Wednesday, 29 October 2008

Yoga Kids Teacher Training in Japan (Part 1)

Sorry about the complete lack of posting lately. As you can tell from the title of this post, my time has been occupied by something rather (though not entirely to some people) unexpected... Yoga Teacher Training.

About two months ago during a two week holiday with nothing to do but save money and study for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test I got to seriously thinking about what exactly I wanted to do with myself.

I knew I was still 50/50 about staying in Japan or returning to Oz (though I seem to always be 100% staying in Australia when I'm in Australia and 100% pro Japan when I'm in Japan) and that I had given myself the aim of getting a Level 2 on the JLPT but when I really analysed those goals I realised just how superficial they were.

A Level 2 would get me on a more level field with the average Japanese worker and would open more job opportunities for me... but I would just be as qualified as your everyday Japanese worker (maybe less so). What would I do after I got to that level? Work in a convenience store? I could return to Sydney tomorrow and do the same thing. The experience would probably be more enjoyable and rewarding too.

While I make okay money teaching English to kids, enough to live off, I didn't want to become one of those 60 year old white guys teaching English not because they'd always wanted to but because they had done so for so long that they were no longer qualified for any other job.

It wasn't until I was doing my daily Yoga that I caught myself thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if I could teach Yoga for a living?" I then quickly realised that, "Hey, why can't I teach Yoga for a living?"

I quickly surfed the net for as many Yoga Teacher Training programs as I could. I found several great ones in Sydney I was thinking about going back for but when I realised the ones in Tokyo were pretty much the same price I figured I might as well do it here.

I had pretty much decided to save up and do YogaJaya's 200 Hour Teacher Training in February next year but it was half a year away (I wanted my new life to start now!), very expensive and took place over the period of a few months (again, I wanted my new life fast!).

A few days later I went to Yoga Fest 2008 (will post on that later this week) and picked up several (well a bag full anyway) pamphlets and postcards advertising different Yoga studios and programs in Japan.

One of the postcards I picked up was for a place called Yoga Generation. It had a mixture of instructors from different racial backgrounds so I figured it'd be ideal for a person like me from outside Japan looking to get trained here.
As soon as I got home I checked out their website but it was all in Japanese! WHY?!?
Luckily I caught a banner on the main page featuring a white gal and the words in English, "Yoga Ed Kids Training". Naturally when I clicked on it, all the info was in Japanese but from what I could understand it looked like an amazing experience so I stumbled and tripped my way through the site's navigation and sent off an email asking in English if the training would be in English and if they had any English information available.

I then closed the window and forgot about it, assuming that if they had wanted non-Japanese people to partake in the program they would have offered different languages on the site.

Surprise surprise! A week later I got an email from a woman called Akiko who thanked me for my inquiry and attached a full several page English document about the teacher training and said that Brynne, the trainer is from Hawaii and doesn't speak any Japanese at all so the entire training would be in English and she would be translating everything she said for the Japanese trainees!

How perfect was that? I emailed her back and said that I would definitely love to do the training.

One problem though, it was a few weeks away (new life, yeah!) but the course fee was a few grand, which is money I could have saved up over a few months but no way was that possible in a few weeks.

Long story short: Special thanks to Dad for helping me! ;) (Seriously, thanks Dad!)

to be continued...

Labels: Yoga in Japan