Devon Yoga Teacher Training: why we love holding it close to home!

We have been very fortunate to host our yoga teacher training course in both the green tranquility of Devon and the  hustle and bustle of the big city, right in the centre of London. You couldn't pick two more opposite locations if you tried and yet I love each of them equally. 
The two courses run in parallel and although the content and many of the tutors are the same, the feel and energy is often very different. The tendency as you would expect is for the London crew to be very focussed, full of energy and able to keep going for days on end at a full on pace. I guess that just tends to be the way of living in any city and it means that those sessions are generally fun, dynamic and full of questions. It is also where people travel in to join us form abroad, catching their flights in and out for each weekend of training. So the mixture of languages, backgrounds and life experience is very vivd and fun!

In Devon, the yoga training draws in students from all over the South West, Cornwall, Somerset, Dorset the Midlands and Bristol being very common although some come in from much further afield. With most of these students being from outside of the cities (and I class Bristol as the most chilled city on Earth) the pace of the weekends tends to be more laid back and in general more 'holistic' in nature. We attract quite a number of existing yoga teachers onto our devon course as well as total newbies to teaching yoga and this makes for a really interesting mix of all round fresh 'no-rules' enthusiasm combined with a lot of experience and knowledge. We also in general have more holistic and alternative bodywork practitioners join us, from backgrounds like massage therapy, physiotherapy you name it, it all goes in the mix!

These are gross generalisations of course and it can depend very much on any number of things but it remains completely fascinating to me how the 'same sessions' can vary completely in their delivery and the direction that they take from one weekend to the next. Regardless of where we are, the flexibility of every session stays the same, something that interests one group can lead us of on a tangent of exploration that doesn't come up in the same session elsewhere and vice versa-it certainly keeps us on our toes but it also means that the sessions stay very 'fresh' feeling in their delivery.

For me though, one of the most important things is that we offer both of the trainings here in the UK.
​I have always been a bit puzzled by the need to fly people half way around the world to study to be a yoga teacher when we have maybe the most multicultural and fascinating city on earth as well as the breathtaking landscape of places such as devon, right on our doorstep.  It avoids the need to burn up tonnes of aviation fuel and it supports the local economy. We would also never be able to afford to bring in all of the teachers that we do if we had to fly them across the planet.

​So for us it all works perfectly, yoga teacher training in devon or london, the best of both worlds!

Our next TT starts in February in Devon; we are already just over a third full but you can join us for our taster day on the 23rd June in Ilfracombe if you are keen to sign up or are just curious about what on Earth we get up to!