Advanced Yoga Teaching Skills - Enhancing the skills that set us apart

This one-week module runs Monday to Friday, 9.15am - 5.15pm at the lake.

You may take this module at a time of your choosing, there is no set order for taking any of the 300 modules

Advanced Yoga Teaching skills does not mean teaching advanced yoga poses - of course it doesn't, unless of course that is what you are drawn to. Indeed, once we have settled into our teaching groove, have found our people & are connecting with our yoga community at large, we will want to learn more, we have come to know how vast this Yoga world is now. The 200 hours wetted our lips & our thirst for knowledge burgeons! It’s time to study again.

This week-long module will thoroughly dissect our communication skills & intensify our way of relating to ourselves & our students. Our own practice, still so important becomes the learning tool for us to become the kind of teacher that changes & transform the practice of our students. Only through introspection, self-awareness & humility can we begin to communicate our understanding to our students, that they may have the experience we have had.

“What is yoga by experience? Anusasanam means “let me have the experience my teacher had.”

TKV Desikachar

Advanced teaching is about listening, watching, feeling & asking questions, getting to know the students & learning by observing, offering rather than fixing & encouraging patience in a world that doesn't recognise patience anymore.

Practicing asana is still the best way for us to ground in the moment as the teacher & the student. Refining asana is a beautiful way to spend a week, thinking about the body, watching & following the breath, recognising our own innate power & fragility. There will be emotions & feelings & frustrations & all of it in a safe place.

Our mornings will be physical & we will look at:

Pose Analysis: Standing poses, forward bends, backbends, twists & inversions. Alignment, recognising form, lineage variations, pose modifications & adding props will be explored. We will talk alignment a lot!

Our afternoons will be theoretical & we will follow presentations with discussions & practicng languaging skills. Our topics will be:

Demonstrating Skills & Languaging: We will assess where it is appropriate to use disciplined & exacting language & where it becomes necessary to activate a more passive tone to bring about relaxation & letting go in pose. How to teach without doing it with the student, how to know when to demo & when to assist.

Theming & Sequencing: Scene setting & the weaving into class planning of mythology, history & philosophy.