Have you ever really watched a toddler learn how to walk?
It’s objectively terrible.
They pull themselves up using the coffee table, stand there looking extremely pleased with themselves, take approximately one and a half steps, wobble like they’ve just left the bar at closing time, and land directly on their butt.
Then they get up and do it again.
Nobody watches this happening and thinks, clearly walking isn’t for her. Nobody takes her aside and gently explains that perhaps she should work on her balance privately for a few months before attempting this in front of other people.
We don’t look at the toddler across the room who has already mastered six consecutive steps and suggest she wait until she can keep up.
We expect her to be terrible at it because she’s learning.
She doesn’t know how to balance yet. She doesn’t know exactly where to put her feet or how to shift her weight from one leg to the other. Half the time she’s hanging onto the coffee table for dear life while we’re standing a few feet away with our arms out, encouraging her to let go.
We understand that she’s going to learn how to walk by being really, really bad at walking first.
Then somewhere along the way, adulthood gets weird.
When did we become so uncomfortable with being beginners?
As adults, we start acting as though competence is the admission price for participation.
- I need to get fitter before I hire a personal trainer.
- I need to lose weight before I go to the gym.
- I need to get flexible before I try yoga.
- I need to know more yoga before I take Yoga Teacher Training.
When you put those thoughts beside the toddler hanging onto the coffee table, you can see how backwards they are.
Imagine looking at her and saying, you know, I really think you should improve your walking before you start learning how to walk.
Ridiculous.
And yet we do versions of this to ourselves all the time.
Being a beginner feels different when you’re an adult. We spend most of our lives being reasonably competent. We know how to do our jobs, drive a car, make dinner, pay bills, take care of other people and generally move through the world without needing someone to explain what comes next.
Then we walk into a yoga class and suddenly everyone seems to know what Downward Dog means except us. Someone tells us to engage our core and we nod thoughtfully while having absolutely no idea what they want us to do.
Being a beginner can make a perfectly capable adult feel surprisingly vulnerable.
So we decide we’ll prepare first. We’ll practise yoga for another year. We’ll watch some videos. We’ll read another book. Then, once we know enough, we’ll finally be ready to be taught.
Except that’s completely backwards.
But what does being good at yoga even mean?
This is the part I think we need to talk about, especially if you’ve been considering Yoga Teacher Training but decided you aren’t good enough at yoga yet.
What does good at yoga actually look like? A handstand? The splits? Putting your foot behind your head? Slowly transforming yourself into a human pretzel while everyone around you politely pretends this is a perfectly normal thing for a person to be doing?
Because if those are the entrance requirements, we have a problem.
Physical ability and teaching ability aren’t the same thing.
Being able to perform an advanced yoga pose tells me that your body can perform that pose. It doesn’t necessarily tell me that you understand what another person might need when their body can’t.
And that distinction matters enormously when you’re teaching.
A teacher needs to understand more than how a pose looks. You need to start learning why you might choose one variation over another, how anatomy affects movement, how to communicate what you’re asking someone to do, and what to change when the person standing in front of you doesn’t respond to the movement the way you expected.
Sometimes the person who can’t make themselves into a pretzel has quite a lot to bring to that conversation.
So, how experienced should you be before Yoga Teacher Training?
You should have some experience with yoga, absolutely, but I’m far less interested in how many years you’ve practised than I am in what yoga means to you.
Why are you drawn to it? What has it brought into your life? How do you imagine sharing it with other people, if teaching is something you’re interested in?
Or maybe teaching isn’t the goal at all, and you’re curious about how you might use what you learn in your own life.
You should be curious. You should be open to learning. You should have enough of a relationship with yoga to know that you want to understand more.
But you aren’t supposed to arrive already knowing everything you’re going to learn in Teacher Training.
That’s why it’s called training.
I hear versions of I don’t know enough more often than you might imagine. People wonder whether they should know all the pose names, whether their practice is advanced enough, whether everyone else will know more than they do, or whether they need more experience before they apply.
But you aren’t supposed to arrive at Yoga Teacher Training already knowing how to be a yoga teacher.
If you did, I’m not entirely sure what you’d be paying me for.
Yoga Teacher Training is where you learn to teach.
Knowing yoga and knowing how to teach yoga are two different skills.
During Teacher Training, you learn anatomy and philosophy. You learn how to build a class and give a useful cue. You learn how to look at the people in front of you and recognize when someone might need another option.
You learn how to use your voice, how to remember what you’re teaching while simultaneously watching a room full of moving humans, and how to adjust when the beautifully planned sequence you created doesn’t quite work the way you imagined.
And yes, sometimes you’re going to feel awkward while you’re learning those things.
Sometimes you’ll forget what comes next. Sometimes you’ll ask a question and wonder whether everyone else already knew the answer. Sometimes you’ll try something, realize it didn’t work, and try it differently next time. It still happens to me more often than I care to admit.
That isn’t evidence that you weren’t ready for Yoga Teacher Training.
That’s Teacher Training doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.
You don’t have to know enough before you begin
Somewhere between the coffee table and adulthood, we became convinced that being bad at something was evidence that we shouldn’t be doing it.
I wonder what would happen if we gave ourselves a little bit of the patience we give that toddler instead.
You’re allowed to wobble. You’re allowed to ask questions. You’re allowed to need help. You’re allowed to not know yet.
You don’t have to know enough before Teacher Training.
Teacher Training is where you go to learn.
Being a beginner isn’t evidence that you don’t belong.
It’s evidence that you’ve begun.
Curious about Yoga Teacher Training?
The next Fundamentals of Yoga: 200hr Teacher Training begins September 18, 2026 at Body Mind Fitness.
If you’ve been considering Teacher Training but wondering whether you have enough experience, know enough poses, are flexible enough, or are simply ready, you don’t have to answer those questions alone.
Learn more about Fundamentals of Yoga, or reach out and tell me what’s making you hesitate. We can figure out whether this training is the right next step for you.
