What My Yoga Teacher Taught Me About Life Off the Mat

I’ve been practicing at my yoga school for a while now, and if there’s one thing that’s changed the way I think about the practice, it’s my teacher, Polly.

Polly has a gift for finding the most essential, most important elements of yoga and stripping away other distractions. She seems to really see each student — how we think, how we learn, where we get stuck. She reads the room, and then she translates what she sees into instructions that meet us where we are, while still pushing us to understand more than we thought we could.

But the thing I keep coming back to, the thing that’s meant the most to me, is how Polly takes what happens on the mat and connects it to life off the mat. It never occurred to me — not until I heard her explain it — that the way we move, the way we approach a pose or a breath or a moment of difficulty in class, is also a way of looking inward. It’s a way of learning something about how to move through life.

Through her teaching, I’ve started to notice how the things I practice on my mat (such as focusing my mind and body on being calm, attentive and non-reactive) shows up in how I handle a hard conversation. How the balance I’m chasing in a pose is the same balance I’m chasing in the rest of my day. Polly doesn’t just teach yoga poses — she teaches a way of paying attention to yourself, so that you can live in a way that’s better for you and for the people around you.

That’s her greatest contribution, at least to me: showing that yoga was never really about the room it happens in.

JC

 

Teacher Training

Students who have been working with Polly for a minimum of 3
years, and who have been attending events such as the Sunday Practice Development sessions  and who have an established personal practice can apply to Polly to become a Trainee. Polly is an accredited teacher trainer with Iyengar Yoga Australia.  

Within the Iyengar tradition, trainees must have completed at least 300 hours of Teacher Training and 100 hours of assisting in classes, to be eligible to sit an assessment at Level 1 Teacher Certification. This level of certification allows you to teach as a recognised Iyengar Yoga teacher and make use of the Iyengar Certification Mark.

The Iyengar Yoga Association requires that a candidate for assessment is formally referred by their training teacher. Referral (by Polly) of a trainee for
assessment is provided once a trainee demonstrates a capacity to teach and practice at the required level. Many trainees take longer than they anticipate to develop the required capacity, whilst others achieve readiness in a shorter period of time. Hence it is critical to note that readiness to be referred for assessment, is not determined by completing hours of training.
“Assessment” is better understood as a ritual rite of passage.  

If you are interested to apply for a teacher traineeship
with Polly, please email via the school to set up a time to meet with Polly.

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