Inside Teacher Training: Interview with Scholarship Winner Jasmeen

Ready for a change? CorePower Yoga Teacher Training may be just the thing! No matter what your ultimate goal is, Teacher Training will help you work on skills that can be used both on and off your mat.  

We sat down with Jasmeen, a recent Teacher Training grad and scholarship winner, to hear about her experience. 

Tell us about your yoga journey

I started doing yoga when I was 10 or 11 years old with my mom at a rec center. I really didn’t understand what it was - I just thought it was a stretching class. 

For me, yoga became an escape. I didn’t really like high school, I was bullied. My mom wasn’t always around because she was spending a lot of time with my brother who was sick. I struggled with depression and anxiety issues my whole life. For me to be able to go to a yoga class was something I looked forward to. It was and is the only time that my mind is very quiet. From this time on, yoga was a very important part of my life.   

What made you want to do TT?

I honestly went into Yoga Teacher Training with no intention of becoming a teacher. I had a lot of friends who had done it and they told me about the journey and how great of an experience it was. I just felt that at the time I applied for Teacher Training, I was in this place in my life where I needed to go through that journey and find myself. Also, since I work with kids, I knew this would be a great opportunity for me to set myself up to be able to volunteer my time, teaching kids yoga. I didn’t think I’d ever take Teacher Training and want to teach in a studio or put myself out there like that, but my mindset has completely changed now. 

Tell us about your Teacher Training experience.

It was a lot of self discovery for me. There were a lot of things about myself that came up that I had suppressed because I didn’t want to face them. There were a lot of challenges in Teacher Training, but all of them ended up being for good, they helped me to become a better person. 

The mindset I’ve taken from Teacher Training has changed the way I look at multiple parts of my life. At school and at work, instead of fixating on things that I don’t understand, I take the things I do understand and work on those. Then I go back and look at what didn’t stick or work and why. 

What would you tell people who are interested in doing Teacher Training?

Be ready to go for the ride of your life. Have an open mind and an open heart because you’re learning a different language, you’re being extremely vulnerable, you’re opening yourself up to people you don’t know. You have to have deep conversations and reflect on the person you thought you were before yoga. It’s a lot of self discovery, it’s a lot of reflecting, but it’s totally worth it. I think so many people come out of TT wanting to make yoga their life because of the positive outcome it has on them. 

What was the biggest thing you took from TT?

I wouldn’t say I necessarily know my purpose completely, but I feel like I have more of an understanding of what I want to do in my life now. 

Do you want to teach yoga? 

100%, I definitely want to teach! It’s funny because I’m a very shy person and I don’t like a lot of attention on me, so I never wanted to teach. Then after we’d do practice teachings in Teacher Training, I slowly became more comfortable. Outside of class I’d do practice classes with my friends and I’d ask them for honest feedback. Something that always came up was that my friends think I have a calming teaching voice and I was shocked. I thought, “Okay, maybe I found my voice through teaching yoga!”

I also just want to be able to give back what I got from doing yoga. Practicing yoga has really changed my life. I know that there are so many people who are going through a struggle, and maybe it’d just take them taking one yoga class in order to find some peace. I’d love to be able to do that for people. 

Jasmeen is a 20-something living in Los Angeles. When she’s not in the studio, she spends her time working for a non-profit and studying advertising and mass communication at Cal State LA. Jasmeen completed her 200 hour Teacher Training last summer - we can’t wait to see what’s next!