It has been a long time since I truly did a personal post, so here it is. I’m finally an RYT200 yoga teacher. It has been a dream long in the making and I’m finally glad I got to do it last year. I love yoga, and quite simply even though I didn’t and still don’t practice it as much as I’d like to, I wanted to dig deeper and figure out what my style of teaching would be and how to get deeper into my practice. So I decided to do this post on how to become a yoga teacher in Dubai.

Little did I know, I’d be teaching, not often but I did start a lovely initiative for rescue cats with some lovely local rescuers and a pet lover’s app called ‘Meowga’ and it has been going pretty strong! For that, I am proud and feel really good.

How to become a yoga teacher in Dubai

Where to do my yoga course?

In terms of the yoga course, I completed my certification at Trident Wellness Centre in Dubai Marina. It is not the only option that I had, but it was definitely the most cost-effective and I was impressed by the calibre of teachers that were going to teach, which included a teacher of Ayurveda (something I’m very keen on learning too). Here are some of the other schools I looked into:

1. Zen Yoga (too expensive, AED 11,550 for an early bird price)
2. Yoga Ashram ( It was around the same price as Trident Wellness Centre, approx AED 9,000, but it didn’t run on weekends which was not an option for me as a person who has a full-time job)
3. Yogafirst (again around AED 9,000 for an early bird price, but the schedule was clashing with mine. Also, this is taught only by one teacher, however, I’ve heard she is excellent.)

Since then, there are many more yoga teacher training sessions going on in Dubai, so it’s best to go with one that you identify with and one that is accredited by Yoga Alliance. Some of them focus on some area of study like yoga therapy or even different contemporary yoga styles like Sri Sri Yoga. It’s really up to you, but don’t just blindly dive into something without doing thorough research on the module and teachers because that could make or break your experience. The main reasons I chose Trident is because it fit my budget, it fit my schedule (even though it took up 3 months of weekends), I wanted to delve deeper into being a Vinyasa teacher as well as having the opportunity to learn from well-experienced teachers. Did that happen? Not entirely, but read on.

What did my yoga course consist of?

The 200 hours at Trident are split into 3 modules – 50 hours of Dhyaan (meditation), 100 traditional hours of yoga (Hatha yoga) and 50 hours of Vinyasa.

What did I think of the course?

What I liked about it

• Learning from a yogic scholar like Dr Maha was truly an opportunity of a lifetime. His knowledge is so innate and deep and it’s been a true pleasure to learn from him.
• We explored Osho meditations which I hope to learn more and delve into as I’ve had the most surreal, out of body experiences.
• I loved exploring different types of yoga and learning experiences from different teachers. I got to learn more about Hatha, Iyengar yoga, Sivananda yoga, Yin Yoga, Power Yoga and Vinyasa.
• The Vinyasa classes were actually the most challenging to learn as we had no study aids in terms of sequencing. However, I have to say we did practice it so much, that some sequences are just etched in my head.
• I loved my classmates, they were a delight to be around right from the start.

What I didn’t like about it

• I felt the classes (especially for meditation) were just too crowded! While it was nice to see so many people interested in wellness, it just wasn’t enough space and attention given to all of us.
• One of the teachers didn’t turn up at all (The Ayurvedic expert in question). I was looking forward to hearing from her and getting to know more and it was a deciding factor. I feel I didn’t get what I paid for in that aspect. Instead, they got a teacher who was still on her journey to learning about Ayurveda and I feel she didn’t have the knowledge yet to share what she knew. Some of the things she said I know were outright wrong concepts.

My challenges

Trust me, I had many. One of which is that you very quickly realise it will take you years to really get any of this stuff. Intense studying is so important, and the true importance of yoga comes to life. While I am nowhere close to leading a true yogic life, there are many things about being one that I feel like I can do. However, in the beginning, the amount of study materials can be quite overwhelming. I am still going through the material and recommended readings 3 months on and there seems to be no end to it. It is a continuous study, but to some extent atleast for me, an imposter syndrome kicks in telling me I’m not ready to teach yet, because I don’t have complete knowledge. As Dr. Maha wisely told us, you’re not an engineer of yoga with these 200 hours, you’re a technician.

Let’s just say if you think you can be a good yoga teacher within these 200 hours of training, then you would be kidding yourself. There is a daily study and practice necessary for you to be in a mind and body space that will improve your teaching and learning skills, so be ready to put that work in if you truly want to teach.

Being away every weekend for 3 months was particularly taxing on my mind and body, but on the bright side, I discovered regular yoga practice gave me zero period cramps! So that was a great discovery for me.

Another thing I went through, was endless frustration with meditation. I think I was so tired by the week’s work, I found myself sleeping and missing out on the actual meditative practice. I ended up recording the rest of the sessions on my phone because I had no idea what happened when I slipped into slumber. You can even hear me snoring on the voice notes, lol.

Overall, as it went, I cannot complain much. I know my yoga journey is only beginning! Are you considering doing a yoga teacher training? I hope you found this post useful. Do let me know any questions you have and I’ll be happy to help!