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When teaching yoga is your passion

The candy hearts and red hots are flowing in the aisles of your local everything so I’m decorating the blog aisles with people who are pursuing their passions through work, people or hobbies they love.

Passionate about yoga

I just wrapped up another training weekend with six amazing women who are destined to be crazy good teachers! With wild-eyed excitement {and nauseous nervousness} they decided to pursue their passion of yoga. 

An important component of teacher training is teaching {duh, right?} but the participants always act so surprised when it comes time to debut and practice their newly acquired abilities. Which was this weekend.

Practice, practice, practice

Excuse me, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? 

How do you become a world champion tennis player?

How do you get better at anything???

The art of being a yoga teacher isn’t about how many hours you spend in training. It’s about how many hours you spend actually teaching. A formal teacher training program only shortens your learning curve.

Back to crazy-good teachers

The really nervous nelly of the group volunteered to teach the opening of Sunday morning’s yoga class. Thirty people showed up and I thought she might pass out. I told her: breathe and own the floor.

She didn’t have much floor to own since the bodies were packed in there, but she stepped up and into her role as teacher. I smiled the whole time. She did amazing and she knows it only gets better with practice, practice, practice.

You should’ve seen the smiles on all their faces as they talked about their first time {teaching} experience. They may have been nervous as hell but they were happy because they were doing something that they were passionate about.

Tired of playing safe

I’m in a coaching group right now and the first few weeks have been about uncovering our stories and identifying what we’re passionate about–and then owning the responsibility for pursuing it.

As part of that I had to share what my life-long dream has always been, something I’m so passionate about but don’t pursue it out of fear. Sound achingly familiar?

The rub of the lesson is if I’m going to show and encourage my soon-to-be crazy-good teachers to pursue their passion, I have to lead by example.

My ultimate dream is to write and publish. To sit on a deck overlooking the ocean somewhere, turn on my computer and write until my head is empty for that day. Then take my son down to the beach to play in the sand.

Tell me, what passion do you want to pursue? {And yes, it’s scary to say it out loud–or write it in a blog for everyone to see.}

So raise a glass and cheers to us for pursuing our passions!!

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Shannon with Purple Lotus Yoga
Hi! I'm Shannon

For 20 years, I’ve helped women of all ages and sizes to realize their dreams of becoming inspiring yoga teachers. 

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