My first weekend of teacher training at MBody is offically over but my brain is still spinning with information and experiences from the weekend. I feel completely energized and I am looking forward to incorporating what I am learning into my classes.

The program is very different than any other teacher training I have attended in that it is not focused on technical details but rather on how to teach in an authentic way.

Turns out authenticity is something that I am sorely lacking. On Saturday we started practice teaching, during which each student led their fellow students through a specific sequence. Our peers were then required to critique us on a number of points, including how "Real" we were in our teaching. While I got consistently positive feedback on my clarity in verbal cues and the "technical" details of my teaching, most of my peers let me know that I didn't seem real while I was teaching. I was consistently critiqued for being in "yoga teacher mode," verbalizing cues on auto-pilot without any feeling. Hmmmm....

Critcal feedback is something I rarely get from students and peers and even in my other teacher trainings, my mentors have been averse to providing any real criticism. During my final review on my prevoius 200 hr teacher training, the program director simply said I did great and was ready to go out and teach. Not so in this training...it looks like I will get real feedback from the whole group, including the director...which is why I signed up.

By Sunday afternoon we were on our third round of teaching and I had a small success...one of my peers told me that he thought I seemed about 70% human! Woo-hoo! I never thought I'd be happy to be told I seemed only 30% like an automaton, but I was genuinely pleased!