Program Overview
Awaken the teacher within
With more than 20 years of experience in training yoga teachers, YKS knows that the best way to learn how to teach yoga is to immerse yourself completely in a yogic lifestyle and practice so that your teaching comes from your deep personal experience. At YKS, you will study in community with expert faculty and guest teachers, practice yoga every day, participate in posture clinics, study the ancient yogic texts, explore experiential anatomy, practice teaching in a variety of learning environments, and so much more.

What will you learn?
Skills for transformational teaching Help your students develop a heightened sense of body-awareness and self-awareness to deepen their practice on the mat, and show them how to take that awareness into their lives, off the mat.

How to create inspirational and safe yoga classes Develop skills for teaching an inspirational 1-hour or 1½-hour yoga class: discover creative ways to warm-up and cool down the body; learn the benefits of classical yoga postures and how to weave them into posture sequences that make an exciting class; find ways to motivate students and safely pace your class according to students’ skill levels and experience, including how to offer modifications, posture options, clarification of contraindications, and how to create lesson plans for a complete series of classes with progressive levels of difficulty.

Principles of anatomy, physiology, and kinesiology Focus on safety, joint movement, range of motion, and a functional understanding of skeletomuscular systems and structures.

Pranayama techniques Enable your students to experience body-mind integration and purification through yogic breathing, and teach them to connect consciously with prana, or life force—the inherent wisdom of the body. Learn and practice creative ways of incorporating various methods of pranayama into your posture sequences.

Relaxation and meditation methodology Gain skills for centering yourself and your students, creating sacred space, and guiding the class in a deeply restorative Savasana.

Yoga Teacher Training Outline

• Philosophy and History of Yoga
• Ethics
• Yama and Niyama
• Asana Postures subdivided into:
  • Stretching positions
  • Equilibrium positions
  • Extending positions
  • Bending positions
  • Lateral bending positions
  • Rotating positions
  • Head down positions
  • Positions using arms for support
  • Dynamic Sadhana
  • Static Sadhana
  • Postures activating the chakras

• Detailed study of yoga postures
  • Definition and the science of teaching yoga asana
  • Teaching objectives and examples of practical teaching sequences
  • Motivation of a defined practice
  • Variants
  • Benefits and contra-indications of asana and combined asana
  • Asana and the flow of energy
  • Symbology of principal and secondary asana
  • Therapeutic asana (yoga therapy)

• Breathing / Pranayama
  • Professional training and re-education to encourage proper breathing (rhythm, volume, respiratory phases, etc.)
  • Symbology of the respiratory system, energy channels and energy centre’s
  • Energy control through breathing
  • Pranayama according to traditional yogic scriptures
  • Bandha
  • Principal and secondary mudras
  • Breaths

• Interiorisation techniques
  • Modes adopted to induce withdrawal of the senses
  • Symbols, colors, vehicles associated with the chakras
  • The practice of Pratyahara

• Concentration or Dharana
  • Tools for inducing concentration
  • Postures and respiration for achieving concentration
  • Yantra and Mandala
  • Techniques and support materials for achieving concentration

• Meditation (Dhyana)
  • The definition of Oriental and Western mediation
  • Mantra Yoga
  • The use of mantra
  • Spontaneous meditation
  • Vipassana Meditation

• Relaxation
  • Nidra Yoga (deep relaxation techniques, determination and meditation)
  • Dynamic relaxation
  • Static relaxation
  • Different relaxation techniques

• Teacher Methodology
  • Group courses
  • Individual courses
  • The structure of a single lesson

• Theoretical Lessons:
  • Anatomy and physiology
  • Our outer shell
  • Cells
  • The function of the respiratory system
  • Circulatory system

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