Yogafit Level 1 Training... As A Fat Girl Part 2

Welcome to Part 2. I'll talk more about the structure of the weekend here. Below is a rough outline of how the weekend progressed.

 Day 1:
30 minutes of introductions
Hour or so with the manual
1st master class 75 minutes
Remaining time till lunch spent reviewing poses
Hour for lunch
2 hours spent reviewing poses
45 minutes with partner work
2nd master class 75 minutes

Day 2:
1.5 hours with the manual
3rd master class 75 minutes
Remaining time till lunch spent reviewing poses
Hour for lunch
Remaining time spent in partner teaching work
Ended the day with a share circle

Level 1 training is a lot of information and we spent a lot of time going methodically through the handbook, pose by pose. Traci had at least two participants demonstrate each pose so we could begin to see how each pose looks on different body types. Most of our time through the weekend was taken up either with poses or with a yoga master class. Traci integrated the teaching language as we worked our way through the poses so we began to get a feel for how to describe and verbally adjust our students in each pose. Level 1 is very basic so there is no hand's on adjustment, but Traci gave a very thorough lesson on how to encourage students to focus on their bodies and begin to adjust from our descriptions and verbal guidance.

We talked about what Yogafit calls transformative language, language that begins the acceptance process both for people joining the class and for our own personal journeys to body acceptance. (They don't mention body acceptance specifically, but yoga is fundamentally about listening and responding to the queues given by the body. Hello, beginners guide to body acceptance!) Yogafit is very big on this transformative language. They highly encourage their trainees to use it during the teaching exercises. It's like learning the language of any new hobby or interest. I found it awkward to begin with, but I can see the benefits and felt more comfortable using it by the end of the weekend.

I will not lie. I was utterly exhausted by the end of the first day. I'm pretty sure I oozed my way to my car because of how tired and limp my muscles were by 5 o'clock. However, while I was sore on day 2, I wasn't completely stove up or unable to move. We did a gentle yoga master class in the morning which helped loosen and lengthen everything that was tight. We finished the morning with reviews of the remaining poses.

The majority of the second day was devoted to teaching exercises. We started in pairs, moved to groups of 3, and ended the group exercise portion in two main groups. I really liked this approach because it allowed us to practice teaching to progressively larger groups of "students." There were several participants who had never taught in any capacity before and they felt this really helped quickly increase their comfort level.

The final hour or so before we ended the second day was spent in discussion about business practicalities like insurance, basic good business practices, and a share circle.

We only did the one share circle but I felt like it was good debrief. Traci gave us all an opportunity to speak about our experience in the training and it was overwhelmingly positive from everyone. 


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