Friday, May 02, 2008
Thinking Of Attending Agama Yoga Teacher Training (TTC)?
In the past few weeks, I've had several emails from people, asking me about my experience with Agama's TTC, and whether it's worth taking. So as to save cutting and pasting replies, I'll put up my basic points here:
1) Agama Yoga is the best yoga school I've found to date, hands down, in terms of the depth of knowledge and practice it offers.
2) Agama is growing VERY rapidly. Just a few years ago, it was a little-known spot in the jungle of south Thailand, which only a few backpackers and yoga enthusiasts had ever heard of. Now it's in Lonely Planet, and attendance this year will top 1,000 students. As such, it is experiencing the simultaneous thrill and discomfort of growing up -- quickly -- as an international organization and educational institution. Mistakes get made, it's true. Everyone here is learning as they go.
3) The Teacher Training Course is intense. Three months, 6 days per week, 4-6 hours per day of class. Lots of practice, lots of theory, lots of work. It's not to be taken lightly. It takes a heavy toll on its participants, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Students go through some intense purification processes, especially if they are new to a hatha yoga which puts such an emphasis on subtle energies.
If you're thinking of doing TTC, I would recommend you at least take the first month intensive of the regular curriculum, first. See what you think and then make your decision about TTC. We have schools offering the first month program now in Canada, UK, Israel, Greece, and Thailand. Also, I'm teaching weekend workshops in the US (east coast) this summer, 2008, where we go into the basics of the first month course. Contact me for details (email listed below).
4) Agama Yoga is now registered under the US Yoga Alliance, as well as the IYF (International Federation of Yoga) as an RYT 500 certified Teacher Training school. This is good, it means that once you complete the course, you can send in your paperwork to YA or IYF and get your name in their registries. This allows you to be insured as a yoga teacher in the countries in which those organizations have some jurisdiction, which is essential for opening your own school.
5) I look at TTC as an investment -- of money, time, and energy. If you stick around long enough in the normal course program of Agama, at some point (usually around the 15th month, although lately students have been given limited teaching empowerment as early as 7th month) you may be given permission to teach, even without having done TTC. So if you're committed to practicing with Agama, then you'll probably get to teach, eventually. The only reason then to do TTC is if you're in a hurry. (Or, if you're not interested in studying long-term with Agama, and you simply want to do a teacher training course here.) When you graduate, you are an Agama Yoga teacher. It's up to you then to make your investment pay off.
If you lined up all the major yoga teacher training programs out there -- Sivananda, Iyengar, Kripalu, and the like -- and compared them with Agama, I have no doubt you'd find that the more established ones are better organized and more smoothly run, and with less of the occasional controversy. If you're simply looking for an RYT yoga certificate so you can start teaching, and you don't really care what kind of Hatha Yoga it is you're teaching, I think you could probably accomplish your goal elsewhere with a lot less effort. However, if you're looking to teach a powerful, progressive style of yoga -- granted, one that can be controversial, and even cross some lines with its methods and approaches at times -- and one which has inspired many on their spiritual journey, then I'd warmly recommend you come to Agama and see for yourself.
In closing, you might look at it like this:
Say you had a scoring system for how well an organization is in integrity with itself, meaning, how completely it fulfills what it sets out to accomplish. This would be represented by actual points vs. total possible points. So a 4 out of 5 score would mean the organization is in 80% integrity with its vision.
The same system also rates the total capacity of the organization. Meaning, what is the organization's highest potential? How much can it do for its members? This would be represented by the "total possible points". So an organization with total possible points as 100 can take its members 200% as far in its stated purpose than can an organization with 50 total possible points.
With this kind of scoring, I would propose that a more established, primarily physically-based hatha yoga organization, like BKS Iyengar's yoga, for example, scores a 5 out of 5. 100% integrity for its 5 units of potential.
Agama Yoga scores more like a 30 out of 50, by the same reckoning. 60% integrity, but even at that rate, still offering a heck of a lot more than the aforementioned category of yoga schools.
There are enough bright, positive, and focused people at Agama to make me optimistic that the school's integrity rating will gradually improve. As I said, the school is in the midst of some growing pains right now. I'll be interested to see how it turns out.
In the meantime, you choose: integrity over total value, or value over integrity? And if you really come to believe that the value offered here is as much as I propose it is, then why not make an effort to join and work on stabilizing Agama's integrity from the inside? That's essentially what I've chosen to do, as I feel there is a true gem here for contemporary spiritual pursuit. All gems need to be polished before they can shine.
And that's what I've got for all you would-be TTC'ers (and for anyone else who's interested in Agama Yoga). Feel free to write to me at dharmahound AT hotmail DOT com with any questions you may have. (It's a really busy month for me, so I may be a bit slow to reply.)
Best,
In light,
Andrew
In the past few weeks, I've had several emails from people, asking me about my experience with Agama's TTC, and whether it's worth taking. So as to save cutting and pasting replies, I'll put up my basic points here:
1) Agama Yoga is the best yoga school I've found to date, hands down, in terms of the depth of knowledge and practice it offers.
2) Agama is growing VERY rapidly. Just a few years ago, it was a little-known spot in the jungle of south Thailand, which only a few backpackers and yoga enthusiasts had ever heard of. Now it's in Lonely Planet, and attendance this year will top 1,000 students. As such, it is experiencing the simultaneous thrill and discomfort of growing up -- quickly -- as an international organization and educational institution. Mistakes get made, it's true. Everyone here is learning as they go.
3) The Teacher Training Course is intense. Three months, 6 days per week, 4-6 hours per day of class. Lots of practice, lots of theory, lots of work. It's not to be taken lightly. It takes a heavy toll on its participants, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Students go through some intense purification processes, especially if they are new to a hatha yoga which puts such an emphasis on subtle energies.
If you're thinking of doing TTC, I would recommend you at least take the first month intensive of the regular curriculum, first. See what you think and then make your decision about TTC. We have schools offering the first month program now in Canada, UK, Israel, Greece, and Thailand. Also, I'm teaching weekend workshops in the US (east coast) this summer, 2008, where we go into the basics of the first month course. Contact me for details (email listed below).
4) Agama Yoga is now registered under the US Yoga Alliance, as well as the IYF (International Federation of Yoga) as an RYT 500 certified Teacher Training school. This is good, it means that once you complete the course, you can send in your paperwork to YA or IYF and get your name in their registries. This allows you to be insured as a yoga teacher in the countries in which those organizations have some jurisdiction, which is essential for opening your own school.
5) I look at TTC as an investment -- of money, time, and energy. If you stick around long enough in the normal course program of Agama, at some point (usually around the 15th month, although lately students have been given limited teaching empowerment as early as 7th month) you may be given permission to teach, even without having done TTC. So if you're committed to practicing with Agama, then you'll probably get to teach, eventually. The only reason then to do TTC is if you're in a hurry. (Or, if you're not interested in studying long-term with Agama, and you simply want to do a teacher training course here.) When you graduate, you are an Agama Yoga teacher. It's up to you then to make your investment pay off.
If you lined up all the major yoga teacher training programs out there -- Sivananda, Iyengar, Kripalu, and the like -- and compared them with Agama, I have no doubt you'd find that the more established ones are better organized and more smoothly run, and with less of the occasional controversy. If you're simply looking for an RYT yoga certificate so you can start teaching, and you don't really care what kind of Hatha Yoga it is you're teaching, I think you could probably accomplish your goal elsewhere with a lot less effort. However, if you're looking to teach a powerful, progressive style of yoga -- granted, one that can be controversial, and even cross some lines with its methods and approaches at times -- and one which has inspired many on their spiritual journey, then I'd warmly recommend you come to Agama and see for yourself.
In closing, you might look at it like this:
Say you had a scoring system for how well an organization is in integrity with itself, meaning, how completely it fulfills what it sets out to accomplish. This would be represented by actual points vs. total possible points. So a 4 out of 5 score would mean the organization is in 80% integrity with its vision.
The same system also rates the total capacity of the organization. Meaning, what is the organization's highest potential? How much can it do for its members? This would be represented by the "total possible points". So an organization with total possible points as 100 can take its members 200% as far in its stated purpose than can an organization with 50 total possible points.
With this kind of scoring, I would propose that a more established, primarily physically-based hatha yoga organization, like BKS Iyengar's yoga, for example, scores a 5 out of 5. 100% integrity for its 5 units of potential.
Agama Yoga scores more like a 30 out of 50, by the same reckoning. 60% integrity, but even at that rate, still offering a heck of a lot more than the aforementioned category of yoga schools.
There are enough bright, positive, and focused people at Agama to make me optimistic that the school's integrity rating will gradually improve. As I said, the school is in the midst of some growing pains right now. I'll be interested to see how it turns out.
In the meantime, you choose: integrity over total value, or value over integrity? And if you really come to believe that the value offered here is as much as I propose it is, then why not make an effort to join and work on stabilizing Agama's integrity from the inside? That's essentially what I've chosen to do, as I feel there is a true gem here for contemporary spiritual pursuit. All gems need to be polished before they can shine.
And that's what I've got for all you would-be TTC'ers (and for anyone else who's interested in Agama Yoga). Feel free to write to me at dharmahound AT hotmail DOT com with any questions you may have. (It's a really busy month for me, so I may be a bit slow to reply.)
Best,
In light,
Andrew
