36. Yoga Teacher Training - Part 3

smarti
Oct 14
2 min read

Updated: Oct 23

It's a wrap! This is a Part 3 of a blog series about my illustration experience through my Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) here in Windhoek, Namibia. (Part 1 was a pre-YTT gratitude post to former teachers, and Part 2 was a asana card deck.) In this post I'll share my reflection pages from my latest Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) in Windhoek, Namibia.

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This time around, I definitely learned new things that were not covered in my first YTT. This course was untethered from the Yoga Alliance certification which finally gave me a chance to fill in the gaps in my knowledge on yogic philosophy, mudras, mantras, meditation, etc. For intellectual property reasons, I cannot share the extensive curriculum. (You can check it out via the samudra yoga school website.) But I can share these illustrated weekly recaps of some of the things I learned:

Illustrated notes of opening ceremony of a yoga teacher training by Smarti.

YTT opening ceremony recap © thesmarti

Hand-drawn notes of yoga history, philosophy and hatha sun salutations by Smarti.

YTT week 1 recap © thesmarti

Hand-drawn notes of yoga concepts of prana, koshas and vinyasa sun salutations by Smarti.

YTT week 2 recap © thesmarti

Illustrated notes on yoga concepts of mudras, mantras and meditation techniques by Smarti.

YTT week 3 recap © thesmarti

Hand-drawn illustrated notes of yoga concepts of vayus, bandhas and inverted poses by Smarti.

We covered a whole lot more than what I could capture here. Of course, we went over all the poses in both hatha/vinyasa as well as yin yoga, which I covered a bit in Part 2 of these series. We also practiced teaching from the very first day, and had assessments every week to chart our teaching presence/voice/sequencing skills. And then there were a bunch of fun extra sessions, too - acro yoga, thai massage, etc. It was a very full month!

On the last day, the head instructor Lara Lyn hosted a closing ceremony. We all donned white to receive our certificates and hug each other. Flowers were given. Wish papers were burned. Fists bumped. It was a sweet closure to a month of sharing space, being curious and expanding our skills. And my goodness - It's also so much fun to draw things that I learned. [..] And I think, in some ways, drawing is a form of meditation, right? Intense focus of the mind from pen to paper, pen to paper, pen to paper....ommmm.

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Cheers to drawing, yoga and continued learning,

smarti