What should a home yoga practice look like?

My little girl was 8 months when I started my yoga teacher training, which was scheduled over 3-day weekends once a month, for 8 months. Most days I left an hour after she woke and got back after she'd gone to bed. It was very hard. Leaving her. Coming face to face with my mum-guilt about leaving her.

I was trying to learn to be a yoga teacher and also still learning to be a mum to small baby, and halfway through my training I went back to my office job 3.5 days a week, the rest of the time trying to practice my own yoga, trying to plan classes and practice teaching, while she never ever slept and I felt I was doing badly at everything (now looking back, reading that back, I see how wrong I was, in my exhaustion and self-reproach. We are terrible critics to ourselves!)

I never felt anything other than supported by by own lovely teacher training from my lovely compassionate teacher and fellow trainees. I tried to get good-enough at teaching as I was good-enough at mothering. I tried not to feel totally squashed by self-criticism and doubt, and failed sometimes. I remember reading about another teacher training (by reputation a fairly disciplined course) which said that you shouldn't apply for the course unless you had 2 hours a day to give to your own self-practice PLUS your course reading and learning and teaching practice time.

At the time I remember feeling triggered by that (are you/were you triggered by everything in early motherhood? I was. It's normal and fine to be vulnerable in all the newness) because I was very lucky if I was clocking more than 20-30 minutes a day in the situation I found myself in. Immediately those not-good-enough feelings rushed in, those why-am-I-even-bothering feelings. Now, with the benefit of time passed, I feel cmpletely furious about it. I mean honestly. Fuck those guys. Anyone with so little imagination that they can't think you might be a brilliant teacher ready to unfurl but also with non-negotiable time-sucking THINGS in their lives at that point - well, I wouldn't part with my money to do their precious training. 

Self-practice is important for a teacher and of course, with any training there has to be a certain time commitment so you can learn the craft. 2 hours a day plus all the other stuff is nonsense though. Nonsense. We live in the real world. We have jobs and children and other commitments. For a long time I held a lot of "shoulds" about my home practice - how active it should be, how long, how varied, how experimental ... blah blah blah. I have a lot less of them now, and I often practice for not more than 30 mins a day, and I still think I'm a good teacher.

We all internalise shoulds about everything, and I try on focus on learning to spot where I've done that and where I can dismantle those assumptions.