Prepped and Ready for Online Training Success

Harnessing your hormones to get the best out of your online teacher training. By Kelsey Taylor

Reading time: 4 minutes

Once you have made the commitment to develop new skills you want to make sure you are at your best. Studying online has the advantage of no travel and maintaining access to many self-care routines that help you keep your hormones in balance.

Yoga involves many disciplines, and your lifestyle choices have a huge effect on your hormones. They affect your mood, health, and energy levels. During your training, you want to be able to concentrate, receive information and remember what you have learnt so you can pass it on to your students.

Here are some tips you may wish to think about for making sure you get the most out of the experience:

Know your inner hormonal cycles: Everybody experiences the inner cycle of the ‘circadian rhythm’ — it controls our sleep/wake cycle and certain functions that happen over a 24-hour period. Male biology works mainly with this cycle, meaning routines should follow a 24-hour pattern. The female body also experiences the circadian rhythm daily but during the child-bearing years they also experience the ‘menstrual cycle’. There are huge sex hormonal shifts over four phases that will affect her ability to sleep, concentrate, availability of energy, mood, and emotions. A woman should have daily routines but also make small changes depending on where in her cycle she is. Understanding these cycles provides a framework for overall health and wellbeing.

Make sure you have a regular sleeping pattern: When we sleep the body is restoring and repairing, which allows us to feel mentally and physically alert when we wake. Melatonin (our sleep hormone) starts to rise during the evening so we should avoid overstimulation during this time. This means we shouldn’t eat late, avoid stimulating exercise and reduce the use of phones, laptops and TV which use blue light and confuse the body in their hormone production. Females experience a complete collapse of sex hormones around menstruation which can affect this sleep routine, so extra rest is advised where necessary.

Maintaining a balanced diet: food is fuel for the mind and body, and eating the right foods at the right time keeps the body in balance. Making sure we include carbohydrates, protein and healthy fats will help the body in its hormone production. Online training allows us to have full access to all the foods that will benefit us.

Engaging in moderate exercise: movement creates and moves energy around the various systems in the body. Too much exercise can create stress in the body and too little can lead to feeling lethargic. There are hormonal peaks in the morning and late afternoon where everyone benefits from being more active, so think about the time you practice. Females should use the peak of oestrogen at ovulation for peak performance and reduce activities around menstruation

These are small changes that can be made that can have a massive effect on our overall wellness — when we are healthy, and feel at our best, we can enjoy our online training and learn as much as possible.

Kelsey Taylor is the founder of Kelsey Taylor Yoga (kelseytayloryoga.com)