Yoga Teaching Training

One of the things that has been taking up a substantial amount of time in my life the last quarter of 2012 (and my excuse for not blogging very consistently) has been a Yoga Teacher Training Class that I have been taking through University of Utah.

Why in the world would a pregnant lady choose to get certified in yoga teaching while she is sick in her first trimester and getting bigger and bigger in her second trimester? Cause it was free!! You all know I can't pass up a good deal. Also, because this opportunity would expire in a year (September of 2013) and I figured it would be easier to coordinate daycare for just one child instead of a toddler and a newborn while I was nursing next year.

How was this opportunity free, you might ask? Well, back in 2005 when I graduated from college, I had a hard time finding a job so I joined the AmeriCorps program where I performed a year of national service (kind of like the PeaceCorps but you work locally) and got paid a measly living stipend but also got an education award that could be used to pay off student loans or go towards future education expenses. Since I didn't have many student loans, I figured I might use it for future schooling some day. The education award did have an expiration date though - seven years.

My AmeriCorps experience did help me land my first job but after I got pregnant with Lucy after a couple years of work and started staying at home when she was born, I knew that I would not be pursuing a masters degree anytime soon. But I didn't want to see all that government money that was set aside just for me to go to waste. So once we were settled in our new home and Lucy was going to preschool and we had good daycare just down the street, I finally enrolled myself. I enrolled through the continuing education program so I wasn't taking the class for credit and didn't have to deal with applying to the school and paying the higher tuition costs. It was academic non-credit but the class was attended by both matriculated and non-matriculated students. The tuition was around $1700 and my books and parking pass probably brought the total expense to close to $2000 but I was completely reimbursed by AmeriCorps (besides the daycare expense - I couldn't count that).

I think I would have preferred to have been taken this class when I wasn't pregnant but the timing at any other time would have been too difficult. When I was first looking into the class, I was also pleasantly surprised that my yoga instructor, Denise Druce, from 24 Hour Fitness (the gym where I work out) was also the instructor at the U. And although I was limited towards the end of my class in what I could do, I was still able to do at least practice and learn about some of the more advanced poses and had some valuable insight on the prenatal section of the class. Some of the poses that I made significant improvement on were my crow and headstand. And once I am done having this baby and can start working out more seriously, I'm really excited to add side crow and crazy eight and really any arm-balancing pose to my practice.

Side Crow or Parsva Bakasana (source)
* I was actually able to do this pose on one side for a few seconds before my tummy got so big.

Crazy Eight or Astavakrasana (source)

The other really cool thing about my class was learning the sanskrit names of the poses as well as studying the chakras, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and the Bhagavad-Gita.

Here is a class picture from our prenatal class. Two of us are really pregnant and the rest had to stuff their shirts to pretend to be pregnant.

And this was our last class - we had a sanskrit name of a pose on our backs that our classmates had to cue us to get into without actually saying the name of the pose. Mine was Eka Pada Rajakapotasana (One-legged King Pigeon Pose).

So I am now officially certified through Yoga Alliance with my 200 hour to teach yoga. But with this baby coming, I won't even consider teaching until well after the birth. Here's hoping I don't forget everything I learned!