Choosing an Aerial Teacher Training: Short Programs vs Depth

Across movement arts, teacher trainings vary dramatically in length, quality, and depth. Many of the most common ones last a weekend or a few days. They are popular for how quickly they can get a certification into your hands, but for anything on a quick timeline we have to weigh speed against the actual results.

A three+ month format for an aerial teacher training offers something that's designed to support you over a longer term. It gives space for the time-based parts of teaching: the parts that require repetition, feedback, integration, recursive reflection, and experimentation. Those simply cannot be absorbed over a short time span.

Short trainings give you ultra-condensed information. Long aerial teacher trainings offer layers of interwoven information, reshape how you think, bring depth to what you teach, and prepare you by giving you many opportunities, over time, to learn, discuss, ask questions, forget, relearn, and build your knowledge: Anatomy Physiology Psychological layers of safety and learning Neuroscience behind motor learning, fear, regulation How teaching and learning actually work Nervous System Dynamics Advanced Foundational Technique Class Dynamics Class Planning Cueing Strategy Teaching methods, styles, and evolution Safety protocols & emergency response And more...

Teaching isn’t just one particular cueing style or a list of tricks and their progressions. It’s being able to read a room, scan for risk, understand the basic cognitive and psychological processes involved in learning, establish technically excellent foundations, adapt your teaching style and cues, hold boundaries, regulate the energy of a class, build skills over a long term, and shift the plan on the fly. Those skills grow slowly, through many discussions, over many exposures, not over a single week intensive. Even if you found a way to fit all the content of a 3-month program into one week - there would be no retention, no ongoing discussion, no longer term dialogue to help refine and integrate the material.

A longer container gives you time to actually absorb knowledge instead of rushing through it. You revisit ideas, apply them in different scenarios, get feedback, adjust, discover new blind spots, and mature as a teacher. You don’t just acquire information - you begin to embody the knowledge. You start to think like a teacher, a leader, a forever-learner.

And then there’s the emotional and psychological side of teaching often skipped entirely. It takes time to explore how people learn, how nervous systems communicate with each other, how to create clarity and safety, how to handle fear, frustration, or overwhelm, and how your presence influences every person in the room. That kind of awareness comes from sustained conversation, mentorship, experience, and reflection.

A longer aerial teacher training program also supports the development of your teaching identity: your voice, your presence, your judgment, and your confidence. Most people underestimate how much this matters. Becoming a teacher isn’t just memorizing a set of cues and progressions; it’s becoming someone who can hold space, make decisions, communicate clearly, connect the unique set of dots that shows up in class, adapt quickly, and lead others with consistency. That simply takes time.

And finally, longer trainings allow for meaningful mentorship. You aren’t learning in isolation. You’re asking questions, getting corrections, receiving personalized feedback, and integrating knowledge with guidance while you’re actually using it. That structure is what makes skills stick — and what helps you feel competent and prepared, not just informed.

In short: Short trainings introduce you to teaching. A multi-month training establishes a layered foundation of knowledge and skills and gradually builds the context of teaching aerial. If your intuition is telling you to seek an aerial teacher training that goes deeper, the Wakeful Ascent BLOOM Aerial Teacher Training is made for you. This training takes place over three months plus a fourth month where you can continue to work on and get feedback on assignments. Join a small cohort online with live sessions and a 3-day in-person component. If that sounds like the kind of depth and detail you're looking for, learn more and join the waitlist here: