advanced yoga teacher training — module 4

Our mod­ern lives are most­ly yang, mean­ing active, accel­er­at­ed and direct­ed out­wards. While we may wish to move to the oth­er end of the spec­trum, the yin side, it has become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for us to access still­ness and intro­spec­tion. In oth­er words: Even though we want to, it’s still hard to step off the ham­ster wheel and just drop into med­i­ta­tion.

When it comes to this tran­si­tion, Yin Yoga (like Pranaya­ma or Restora­tive Yoga) can build a bridge between our active and more recep­tive state. Prac­tic­ing Yin means we’re still in a yoga pose, we’re still using our body, but we move slow­ly or not at all. And that still­ness even­tu­al­ly seeps in through the lay­ers. Through the vehi­cle of the body, the mind can become still.

This foun­da­tion­al Yin mod­ule offers the space to learn more about the prac­tice of Yin Yoga through per­son­al expe­ri­ence and just enough the­o­ry. The knowl­edge will both serve your own prac­tice and the peo­ple you teach.

We will begin every day with a 90 minute Yin Yoga prac­tice to set our foun­da­tion in expe­ri­ence first.

The morn­ing prac­tice is fol­lowed by a lec­ture with insights into the gross body on the first day (see below for details). On the sec­ond and third day, we’ll delve into the con­cepts of Daoist phi­los­o­phy and Chi­nese med­i­cine and how they have impact­ed the prac­tice that came to be named Yin Yoga.

The sec­ond half of the morn­ing and after­noons will be ded­i­cat­ed to dis­cussing the pos­es from the morn­ing prac­tice, learn­ing how to enter and exit safe­ly and going through alter­na­tives and vari­a­tions. Stu­dents will be giv­en time to cre­ate their own sequences and ask ques­tions as they arise.

The after­noons open with an invig­o­rat­ing Yang sec­tion (breath and body) and close with a calm­ing prac­tice con­sist­ing of Yoga Nidra, Restora­tive and mantra.