. There was no ceremony for graduation or anything, it was just sort of workshop-based - it felt as if I just attended a ton of workshops in a small amount of time. The subject matter was 100% different from what my 200hr training was in, so I feel like I have a very comprehensive background in yoga, and feel that much more confident in my training.
What was the coolest or more exciting thing you learned? Oooo. Good question! There were quite a few, but one that really stuck out for me was that I need to stop cueing to tuck the tailbone. In the both alignment modules I took, I learned so much about the spine and I realized that more often than not, people aren’t dealing with lordosis (sway back) - they’re usually dealing with thrusting the ribs out and tight psoas. So I learned how to do a postural analysis, how to help with the psoas tightness, and how to strengthen the transverse abdominals, obliques and upper back muscles - all of which will help people with low back pain.
In a 200 hour teacher training, you should teach a lot. Did you in the 300hr? Per the Yoga Alliance, there is a set amount of hours you need to teach. This training went above and beyond what was required - I had to do 125 hours of teaching, plus we had to teach in each module as well. However, the focus of this training was not teaching - it was the subject matter.
What made this timing right for you? It was equal parts me wanting to test myself and get back to being a student. I go to yoga classes and master classes throughout the year, but I wanted a solid training where I could really dive in and be a student. The other part of it was, from a business perspective, I’d like to expand my offerings, and you cannot lead a 300hr yoga teacher training without being a 300hr yoga teacher :) So that’s what’s coming next for Namaslay® YTT. If you’re interested in learning more about our trainings, sign up for our teacher training newsletter.
What do you wish they’d covered more in-depth? One of the trainings was about meditation and neuroscience, and I was hoping to nerd out on the neuroscience bit, but instead it was more focused on meditation. Still a good training, but I would’ve appreciated a deeper insight into specifics of the brain.
What did you learn that you didn’t expect to? Most profound takeaway? Hmm great question. Well, one thing I didn’t expect to hear over and over again was how important it is to weight-train and how vital it is to spine health. It wasn’t new to me - I am a huge proponent of strength building and that’s why we include it in our YTTs and developed Namaslay® Strength, but it was confirmation from major players in the medical and yoga worlds that what we are teaching is solid. Another profound takeaway is that there is a whole different aspect to yoga nidra as an experience, and I am so looking forward to bringing that to my teachings and 300hr yoga teacher training.
Do you think it helped you better understand anatomy vs just reading books and researching? Yes, we did some really cool one to one exercises which taught me to see the body in an entirely new way, and understand why we move the way we move. It was so useful. I’ve done postural analysis on multiple people in my life and essentially helped to bring awareness to the root cause of their day to day hip or back pain based on their stance and gait. So, so cool.
Despite everything I’ve learned, the journey is never ending for me and I hope it always stays that way. I’d like to go to a cadaver dissection at some point, and I’ve also just finished a personal training certification program (just need to sit for the test this winter). I just really like learning, and am confident that the yoga workshops, yoga retreats and yoga teacher trainings I offer, along with the studio classes I teach will always reflect the learnings of a forever-student, who is constantly growing and evolving.