Everything is Teachable Podcast Review: Ep. 2 Yoga Teacher Training — Alanna Kaivalya, The Yoga Doctor
It’ time for another Teachable podcast summary! This time it’s the turn of Alanna Kaivalya, or as some people may know her — The Yoga Doctor. In this podcast, Alanna shares her struggles, battles and successes, along with how she became the founder of the world’s first 500-hour yoga teacher certification programme!
Alanna Kaivalya — Her Journey
Alanna started practising yoga herself in college after she was diagnosed with a thyroid disorder which made her lethargic along with gaining weight. Alanna described that yoga was the only thing that made her feel better. At the same time, she started accidentally learning the mythology behind yoga due to a required course at her college.
When Alanna graduated, she struggled to find employment due to the job market crashing and even when she found a job as a teacher, she realised her income wasn’t supporting her lifestyle and she couldn’t even afford her yoga classes which made her feel so much better. This was when Alanna decided to complete her yoga teacher training and turn her hobby into her career.
Alanna began to master her newfound career and even developed yoga teaching training for Core Power Yoga. This is when Alanna truly found her niche — yoga teacher training. Even with all of this, Alanna explains that she was still struggling financially. She explained how she was looking over tax returns from 2007 which told her she only made $12,000 that year.
Alanna described that she was always interested in tech and how it could help accelerate her career. In 2005 she was the very first yoga teacher to have a podcast which acquired an impressive 2 million person strong audience. Alanna loved this as it allowed her to communicate and educate people from all over the globe, not just those close to her. In 2010 Alanna partnered with a bigger yoga company and put her yoga classes online. She describes that she knew the opportunity’s of this tech was endless, she just needed to wait until the rest of the world caught up.
Alanna was then contacted by Udemy to put her yoga teacher training courses online, however, she began to feel frustrated that she couldn’t customise her courses the way she wanted, again she felt like the content still wasn’t her’s. She then found Teachable. Teachable was a saving grace for Alanna. She said she loves the fact that she can post her content, her way… and make good money from it! Alanna now has over 1000 hours of course content with little intention of slowing down!
Taking a Leap of Faith
When asked how she found the courage to start her online yoga teacher school, Alanna replied that there we a number of reasons that encouraged her to take the leap of faith. The first was that she wanted to elevate the standard of yoga teacher training. She explained that traditional training takes place over 10 consecutive weekends, meaning that if you missed one due to a commitment, you would miss out on vital training. With an online school, students can learn at their own pace at a time convenient for them. Alanna also stated that she was fed up with only getting a fraction of the profits she was making due to the way the yoga industry was set up. This all caused her to get brave, and start working for herself.
The Benefits of Online Courses
Alanna explained that there are many benefited of online courses for both the creator and the students.
The first, mentioned above, was that people could access her course at a time and place that suited them. This way people all over the world can learn to become a yoga teacher without travel or without other commitments getting in the way of learning. This also means that student can take her course at their own pace.
The second was that Alanna could pack in all the content she felt was vital for yoga teachers, without the worry of time constraints of having to fit all the content into 10 weekends. She described how a traditional yoga teaching training course lasts 200 hours, when Alanna finished her online course with all the content she wanted, it was 500 hours. This shows how both the trainee yoga teacher was benefitting due to learning more vital information to uplevel their teaching, and that future yoga students will benefit due to having a more educated teacher.
Alanna went on to say that there is a misconception that in-studio training is more personal, meaning it will create a more personalised experience for the trainee teacher. However, she described how she didn’t even know some students names when they were completing training in the studio due to the sheer number of students, nevermind giving them personalised feedback on their learning. She explains that with online teaching, students send her videos of them conducting classes and poses, and she gives personalised feedback from the video. Having online classes also meant that Alanna could take time to answer all of her students' questions, whereas when she was conducting in-person training, she would often not even get to answer questions due to time constraints of the studio closing.
The benefits for Alanna have been immeasurable. She makes more money than she ever did before, meaning that she can now visit a doctor for her thyroid condition and support her lifestyle. She also mentioned that because of her condition, working none stop in the studio was detrimental to her health and made her very ill. Now she can work from home at her own pace, Alanna isn’t suffering as much from her condition. Alanna finished by saying that she always blamed yoga for her money problems, however now, she realises that it was how the industry is set up that’s the problem, so she changed it for herself and is happier than ever.
I think we can all agree that online courses and Teachable really did transform Alanna’s life and has helped hundreds of yoga teachers take their practice to the next level. A proper success story!
To listen to the Teachable podcast discussed, click here
To find out more about Alanna’s course, click here
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