Yoga Apprenticeship

Where practice becomes teaching

A six-month, one-to-one apprenticeship for experienced practitioners beginning to teach, qualified teachers seeking deeper development, and committed students who want their understanding of yoga to become more fully lived.

Some people arrive after completing a teacher training. Others have spent years practising, studying and learning through relationship, and feel that teaching is beginning to emerge naturally from that foundation.

Neither a certificate nor the number of years someone has practised can determine readiness on its own.

You may have completed a training but still feel uncertain of your voice. Perhaps your knowledge has grown while your personal practice has become mechanical or disconnected from your life.

You may never have taken a conventional teacher training, yet have practised seriously for years and now feel called to share what has shaped you. The question is no longer simply whether you know enough. It is how to meet the responsibility of teaching real people with sensitivity, honesty and discernment.

This apprenticeship is a space for that development.

What the apprenticeship is

This is a six-month, one-to-one relationship built around your practice, understanding and emerging or established teaching.

We meet for twenty-four 60-minute sessions across six months, usually following a weekly rhythm. Across that time, up to six of our meetings can continue for an additional hour when teaching observation, a particular practice or a deeper area of study requires more space.

Between our meetings, you can bring meaningful questions, teaching situations and experiences arising from your practice through voice notes and messages during my working week.

Our work may move through five broad areas:

Personal practice and study

Teaching observation and feedback

Anatomy, cueing and assisting

Philosophy, mantra and prāṇāyāma

The development of your own teaching voice

The exact emphasis will depend upon where you are, how you have learned and what needs sustained attention.

Someone beginning to teach after years of practice may need support translating embodied experience into clear language, responsible sequencing and the ability to meet different bodies.

A qualified teacher may need less foundational guidance and more direct feedback, philosophical depth or help moving beyond the structures and scripts learned during training.

For a practitioner who does not intend to teach, the same attention can be directed more fully towards sādhana, study and the integration of yoga into ordinary life.

The apprenticeship is not delivered through a predetermined curriculum. It develops through a relationship in which your practice and teaching can be followed over time.

I work with no more than three apprentices at any one time. This allows me to review what you bring between meetings, prepare where necessary and become meaningfully involved in your development rather than simply meeting you for a weekly appointment.

The apprenticeship requires a six-month commitment. The investment is £5,000, with a payment plan available.

Teacher training is one route, not the whole tradition

The standardised yoga teacher training is a relatively modern form.

In many earlier traditions, a student did not complete a short course and then receive permission to teach. They practised over time, often in close relationship with a teacher and community. They observed, served, studied, asked questions, made mistakes and gradually assumed greater responsibility.

Teaching could emerge from that sustained education when the student’s understanding, character and capacity were recognised.

Modern teacher training serves a different and often valuable purpose. It can provide a structured introduction to anatomy, sequencing, ethics, philosophy and the practical craft of leading a class. It may also provide the qualification expected by insurers, studios and professional organisations.

But completing a course does not make someone a finished teacher, just as years of personal practice do not automatically prepare someone to teach safely.

These are two different forms of readiness.

A certificate cannot replace lived understanding, sensitivity or the ability to respond to the person in front of you. Deep personal experience, however, does not remove the need to understand consent, boundaries, anatomy, appropriate progression and the responsibility involved in guiding somebody else’s body and practice.

The apprenticeship is where these dimensions can meet.

For somebody who has completed a teacher training, it offers the sustained relationship through which initial knowledge can mature.

For an experienced practitioner moving towards teaching without following the conventional route, it provides somewhere to develop the practical, ethical and relational capacities that personal practice alone may not have required.

The question is not whether one path is more legitimate than the other. It is whether you are prepared to meet teaching as a responsibility rather than simply a role you have decided to adopt.

What the apprenticeship can hold

There is no fixed curriculum imposed upon every apprentice.

We begin by looking carefully at where you are now, how you practise, what has shaped your understanding and what you sense is asking to develop.

From there, several threads may become part of our work.

Personal sādhana

Teaching can gradually displace the practice that first made teaching meaningful.

You may spend more time preparing classes than practising for yourself. Your sādhana can become another responsibility to maintain, or something performed according to an old structure that no longer responds to your life.

If you are only beginning to teach, another difficulty can appear. The moment practice becomes something you might share, you may begin observing yourself from the imagined perspective of a teacher. What was once intimate can become material.

We establish or refine a practice that is honest, sustainable and alive.

That may involve āsana, meditation, self-inquiry, chanting, mantra, prāṇāyāma, devotional practice or philosophical study. The intention is not to accumulate techniques. It is to remain with practice long enough for sensitivity, steadiness and understanding to develop through experience.

Learning to teach what you have lived

A long-standing practice contains forms of knowledge that can be difficult to articulate.

You may feel a posture clearly within your own body but not yet know how to guide somebody encountering it for the first time. Something that has become intuitive to you may need to be slowed down, examined and translated into language another person can understand.

We explore how direct experience becomes responsible teaching.

This includes recognising what can be shared, what still needs further investigation and where your own body, history or temperament may have led you to assume that everybody experiences practice as you do.

Teaching from experience does not mean treating your experience as universal. It means allowing what you have lived to become a ground for attention rather than a source of unquestioned certainty.

Teaching observation and honest feedback

You can bring recordings of classes, sequences, workshop plans and difficult teaching experiences into our meetings.

If you are beginning to teach, practice classes and smaller offerings can become part of the apprenticeship. We can examine what happened, what you noticed, where you became uncertain and how students responded.

For established teachers, we may look more closely at the habits that have formed over time.

You could be speaking too much because silence feels uncomfortable. Perhaps you rely on familiar phrases without knowing whether students understand them. You may be following a sequence mechanically while missing what somebody’s breathing, expression or movement is communicating.

We consider how you hold the room, the clarity of your language, the pace of your teaching and the relationship between what you planned and what was actually happening.

Feedback is not given to make you imitate my way of teaching. It helps you see more clearly, make responsible choices and uncover a voice that belongs to you.

Embodied anatomy, cueing and assisting

Anatomy becomes useful when knowledge of the body is joined by the ability to observe and feel.

We explore how movement and posture are experienced within your own body, rather than treating anatomy as a collection of terms to memorise.

You begin to recognise the difference between a useful edge and unnecessary force. We consider when a student might benefit from encouragement, when they need another approach and when the most intelligent instruction is to stop.

Particular attention is given to the assumptions that can develop through personal practice. Something that feels accessible or supportive in your body may be unsuitable for somebody with a different history, structure, condition or level of experience.

Assisting requires more than knowing where to place your hands. It asks for consent, attention, sensitivity and an understanding that you are meeting a living person rather than arranging a body into an ideal shape.

Where appropriate, we can examine positioning, the principles and ethics of physical assisting, and the cues that help students develop awareness from within their own experience. When we meet in person, this can also include practical work with assisting.

Philosophy as something lived

Yoga philosophy can easily become beautiful language spoken from the front of a room.

Before sharing a teaching, we investigate what it means within your own life.

Where does it challenge you? What have you genuinely experienced? Which parts remain intellectual? Are you speaking from direct understanding, or repeating an interpretation because it sounds authoritative?

You do not need to have resolved every human difficulty before you can teach. You do need enough honesty to distinguish what you know, what you believe and what you are still exploring.

That discernment allows philosophy to enter your teaching naturally, without performance or the need to present yourself as having reached somewhere you have not.

Mantra, chanting and prāṇāyāma

These practices carry effects and responsibilities that cannot be understood through definitions alone.

We can explore what a mantra does within breath, attention and the body before you consider sharing its potency with others. Chanting can be approached through meaning, pronunciation, rhythm, devotion and the direct experience of allowing the voice to become part of practice.

Prāṇāyāma requires the same care. We look at what a particular practice asks of the nervous system, how it affects you, when it may be helpful and when it may be inappropriate.

The point is not to collect more material for your classes. It is to understand what you are offering, why you are offering it and whether it genuinely serves the people in front of you.

The life of the teacher

Your teaching cannot be separated from the person doing it.

Confidence, ambition, comparison, uncertainty, relationships, responsibility and the desire for approval can all enter the teaching space.

You may be afraid of appearing inexperienced, so you speak with more certainty than you feel. A need to be liked can make boundaries difficult. Frustration in your own life may affect the way you meet a student. Success can draw your attention away from the practice that gave the work its foundation.

The apprenticeship gives us somewhere to meet these movements without pretending that becoming a teacher means becoming a finished human being.

Over time, your teaching can become less dependent upon performance and more rooted in attention, honesty and the willingness to respond to what is actually present.

Why I call this an apprenticeship

My understanding of yoga was shaped by a relationship that extended far beyond attending classes.

By the time I met my teacher, he had already spent more than thirty years studying, practising and living yoga. His path included Ashtanga, Jivamukti and Sivananda Yoga, but what affected me was not his list of trainings.

I encountered somebody whose practice had entered the way he lived.

There was a steadiness in how he met people, difficulty and responsibility. He was not trying to appear spiritual or present himself as somebody special. The teaching could be felt in the ordinary way he moved through life.

I began by attending yoga classes. Those classes gradually opened into meditation, satsang and a community of people who were serious about practice. Yoga became larger than the hour spent on a mat.

I started offering karma yoga. At first, that meant cleaning the studio and helping at events. Later, I worked in the garden, fixed things around his home, supported retreats and helped build spaces in which the community could gather.

Through that service, I spent real time around my teacher and the life of the teaching. I saw how he worked, welcomed people, met challenges and held responsibility. He came to know me through conversation, work, shared meals, retreats and the ongoing life of the sangha.

That proximity entered the physical practice too.

My teacher would use my body to demonstrate postures. He showed students how my feet were placed, how weight travelled through my legs and what changed when alignment shifted. If I moved incorrectly, he corrected me in front of the room.

It was not always comfortable, but it was precise.

I was not simply told where my feet should go. I learned to feel what changed when they were placed differently. Over time, I began to understand how one movement affected the rest of the body and how easily a teacher can repeat an instruction without having fully experienced it.

The studio also brought us into contact with experienced teachers including Swami Govindananda, Gregor Maehle and Yogeswari. Their visits offered different expressions of practice, philosophy and devotion. My continuing relationship with my own teacher gave me somewhere to digest what I was receiving rather than briefly consuming it and moving on.

Only after years of this did he encourage Bee and me to travel to India and complete the 300-hour Jivamukti teacher training.

The formal training was valuable, but it did not begin my education in yoga, nor was it treated as the moment at which I suddenly became ready to teach. It entered a much longer relationship of practice, service, observation and responsibility.

When we returned, we began teaching real people. My teacher observed us, corrected us and sometimes arrived unexpectedly to see how our classes were developing. Gradually, we stopped trying to reproduce somebody else’s teaching and began discovering our own.

Eventually, he stepped back almost completely. At the time, I did not fully understand it. Years later, I can see that his withdrawal was another part of the apprenticeship.

A healthy teacher does not create a student who cannot stand alone. The relationship should develop viveka, discernment: the capacity to meet your practice, your students and your life with increasing clarity and responsibility.

You are given enough support to grow and enough space to discover your own ground.

I cannot recreate the traditional conditions in which I learned, nor would I pretend to reproduce an ancient guru–śiṣya relationship through an online apprenticeship.

What I can offer is something of its essential intelligence: continuity, observation, honest correction, lived practice and a relationship in which you are known over time.

Who this is for

This apprenticeship may be appropriate if:

You have completed a yoga teacher training but know that your deeper education as a teacher has only begun.

You have practised yoga seriously for years and feel ready to begin teaching through a closer relationship rather than entering immediately into conventional teacher training.

You already teach but want your teaching to become a more authentic expression of your practice.

You are developing workshops, retreats or a more substantial body of work and want close guidance as your responsibilities grow.

You are a committed practitioner who does not intend to teach but feels ready for a deeper and more sustained relationship with the path.

You do not need to arrive with a perfectly formed goal.

You do need a sincere willingness to practise, look honestly, receive feedback and remain available to learning.

This apprenticeship is not an accredited teacher-training course and does not award a professional teaching qualification.

If you intend to teach publicly or professionally, you will need to confirm the insurance, venue and membership requirements relevant to where and how you plan to teach. We can discuss that practical landscape honestly without reducing readiness to the possession of a certificate.

Commitment and exchange

The apprenticeship requires a six-month commitment.

This is not because development can be promised on a timetable. It is because relationship takes time.

I need enough continuity to understand your practice, recognise your patterns and see how you respond when something becomes difficult. You need time to carry what we explore into your teaching and life, discover what actually happens and return with something more than an immediate impression.

The investment is £5,000, with a payment plan available.

The apprenticeship includes:

Twenty-four 60-minute one-to-one meetings across six months, usually following a weekly rhythm

Up to six additional 60-minute deep-dive extensions when teaching observation or the work requires more space

Teaching observation and detailed feedback

Review of recordings, sequences, workshops and developing offerings

Guidance for your personal practice and study

Voice-note and message support between meetings during my working week

A relationship shaped around your actual development rather than a predetermined curriculum

I accept no more than three apprentices at any one time.

The limit matters because this relationship asks for more than the hours visible in the calendar. It requires time to review your work, consider what you bring between meetings, prepare where necessary and remain genuinely attentive to your development.

In older traditions, the relationship between student and teacher was often supported through sevā and karma yoga: practical contribution within a shared life and community.

Modern life rarely provides those same conditions. Money is the practical exchange that allows me to make substantial room for this work. It is not payment for enlightenment, access to secret knowledge or a guaranteed transformation.

I bring my experience, attention, honesty and willingness to become meaningfully involved in your development.

You bring your practice, participation and readiness to be seen, questioned and corrected.

This is not another qualification to collect. It is a sustained period in which what you have learned through practice, formal study or both is given the attention and relationship necessary to become your own.

Begin with a conversation

Before either of us commits, we begin with a free introductory conversation online.

You can tell me where you are, how your practice has developed, whether you already teach and what you are hoping to explore.

I will explain how I work, answer your questions and speak honestly about whether I believe the apprenticeship is appropriate for what you need.

If you want to teach without completing conventional teacher training, we can also discuss what the apprenticeship can genuinely provide and what separate professional requirements you may still need to meet.

There is no pressure to make a decision during the call.

Because I work with only three apprentices, the relationship needs to feel right for both of us.

Book an Introductory Conversation

“A fulfilled life is not found somewhere else. It begins in the way we meet this moment.”