The Fine Art of Eating an Elephant a Bite at a Time

How to Handle Study Overwhelm in Yoga Teacher Training

The struggle to balance daily life is enough without having to add the study and practice of “self-paced” and online course work. Still, every day people sign up and log on to online courses only to get completely overwhelmed at the live class schedule, the recorded classes and the reading material. Amusingly, we (me, I’m “we”) tend to equate “self paced” with “fast!”, and while that can be true, there’s another truth; acquiring knowledge to submit a half hour to hour long video that shows you proficient enough to teach yoga properly, respectfully, safely is daunting and imposter syndrome is real!

Often, I see my fellow learners asking, “Where do I start?’ or “How is everyone else working through the material?” and “Any tips or tricks?” We’re yogis, learning how to teacher, or maybe we have no desire to teach and are just “deepening our practice” (also me). Today I decided to offer a suggestion to our group, and I also thought it would make a good blog post; my first as it turns out! Here’s what I offered:

Namaste, Yogis and Yoginis! I see so many questions about how and where to start in our group and I thought I’d offer a suggestion for your consideration. My suggestion, as a graduate of 1500 hours is to just start somewhere. Anywhere. Join a live class, watch a recorded class, read some material, take some quizzes, make some flash cards, and practice, practice, practice!

“Self-paced” would have some to think of flying through the material, racing to the certification, focused on receiving the certification. However, self-paced, online learning is actually the perfect yoga practice, in my opinion. Why? When you’re feeling overwhelmed by the volume of the material and the classes in my experience, it’s best to practice the “fine art of eating an elephant a bite at a time”- Unknown How would you eat an entire elephant? Of course, only a bite at a time, also of course you’d chew it fully and completely and of course again, you’d have to digest every bite!

What I mean is that you have to settle into it use discipline, focus on the object with one-pointed attention until you know it. This could be one paragraph, one page, one chapter, etc. until you come to the end of it. Its not advisable to think about the certificate or the next module. Just like staying in the pose; we are not thinking of the next one, we’re in this moment, this breath. Approach your studies like you approach Nadi Shodhana pranayama, like you have all the time in the world, it takes as long as it takes and you’re happy about it! More info on Nadi Shodhana? I’ll come back to link my lesson later! See? Online and self-paced learning can be the perfect yoga practice because it forces you to stay mindful of the present moment and requires laser focus on one object.

Online, self-paced learning can also be a beautiful Kaizen practice as just 1% improvement daily towards an objective is a powerful practice over time and can be applied to life in general. Read more about Kaizen here, if you like.

It’s a wonderful practice to see yourself with the certification and feel the elation at all the potential outcomes, but we can’t forget the practice of doing the work with laser focus in real time until that day! But with what time, you might ask? By rising before sunrise for your daily sadhana, like all good yogis and yoginis! I hope this helps.

If you’re not signed up and logged in and are interested in teacher training, I’ve got courses for you right here in my store! If you’d like to discuss a study coaching package, I’m currently working on my offerings and will post them soon! Thank you for reading ! Om Shanti

MiYogini