Yoga Teacher Tuneup 1-3 March, 2024

When you started teaching you may have had visions of deepening your own practice in a community of like-minded souls while delivering innovative, inspiring sequences that change your students’ lives forever. But the reality can often be different. The responsibility of planning and teaching multiple classes, running from studio to studio, keeping up with social media, and balancing personal time can leave you feeling burned out and even isolated at times.

It’s time to find your tribe and make the evolution of your teaching a priority!

Because yoga is constantly evolving, continuing education and connection to your ‘why’ is critical to thriving as a teacher in a competitive industry. This weekend is designed to build your skillset and reconnect you with the passion that first inspired you to teach. Upskilling brings confidence to your teaching and this weekend is designed to hone your craft, nurture your soul, fire up your practice, and connect you with a tribe of kindred spirits. Each morning there will be time for practice and connecting, the rest of the days will be devoted to theory.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Day 1: Refining your Cues and Teaching Off the Mat

One of the key elements of effective teaching is the ability to connect with your students. But if you’re looking at the floor in Down Dog while firing off cues, not only can you NOT connect with your students, you can’t see if your cues are effective, and you can’t keep your students safe! Effective cueing is an art form, and learning to use potent language to move your students in and out of poses is one of the hallmarks of masterful teaching.

We’ll focus on:

• Getting off your mat so you can address your teaching to what you see happening in the room
• How to use direct, effective language
• Identifying your ‘filler words’
• How to be comfortable offering moments of silence while you’re teaching

Day 2: The Effective Use of Themes

Using themes is much more than the ‘spiritual sandwich’ method of mentioning a quote or reading at the beginning and end of class. Effective theming is challenging, but when done properly, it elevates and sets your teaching apart. A theme can be a thread of purpose that weaves the various elements of a yoga class into an integrated body/mind/spirit experience for your students. A well-executed theme gives your students an embodied experience of a concept and underscores and supports what you are teaching.

We’ll focus on:

• Different types of themes (pose-based, stories, quotes, and more)
• What to do and what NOT to do when using themes
• Authenticity in theming
• Where to find ideas for themes
• How to know if your themes are effective

Day 3: Inversions and Assists

We’ll start day 3 with a three-hour Inversion Immersion! You’ll learn what makes an inversion more ‘advanced’ (it’s not what you think!) and how to teach inversions in a general class setting. The afternoon will be all about assists, how to touch, and how to safely spot your students in a variety of poses. We’ll focus on:

• A safe and sequential progression of inversions from the simplest to the most complex
• Why it’s important to teach inversions to beginners, and how to do it safely
• Why assisting is different to adjusting, and how to assist your students safely
• The art of touch
• The power of student demonstrations and how to facilitate a good demo during class

Prerequisites: Must have completed a minimum of 200 hours of yoga teacher training.

On completion, you’ll receive a certificate of completion and 21 CEC’s with Yoga Australia and Yoga Alliance, and a whole bunch of new friends!