om yoga teacher training guide
Zethyn McKinley shares the experience of teacher training with Siddhi Yoga
M
y relationship with yoga
has been a difficult one. I
first tried it as a university
course over 10 years ago
... and I hated it. With
the class located in a huge gymnasium,
I felt disconnected from my teacher and
the teaching, and by the time we entered
the half-hour mediation at the end of each
practice, I had to work with everything I had
to keep from hyperventilating. Simply laying
still made me that uncomfortable.
Looking back, this seems extreme.
Still, I can see why the relationship
started so poorly. My anxious and
My
yoga journey
obsessively compulsive nature made yoga
uncomfortable; I couldn’t connect with
myself or the teachings.
I left yoga behind, thinking that it wasn’t
for me. However, a seed had been planted.
Years later, after facing hip and back
pain, I remembered several poses from
my prior yoga practices and begrudgingly
began incorporating them into my morning
‘loosening-up’ routine.
Regular practice
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months,
and before long I realised I had been doing
yoga almost every day for a couple of years,
starting with a few poses, turning into more
elaborate practices.
So when my husband asked me one day
while on a long drive, ‘What do you want with
life? What do you want to do?’ I responded,
‘I want to learn more about and teach yoga’.
He was shocked, but I gained so much from
practicing yoga that I wanted to share it. So,
I began researching teacher trainings and I
found Siddhi Yoga.
It ticked all my boxes: a registered school,
positive testimonials and reviews, the course
outline covered what I wanted to learn, and
it was on the beach! I chose to go to Goa,
India, where I could do yoga on the beach