Yoga for Mental Health Teacher Training with Maria Kirsten, OT, EYRT500, YACEP

The intention of this course is to help yoga teachers practice and teach yoga in a way that supports their own and their students' mental health. This course reorients the focus from the teaching of poses and practices to using poses and practices as opportunities to sense internally, to explore curiously, and to respond compassionately to challenges and opportunities as they arise. This course is not a certification in teaching yoga for any particular diagnosis, nor is it about herding people with mental health problems together into a class. This course is about understanding mental health from a yogic framework and from the framework of recovery, it is about understanding how yoga works on a scientific and experiential level, and it is about knowing how to create a safe, ethically responsible, trauma informed environment in which to offer yoga. 

​Course Content:​

• The Yoga for Mental Health Teacher Training is designed to educate and support yoga teachers to offer classes that train resilience, self regulation and self empowerment through yoga. In a safe environment, with a supportive teacher, yoga is a means of finding and cultivating a positive healthy relationship with ourselves.
• The concept of Recovery in mental health and the Yogic framework for mental health
• Scientific explanation of how yoga supports mental health
• Bottom up versus Top Down approaches are explained and explored in practice
• Evidence based approaches and practices which support resilience, recovery and self regulation.
• Important contraindications and guidelines for anxiety and depression.
• A definition and explanation of trauma informed care (this training does not focus exclusively on trauma sensitive yoga) and how to implement it in practice.
• Each of the three days will have time for theory, practical training, reflection, and discussion.

Requirements for Registration: 

• 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training Certificate, or Registered Health Professional
• minimum 6 months teaching experience or relevant clinical experience
• Basic anatomy: familiarity major bones, joints and muscle groups, basic anatomy of breathing, movements of major joints
• Short Statement of why you want to undertake this training and what you intend to do with it. 
• Please note: this course is directed to teachers and therapist who want to offer yoga that supports mental health. It includes using yoga for self care and self regulation, but cannot, in such a short space of time, or with a group of this size, offer the continuity or personalised support for a person who is acutely unwell or in crisis.

Upcoming courses:

                  Krishna Village Retreat Centre, near Murwillumbah, northern NSW: April 12-14, 2019
​                                      click here for schedule and registration information

                       Lennox Head, NSW Northern NSW: 21-23 June, 2019
                                                   click here for schedule and registration information


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