Hard Decisions Yield Truth

No matter how much research you do sometimes you just have to trust your gut and then sometimes you still make the wrong decision.

I started this week eager to embark on my YTT 300 hour journey. I quickly learned the provider I chose for this had an online learning setup that stressed me out! I had that many pages pinned in my browser each with important links that were vital to the learning journey. 

Tabs with schedules, documents needed daily, shared drive etc

Every time I sat at the computer I felt like I was drowning in a quagmire of unnecessarily complicated systems. Here are a few concerns I had early on:

• I wasn't enjoying the journey at all, it was 100% stress due to an overly complicated course setup

• Step 1 AFTER paying $465 was a pretest based on content in their 200hr course. In my opinion this was an upselling tactic to try to get participants to upgrade to a 500hr or redo 200hrs with them. They could've sent me those pretest questions via email before I signed up because I had emailed them some questions about their program.

• The course included a requirement to join live online study groups and I felt a lot of my valuable learning time was wasted by group chit chat. Basically logging hours just for the sake of it!! Seriously yoga philosophy is a vast field of study if you can't fill 300hrs properly you aren't doing justice to yoga. 

• I also felt that course was whitewashing yoga with some of the opinion based comments during theory videos in the first module that I completed. 

• 20hrs of recorded asana classes for final assessment. Seriously a few hours would suffice, this told me their course was going to be asana focused, asana is only one of the eight limbs of yoga! They also expected this to be done in videos a minimum of 1hr in length. My camera (most cameras actually it's an industry standard) has a 29 min recording maximum for video, so I would've needed to buy a camcorder which I would have no use for after the assessment task is complete. The only alternative was to provide written scripts. So... They can glean my 'fitness' to be certified from text only but not from a series of videos 29 mins long? 

But sometimes you have to step away from a problem to recognize it as solvable. I had a great day today golfing with hubby and friends then we went to a great Denver brewery. 

Once I got home had a bath and settled in on the couch to relax I knew instantly that I needed to choose a different 300hr YTT provider. So I requested a full refund from the stress inducing provider and signed up for 300hrs with Bhakti Yogshala because I found their 200hr course easy to navigate and full of excellent content 👌 So on Monday I start my 300hrs again from the start after having wasted 5 days on a mistake, but you know what?

I'm excited again about learning more yoga content! I haven't felt that way all week! So I know I made the right decision this time.

It's about what brings me joy and what suits my style and aspirations.