Functional Gifts for YTT Grads

Every season a pile of new yoga teachers is unleashed into the wild. Whenever I graduated everyone wanted to send me some sort of graduation gift. At the time all I really knew to ask for was yoga clothes because I didn't know what would be truly useful. Now it's been a few years and I know my way around a little better.

Here's My Top 10 Gifts to make a new teacher's life easier:

• Business Cards/Holders - Creative high quality business cards are more memorable.
• Parking Money - A parking meter cashkey would've saved me a lot of trouble when I first started teaching downtown.
• Hot tea - Sipping hot tea while teaching or just after class is great for overworked throats.
• Yoga Anatomy book - never stop studying.
• Yoga classes - to prevent burnout and stay inspired. Self-care is important.

• Square - to accept credit/debit for private sessions
• Blessed to Serve - I declared this book required reading for aspiring teachers.
• Yoga Teacher Bag - a good sized dedicated bag for classes keeps everything in one spot and makes it easy to carry all over town.
• Yoga clothes - Layers for cold classrooms, and nice new clothes for interviews/auditions.
• Binder - for organizing class plans/articles/notes/waivers/contracts...