Yoga Teacher Training Class of 2026: You Were Already There ✨

As you'll have seen on Instagram, our 2026 teacher training cohort qualified and graduated this past weekend 🎉✨.

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Congratulations to every one of them for showing up week after week, and for turning fear on its head, nerves into a voice that reached the back of the room, and uncertainty into something that looked suspiciously like confidence 🧐

A few of them thanked the team for everything we'd done for them, which was nice, but I have to be honest: it gives us far too much credit. We didn't do the ten months. Well, not like they did. They turned up tired, practised on sore bodies, stood up and taught in front of their peers when every part of them wanted to hide, and kept coming back when it all felt like a slog. And it does feel like a slog at times. Just ask Alli, who I made cry nearly every week 😄🫣 (she's forgiven me, I think 😏). But it pays off.

To the class of 2026, we are so proud of you, not for what you learned from us but for the strength you found in yourselves and how much more of who you are you discovered along the way.

I just hope you still remember why zebras don't get ulcers 🦓😳, why carbon dioxide is NOT the enemy 😤, the difference between Sun Sal A and B (and apparently C 🫣)🌞, why and when bandhas matter, and how your pelvic tilt defines nearly everything.

Now, on to me 🫣 Training is never a one-way street, and every year the faculty walks away having learned at least as much as the trainees.

What gets me every time is what people bring on day one. A new trainee arrives with an innocent, uncluttered mind, not yet contaminated by modern day yoga nonsense, and more often than not that's the closest thing to yoga in the building. Somewhere around month three I notice they're asking simple questions I stopped asking years ago, and I'm reminded how baffling and convoluted we've managed to make something that is fundamentally about breathing, moving and paying attention. Their simplicity shows me the qualities I may have lost.

There's always a temptation as a teacher to keep a little distance and hold the position at the front. We are the teachers, after all. But as the months go on and we get closer to the group, that distance closes, and it dawns on you that a real teacher doesn't need to be distant at all. The students become friends who just happens to be a bit further back on the same road. The trainees become fellow travellers who simply started the journey a little later than we did. It's humbling, and it's an important reminder never to get ahead of ourselves about what we do.

Our trainees, through their personalities and their openness, remind us that we are not here to build disciples or obedient students, or to carve people into rigid shapes and systems. We're here to help clear the dust so their own wild, untamed individuality can step forward 🫶🏽. The class of 2026 has been the reminder I needed that we don't really create yoga teachers at all. We create the conditions in which they find themselves. We don't teach a system; we help people discover themselves ✨

Every one of them was already a yoga teacher before they started. Every one of them was confident and capable; they just couldn't see it yet. Laura and Paul, and to a lesser degree me, simply helped them find it. It's the same when someone tells me yoga made them a better person. I always say no, it didn't. You were already that person. Yoga just helped you notice.

So, one final well done and thank you to the trainees of 2026. We love what we do, and nothing was more rewarding than watching you unfold.

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Namaskar - Eternal Seeker

Zahir Akram

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