Our teacher training consists of 3 School departments:
1. Online School, 2. Posture Clinic, and 3. The 12 day intensive – Psychological Practice of Teaching (How to be a teacher)
1. Online School:
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History,
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5000 years ago
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150 years ago
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40 years ago
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today
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Philosophy
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Six Sanskrit philosophies one goal
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Vedanta – a progressive and adaptive ideology
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Yoga – Patanjali the ancient path, Bhakti the modern path
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Samkya – a model for virtual reality
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Anatomy
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The musculoskeletal system
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Breathing
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The nervous system
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Yoga Anatomy (Paul Grilley)
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Developing a meditation practice
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grounding and centering
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pranayama
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nada yoga
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mantra practice
2. Posture Clinic: 3 days and 3 mornings
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Postures,
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21 principal poses
- Sanskrit Vocabulary of each pose w/ Pronunciation
- Physical Description/Break Down of each
- Benefits & Risks of each
- Teaching Action Cues of each
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Adjustments
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criteria
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safety
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when to and when not to
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Sequencing
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rules
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anatomical issues
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execution
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Scripting
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developing scripts
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preparing for teaching
3. The Psychological Practice of Yoga: 12 day intensive
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How to become a present, fearless, connected, calm and charismatic teacher
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Intro to teacher training
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Atma yoga theory of alignment (a way to move through everyday life)
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Titikshiva (the willingness to feel everything) the fulcrum of yoga practice
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Himalayan yoga – how to rewire the nervous system for courage
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The theory of mantras
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Sadhana – the daily practice of meditation →turning stress into strength
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Internal Dialogue – understanding how the mind works
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Roles as Yoga
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The grammar of roles – character
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The grammar of roles – objective
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The grammar of roles – emotion
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Rehearsal as Yoga
The X factor:
One of the most important aspects of becoming a teacher is your dedication to learn. The more yoga classes you take from widest array of teachers the deeper will be your foundation.
Atma Yoga teacher training recommends that you take a minimum of four yoga classes a week (although six is recommended).
If you live in the Los Angeles area we can provide you with a list of the teachers who will give you the widest experience of yoga as well as some of the best yoga classes available in the United States. (Sorry this list is only made available to students enrolled in at least one of the three teacher-training departments – online, postures clincic, 12 day intensive.)
In addition, after you complete the 12 day intensive you are required to take 10 classes from 10 different teachers and write reviews for them that you will post to Yelp. This is to reinforce the importance of continued learning and to give you a chance to see yoga teaching with the new eyes you will have after the intensive.
Ultimately yoga is how you balance the requirements of maintaining your own body, mental well-being, and spiritual journey with the ways you reach out to serve humanity.
Atma Yoga teacher training takes creating this balance as core to it’s teaching goals.
Your Journey Begins
The Atma Yoga journey begins with your heart. The heart is the wondrous force that drives you to improve, to excel, and to love. The question for some of us is how do we tap into our hearts? How do we open our hearts to what is possible?
The first thing to consider is that the heart is an agency of feelings. To access the heart we have to be willing to feel. In order to feel we have to be consciously aware of our bodies. We are inside of this magnificent vehicle, and we need to take responsibility for it. This means we have to recognize ourselves as separate from our bodies. This is the first step in opening ourselves up to the realm of the heart.
Your relationship with your body
The more we learn to feel and experience the sensation in our own bodies the closer we move to the real of our heart. It is in this part of the journey that we can heal and improve our self respect. The more we learn to see the body as a gift, a magical tool that we can use to navigate the material plane.
Your relationship with others
From the people that are a closest to you to the people that your pass by on the street; the more you understands that you are not only not your body, but that you are also not your mind, the greater your ability will be to explore, to love and to contain within your heart the person before you
Your relationship with Spirit
What is that lies beyond the edge of all expression, just outside the grasp of comprehension? What is that intangible but clearly perceptible phenomenon we see in the eyes of some one we love? Is that the evidence of soul? Where do souls come from? The answers to these questions lie on the other side of the body and the mind. This is the inconceivable, infinite, always fresh, always mysterious realm of Spirit. Yoga is a portal to Spirit.
