How to Choose an RYT500 Yoga Teacher Training

Choosing to take the next step in your yoga career is an exciting and important one. It should involve finding a balance between your heart, mind and goals. This means balancing how you feel about a trainer or a location with what you can learn from a program, and what you hope to achieve as a yoga teacher. As you go about doing your research on which RYT500 training to pursue, there are several factors to consider. 

Here is a checklist to help you in your search to find the perfect program for you:

• 1. What’s the Focus: Fitness Based? Therapeutically oriented? Philosophy?

  Begin by deciding what kind of higher level of training you need. Do you want a training that focuses primarily on asanas and increasingly difficult poses? Do you want a training that is oriented toward therapeutics? Do you want a training that helps you to understand philosophy better? Or perhaps there is something else you are looking for like one style of yoga only or an emphasis on alignment or kinesiology?  This is an important first step to make in choosing the right training.

• 2. Methodology: Individual workshops or a comprehensive training?

  Are you looking for a series of workshops for your RYT500 or are you looking for an actual training that will help you know how to work with groups and individuals with a variety of conditions? Some yoga schools will sign off on any workshops you take beyond your 200 hour and while that will help you achieve those numbers after your name, you have to ask yourself if this is fair to you as a serious student of yoga. Could a series of workshops from different styles result in confusion?

• 3. Personal Transformation

  Is it important to you to find a training that emphasizes your own personal practice – asanas, meditation, pranayama and personal study, and gives you the tools to achieve that practice?

• 4. Group Process

  Is it important to you to find training that leverages the power of your group so their collective wisdom, energy and compassion support you as you go through your learning process?

• 5. Outcome Orientation: Public Health or Individuals only?

  Do you want a training that teaches you how to teach many different kinds of people, from diverse backgrounds, with different needs? Or are you looking for one that’s focused on teaching increasingly challenging poses to those who are already athletes?

• 6. Knowledge base: Is there evidence?

  Are you looking for a training in which the trainers are aware of research? For example, if they are teaching about yoga for back pain, do they present the research? Are they able to bridge knowledge from the yoga world to the academic or science based realms?

• 7. Perspective: Yoga-centric vs. Integrative

  Are you looking for a training in which the trainers are willing to build bridges to the medical field and other allied health professions? Do they see yoga as a stand-alone profession or do they understand it as part of a larger picture of health care?

• 8. Safety

  Are you looking for a training in which you learn how to keep your students/clients safe, physically and emotionally?  Do you want to understand trauma informed best practices?

• 9. Business: Marketing and Differentiation

  Are you looking for a training that conveys the nuts and bolts of marketing and differentiation in order to reach the people you can best serve? Are the trainers interested in helping you to have a successful business once the training is complete?

• 10. Cost: Affordability vs. Second mortgage

  Is the training affordable? Does the institute offer payment plans and scholarships? How quickly will you be able to recover your investment?