Join us for our unique and extensive 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training Course. A full immersion into the Yoga system, examining dynamic and static styles of Vinyasa Flow and Hatha Yoga, our teaching methodology and teaching practicum goes above and beyond the Yoga Alliance requirements for a level one course. This course has been designed to equip our students with the necessary tools and experience to transform themselves into the teachers they aspire to become. Our 200 hour program is accredited by Yoga Alliance and graduates of this course will receive internally recognized credentials and the ability to register with Yoga Alliance as an RYT 200 

-Structural Alignment Workshops

-Applied Yoga Anatomy Training

-Intuitive Flow Sequencing

-Verbal Cues Tutorials for all major Asanas

-Modification & Adjustment Clinics

-Yoga Philosophy Studies 

-Pranayama & Meditation

-Intro to Yoga Nidra

-Interactive Teaching Practicums & Feedback Sessions

Unlike most programs which have only one final exam at the end of the course, our Yoga Teacher Training program will have at least 5 rounds of teaching practicum, where students will have the opportunity to apply and polish the newly acquired skills and knowledge from lectures and workshops in a live setting. This safe space will allow the group to collectively fine tune the necessary skills to build a strong foundation for their yoga careers and experience and observe the reoccurring tendencies new instructors have and begin to replace them with effective methods for cultivating awareness in their students. 

A variety of situations, time restrictions, and styles of classes will be presented and practiced to create a template for approaching lead studio classes. Drawing from our Structural Alignment workshops, students will learn how to break down postures from the ground up, understanding their actions, weight distributions, goals and priorities, in order to allow you as a teacher to have the ability to fully understand and explain each asana, along with the opportunity to run alignment workshops in the future.

Teaching practicum sessions will be followed by group discussions which we have seen to be invaluable to the growth and development of new instructors. Not only in the development of their own teaching abilities, but in their vision and ability to analyze their peers and provide insightful feedback, a transformation begins to occur throughout the rounds creating a new awareness to detail and opportunity to provide that awareness to their students. 

Our Structural Alignment workshops will breakdown and examine all core asanas from the ground up, deepening our student’s intellectual understanding of each posture, and creating a strong foundation for expanding physical awareness throughout the body. Once the priorities of an asana and its actions, weight distribution, and student’s tendencies in these postures are understood, we can begin to practice more mindfully and as teachers bring this level of awareness to our students to create a safe environment for growth and understanding. With these insights and knowledge, this will not only arm our new teachers with the ability to teach similar styles of alignment workshops, but bring this level awareness into studio class settings, creating a more impactful and safer environment for their students.

Lead Hatha and Vinyasa classes will be held in order to have an energetic space to incorporate the ideas and actions learned in our Structural Alignment workshops. Along with developing our personal practice, these lead group classes will also be used as templates to examine in our Sequencing lectures and will help as live examples for developing student’s sequences for their teaching practicums.

The Structural Skeleton of Fluidity

& Intuitive Flow Sequencing

A unique and accessible perspective on sequencing will be provided to help new teachers create and design static and dynamic style classes and workshops. Situational sequencing and themed classes will be examined, explored, and implemented in our teaching practicums, preparing our new teachers with an array of perspectives and approaches to leading classes. Designing classes and courses for beginners, intermediate students, and seasoned practitioners will be gone over in detail, and students will be expected to created several sequences of their own to grow from experience of attempting their perceived ideas of how classes should be structured in a real live setting. An emphasis on fluid transitions, will increase the overall fluidity and feel of the designed sequences, and by understanding all possibly avenues from asana to asana, and effectively utilizing positions, students will be taught how to have the ability to teach intuitively when the sequence they have created may need to be alter to fit the group that they are currently teaching. 

As instructors in group lead classes, one of the most important tools is our ability to use effective and insightful instructions to draw students into proper alignment and guide them safely through transitions. Our extensive verbal cues tutorials will draw and expand on our Structural Alignment workshops from a teacher’s perspective, learning to use general and applied verbal cues as physical adjustments from a non-physical space, drawing physical awareness in our students and allowing them to find the action form the inside out. Especially when dealing with large groups, when physical adjustments on every individual in each posture is simply not possible, being able to use effective verbal cues is imperative to maximizing the positive effects and safety for your class. All core asanas will be examined and an exhaustive amount of verbal cues will be provided along with strategies and approaches on how and when to use these verbal adjustments.

In our style and philosophy of asana, our methodology towards physical adjustments is a noninvasive approach, applying this tool as aid and extension to our verbal cues. Too many times we have seen aggressive physical adjustments that have ended up injury for students, as many schools of thought and teachers have the ideal posture and goal of the pose to go “deeper,” bend further, whereas many times the student actually needs to come back and realign themselves to work more intellectually. Our physical and visual adjustments are taught be used as a means to illuminate our words and explanations and allow our students to understand these actions from the inside out within their own bodies, rather than forcing their bodies into a deeper position. The goal being that once their bodies begin to understand the actions in the pose, that in their own self-practice or in a studio class, they will begin to recognize these actions and their practice will deepen in a new level of awareness.

A huge focus throughout the course will be examining not only the how’s of what we do, but the why’s. Each yoga teacher must adopt, develop and grow their philosophy of their practice and how they share their experience. The philosophy of asana and how it is taught will be explained and observed from many perspectives, and throughout our teaching practicum sessions, given the space to explore these approaches, styles, and methods.

A survey course of variety of perspectives of Yogic philosophy and Zen Buddhism will be explored, questioned, and discussed in hopes to stimulate new trains of thoughts as foundations for higher states of consciousness. Ideas on a liberation of consciousness and its correlation to a path towards enlightenment will be observed and analyzed, along with the ethics and morality of Yogic philosophy and how it may be implemented in our modern epoch. Texts from the Bihar School of Yoga, the classical text of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Alan Watts, and others will be examined in our group discussions and lectures.  

An examination of the body and actions in postures from a biomechanical view of each postures will help build a deeper understanding of what is happening in each asana. Our main goal being to give an introduction and foundation to the physical practice in order to give useful and accessible tools which can be used in the classroom and lead classes and allow our teacher to instruct intelligently and safely. Lectures and workshops will give an added perspective and knowledge on why certain transitions in dynamic classes should be avoided, and the limitations of the body and proper actions to protect the body from the future injury of your future students.

The breath is known as the life force of the body in our practice, and the breathing techniques of pranayama have been used by Yogi’s as one of the pivotal tools to reconnecting to the source and drawing to higher states of consciousness. A variety of techniques and methods will be taught and practiced in this course, along with drawing them into our teaching practicum sessions and sequencing in order to allow students teachers to implement these techniques in their own future classes.

A variety of mediation methods will be observed and practiced in order to give students available tools to bring mediation into their own personal practice, along with incorporating it into their teaching methods. An intro to Yoga Nidra will be experienced and explained along with scripting lead meditations from a teacher’s perspective. 

The Sanskrit names of asanas is the most universe language for our postures. Sanskrit and English names will be studied in order to equip our teachers with the best reference and tools to effectively teach in studios across the globe. We will also learn Mantra chants which are traditionally practiced in in India.

It is odd for most to speak of yoga as an industry but it is quite a large and expanding one and as a new instructor, it can be difficult finding one’s footing and place in this business without losing what we all love so much about our practice and the beauty it brings us.  Throughout our teaching methodology lectures and feedback sessions in teaching practicum sessions we will include insights about the studio life and how to approach running courses, workshops and retreats. Along with these insights we have lectures on approaching the industry as a new instructor and how to gain experience and employment in the most organic ways possible.

7:30 to 9:00 Morning Practice*

9:00 to 10:00 Breakfast

10:15 to 1:15 Training Session**

1:15 to 3:15 Lunch Break

3:30 to 5:00 Training Session**

5:15 to 7:00 Structural Alignment/Teaching Practicum

*Morning Practice includes Hatha Yoga and Vinyasa Flow lead classes, Pranayama, Meditation, and Teaching Practicum.

**Training Sessions will include all Teaching Methodology lectures and workshops, along with Philosophy and Anatomy lectures. 

Schedule may alter for arranging time schedules for Teaching Practicum Sessions.) 

Stevie Ray E-RYT 500

Stevie Ray is an international Yoga teacher who has been primarily stationed out of Rishikesh, India, the capital and birth place of Yoga.  He has been a lead methodology instructor and asana teacher at Himalayan Yoga Academy and Rishikesh Yog Peeth’s teacher training courses, along with retreats and workshops in the States, Nicaragua, Thailand, and Ukraine. As a teacher, he is dedicated to the development of the connection of breath and the body in his students, and utilizing the tools of our physical practice as a bridge to meditation and higher states of consciousness.  He has trained extensively with the top Hatha and Iyengar teachers in Rishikesh, and his workshops primarily focus on structural alignment and building a physical and intellectual understanding of postures, expanding awareness in his students’ practices. His classes range from dynamic flow sequences, hatha yoga, and restorative yoga, all with a focus on proper alignment.  “Yoga is an ancient art of self-healing that must be discovered by experience. We attempt to explore the body to bring awareness to dormant portions of our physical being while bringing light into the dark corners of consciousness.”

YOGA TRAIL PROFILE