Congratulations!

You are about to embark on an experience of a lifetime.  Bikram Yoga Teacher Training is a crazy two month journey!

You will challenge yourself.  You will physically do more Bikram Yoga Classes then you ever thought possible.  Your mind will go crazy reciting dialogue day in and day out!

You get to learn from Bikram himself.  Hear his isms and sayings straight from his mouth.  You will also get to learn from some of Bikram’s own hand picked lecturers.  Ones to look forward to are Emmy Cleaves, Jim Kallet, Jon Burres, and Dr. Jim Preddy.

You will take yoga from world renown instructors such as Rajashree Choudury, Cynthia Wehr, Joseph Encina, and Emmy Cleaves.

You will eat a lot of nuts, goldfish, popcorn, and tuna.

Who Knows What Questions You Have

I can’t even begin to imagine the questions you have.  Write them below in the comment section, I will answer them!

Commonly Asked Questions:

Q. What do I need to pack?

• Check out Packing List to see what to bring.   

Q.  What are most days like?

• Each day you wake up in time to sign up for class at 8:30.  Sign in starts at 8.  You don’t need to be there right at 8 unless you want to wait in line to get your spot in the yoga room.  (It doesn’t matter, you will be assigned a line to practice on, yet people still lined up every day!)
• Class run from 8:30-10ish.  After you normally have 2 hours to shower, eat, nap, and study dialogue.
• At 12 you usually check in for either a lecture or posture clinic.  Don’t plan on having time between lecture/posture and class.  Bring a snack if you will need one!  Lecture or posture clinic normally runs until 4 or 4:15.
• At 4:30 you have check in for evening class.  This is normally the class Bikram Teaches if he is in town.  Emmy usually taught Thursday mornings, and if Rajashree is in town she teaches one morning class per week.  Class will start at 5pm Indian Time and often ran past 7.
• After class you have time to shower, eat dinner, study dialogue and relax until about 9.
• Sign in for evening lecture, posture clinic, and/or movie nights usually was at 9 or 9:30 and evening session would last until 11, 12, 1am….who knows how late.  It’s up to Bikram.   I will say most weeks we were only up past 2 one night a week.  They like to keep the fear of late nights constantly on you, but they rarely do late nights back to back.

Q.  Is it every day?

• The above schedule is the normal schedule Mon-Fri.  Saturday you only have class at 8:30 unless you are late or don’t sign up.  then you will have to do a makeup class at 11 called Team Saturday.
• After Saturday Class you are free for the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday!

Q.  Do I need to know my dialogue before I get there?

• I didn’t know one posture before I went to training and I did fine, however, if you are someone who stresses I would try to memorize as much dialogue as you can before you get to training.
• You will have to say half moon posture in front of Bikram within the first week.  You might want to have that one memorized!
• It takes a week and a half for everyone to get through half moon.  The sooner you go, the sooner you can use the time to start working on the rest of the dialogue.
• That being said, if you don’t know it, wait until you do to get up there in front of Bikram!  He will rip into you if you haven’t put in the work!

Q. What are some tips for memorizing the dialogue?

1. Line by Line:  This was the best tool for me.  I would pace in the hallways, or at the beach on the weekends saying one line at a time until I had it memorized.  Then I would move onto the next line saying the previous lines first.  Repetition was my best tool!
2. In lectures or posture clinics I would write the first letter of each word over and over for a posture using the line by the line technique.  It helped ingrain it in my mind.
3. Record yourself!  I would listen to the postures as I showered.  Make sure when you record yourself you leave a gap of time between each line.  Then you can work to say the next line, with a correction instantly following if you say it incorrectly.
4. Many people liked round robin.  There are two ways to do round robin.  The first way is to say one line, then the next person says the next and so on and so forth.  Another way to round robin is to have the first person say one line.  The second person will then say the 1st and 2nd line.  The 1st (or 3rd you can play with many people) then says the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd line and so on and so forth until the posture is complete.  ***Round Robins are helpful tools to ingrain the words in your head, but they are kind of useless if you don’t know the posture well yet.

Q.  What do I eat?

• Stock up on food on the weekends.  You will eat a lot of dry packaged, canned, and dried foods.  You will have  a mini fridge to share with your roomie.  The mini friedges surprisingly store a lot!  
• Sample Grocery List: A Yogi’s Groceries

Q.  Where can I get food?

• Walking Distance Grocery Stores: Trader Joe’s and Ralphs
• Bikram Shuttle on Saturday and Sunday:  Target, Whole Foods
• There is also a Subway, Taco Joint, In-N-Out Burger, Starbucks, ToGos, Thai Food, and Chinese Food within walking distance.
• On the weekends I recommend taking the trolley to Manhattan Beach and hitting up real food.

Q.  How hot is the room?

• The hot room depends training to training.  
• At my training, the boiler was broken for 2-3 weeks.  We had a couple scorchers, but it wasn’t that bad.
• I hear Fall Training 2011 sucked!

Q.  What’s with the no green rule?

• Bikram will tell the story to your training.  It is a personal story about a personal friend as well as an Indian Wives Tale.  
• I have heard in previous trainings he gets very upset if you wear green.
• He didn’t really yell at anyone in our training…but I still never wanted to risk it.  LEAVE THE GREEN AT HOME!

Q.  Will Bikram really keep me up all night?

• I was never up all night, but I was up until 4 a couple times.  
• Don’t stress about the late nights, they don’t do them in a row and often if you were up late they will go easy on you the next day.
• The worst part of the late nights were the anxiety over how tired you would be the next day.
• Let it go.  Live in the present.  The Bollywood movies are fun!

Q.  What’s posture clinic?

• Posture clinic is where you learn the dialogue.
• You will be divided into groups of 20.  2 groups will be together at a time.  One by one each person gets up and delivers the dialogue for a given posture until everyone has completed the posture.  Some postures spam over 2-3 days.  Other times you will give 2 postures in a day.  Always be ready to give the posture you are on and the next one!
• Don’t stress about posture clinic.  If you mess up the dialogue the worst that happens is you have to do it again.  Often they just check you off and tell you to work on it.  You put the pressure on yourself to memorize the dialogue because you want to teach!
• You deliver your dialogue to 3 students doing the posture and 1-3 teachers who have come to visit and/or the staff.
• Bring clothes that you want to teach in.  I brought many options to practice in, but few for lectures and posture clinics.  I wish I had brought more long and capri yoga pants.

Q.   What should I do in my free time?

When you get free time, WORK ON DIALOGUE.  That being said here are some fun things to do:

• The beach!  Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Venice Beach, Santa Monica all are easy to get to via bus or trolley!
• Venice Beach has awesome street shopping.
• Santa Monica has a fare on the pier!
• Disneyland
• Hollywood Walk of Fame
• Lights exhibit at the LA County Museum (It’s Free!)
• The Getty Museum (It’s Free!)
• Take a class at Headquarters
• Hermosa Beach offers free classes to Teacher Trainees