Bikram vs. Barkan

Someone commented on an old post and asked for thoughts on Bikram teacher training vs. Barkan teacher training. (Bik vs. Bar) Now keep in mind I've only been to the Bar- training, so my understanding of the Bik- training is based on what graduated teachers have told me, and having taken Bik- classes from newly minted Bikram-trained teachers.

...

**UPDATED** May 2011:

Unfortunately I have found it necessary to delete the rest of this post and its comments. This post once continued on with several paragraphs of my personal, extremely subjective comparison of the two teacher trainings. In the opening paragraph, which I left above, you'll see I note that I've only been to once training, so not only was my post extremely subjective, my own subjective perspective lacked a very big piece. I never purported to be objective in any way, which some commenters ignored. ("You obviously prefer Barkan blah blah") Um. Duh.

While I think it's beneficial and important to discuss differences of opinion, both generally and in yoga especially given the way yoga and yoga business has blossomed in the West, the comments my post inspired were often extremely disrespectful and constituted harmful speech. I don't wish to sustain the cause for that type of communication.

If you are considering hot yoga teacher training and are interested in my EXTREMELY SUBJECTIVE, PERSONAL OPINION of the two trainings, please comment (comments are hidden but I will still see them) with your email address and I will send you the archived original text of this post. I will send it from an email account I don't use a lot, so if you reply with a lot of garbage and hateful words, I will never see it. Comments will be reviewed by me prior to publishing, so cultivate a positive intention before you start typing.

I understand people can get very passionate about a type of yoga, especially if a practitioner has experienced deep personal transformation based on a particular style of practice. But that deep personal transformation occurred because the practitioner kept showing up and opened their heart--the person who owns the studio, or trained the teacher, or patented that series of poses didn't do the work for him or her. You are the author of your own liberation, regardless of who teaches you. If a person feels the need to unloose the kind of venom I saw in the comments on this post, especially about yoga, that person needs to get back on his or her mat and practice some more.

And I can say that because it's my blog, and a forum for my own personal, subjective opinion.

I should add that Bikram's teacher training and The Barkan Method teacher training are far from being your only options when training to be a hot yoga teacher. A cursory web search will reveal this. Probably they are two of the best-known hot yoga trainings, although few on the West Coast have heard of Barkan. On the West Coast, however, Bikram's sequence continues to be the best-known and when other hot yoga studios in Seattle come up with their own sequence, they continue to pattern it after Bikram's, at least loosely, in my experience. They do this, at least in one case to which I can personally attest, and probably in many cases, in order to keep some familiarity for practitioners who've taken at a Bikram studio. I think that's a good call, since there are so many practitioners out there who have, and are familiar with that sequence.

Before you invest your time, money, and heart in a teacher training, it's helpful to ask around and get input from many people, and preferably people you trust, teachers whose classes you find meaningful.