You will master these major
areas of teaching Yoga: 

To clearly demonstrate, integrate and develop a more in depth teaching platform, we will intensify our daily practice with an enriched Sadhana. Today’s fast paced lifestyle and technology overload consistently demand awareness around the needs of depleted, drained and stressed students. Creating and teaching from a place of balance, harmony and well being provide for a rejuvenating and sustainable practice. As today’s teachers, we need to be able to recognize this in our classrooms and understand how alignment and the use of therapeutics and props can make or break a practice. Change occurs at the speed of light and developing techniques to address and heal in the classroom requires acumen and poise. You will learn how to assimilate ancient teachings with modern wisdom to evolve your teaching skills. Breath is life, life is breath, and to understand the intricacies of working with the Life Force, Prana, we will thoroughly explore from the basic to the in depth levels of breathing.

• Daily asana practice and teaching

• Identification and instruction for beginning, intermediate, advanced and all levels classes

• Deeper cultivation of your personal teaching style, including deeper explorations into a myriad of yoga class styles and forms

• Full exploration and alignment delineation for all asana groupings as per the Foundational Level training

• Advanced asana exploration and vinyasa krama styles

• Advanced teaching techniques

• Therapeutic yoga techniques with specific healing modalities for injury and trauma

• Energetics of Assists: advanced techniques and use of props

• Using Subtle body energy for advanced practices, including Bandhas, Pranayama and alternative practices

• In depth exploration of Kapalabhati, Bhastrika, Nadi Shodhana, One Minute Breath and Brahmari

• Specific instruction on how to teach Pranayama per Doshic imbalance

• How to strengthen, tone, recharge and restore with Pranayama

• How to harmonize emotional, mental and spiritual conditions with Pranayama as well as conjuring altered states.

• How to structure a class on Pranayama

The physical body contains a myriad of systems, skeletal, muscular, respiratory, nervous, digestive and cardiovascular. Within these systems, the subtle or energy body exists with its rarefied and intangible presence. With mind manifesting body, the study and understanding of how these systems integrate is critical. Preventing pain and injury or ahimsa, lies at the very root of these practices. Here we will explore in more depth the structure, system and nature of body dynamics.

• Learning to recognize habitual patterns to prevent injury and alleviate pain

• Furthering the study of how mind manifests body through subtle energy channels and how to shift awareness to release long held beliefs, patterns and thus illness and dis-ease.

• Further explorations into Ayurveda and its role in practice and lifestyle with herbs, body treatments, and food

• Review and analysis of key muscles and their interplay with asana, bandhas, nadis, chakras and vayus

• An esoteric walk into the world of cellular disharmony and the Organ Emotional link

• Specific attention to food and its relationship to heath and well being

• Nutrition and health: food choices, lifestyle choices

• Sound healing and its ramifications

• Exploring the science of Neuroplasticity of the Brain and its relationship to Sadhana

• Philosophy, Ethics, Meditation, Mantra, and Mudra

• Incorporating discussions and practices to assimilate ethics and philosophy along with reflective, mindful and inquiry based meditation practices using mantra, mudra and breath will synthesize Eastern minds with Western issues.

Removing the divide between “doing yoga” and “living yoga” is as essential as it is to realize that meditation is not something we “do” as much as a way that we live. Often we may find in our initial foray into a spiritual path, that many precepts are directly contradictory to our current lifestyle. Bridging this gap and cultivating a more aware and gracious lifestyle without becoming dogmatic takes skill and humility.  The ancient sacred yogic texts as well as some splendid modern works lend great insight into this art of creating, teaching and embodying a harmonious life. Tools for this include summoning fortitude, educing poise and potentiating humility. Incorporating discussions and practices to assimilate ethics and philosophy along with reflective, mindful and inquiry based meditation practices using mantra, mudra and breath will synthesize our natural polarities.

• Visiting our relationship to the ancient sacred texts and their application to today’s lifestyle to create a sacred teaching platform

• Elaboration on sacred texts such as the Gherandha and Shiva Samhitas, Yoga Spandakarika and other sacred works, including the Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Hatha Yoga Pradipika and The Upanishads

• Exploring in depth meditation techniques with extended times

• Dieties, Mythology and Meditation

• Exploring Japa: the art and science of mantra chanting

• Exploring Mudra: the benefits and results

• Active practices to enhance practical ways of Service including conversations and activities on: Social activism, organizing and conducting Satsang and cultivating a giving and involved student body

• How to recognize your Dharma and work with that

• Conversations around: community responsibility, environmental concerns of the times, Perma-culture and living in the world but not being of it. Yogic Cultural appropriation and the consequences.

• Ego and Shadow: how it shows up and how to create and live from a dynamic process and not goal oriented

• Hidden agendas in and out of the classroom, witnessing the grounds for teaching from a place of need to giving

• Learning to observe, assist, correct, enhance and demonstrate from a place of inspiration

• Tuning into the Body’s wisdom with insight into body feedback, pain, injury, mental suffering, dogma driven practice, restricted belief systems, past memory, conflicting systems and authoritarian practices

• Moving from prodding to elevation in your teaching methods

• Cultivate in your teaching honesty, pure compassion and support

• Classroom situations: inappropriate student/teacher relationships, vulnerability in the class, and how to handle unexpected classroom situations

• Trauma Informed yoga

Invoking the pearls of wisdom from each learning moment takes critical thinking, often outside of the “box”. The entire foundation of the Divine Light Yoga teacher training is to instill within you a strong, inspiration driven Sadhana, without dogma or compulsion. The heartfelt intent is for you to develop and sustain a lifetime practice that carries you deeper and deeper into Self awareness. Using ancient and modern tools, teaching in a Sattvic environment, and allowing ample time for process, integration and joy, we know that with your heartfelt devotion, all that shows up is exactly what is meant to. Our intention is to further your ability to create, execute and deliver inspiring, personal and effective classes and learning experiences.

• Honing of your teaching skills with personally created sequences directed towards target audiences

• Peer reviews to refine languaging, voice projection, classroom presence and energy focus to develop confidence and ease

• Discussions and inquiry regarding our idealizations, visioning and dreams for teaching

• Refining your teaching platform: orchestrating workshops, classes, retreats and trainings with themes and formats

• Right livelihood: how to teach yoga ethically in a modern world

• Seva: service, activism and community involvement

• Digital Marketing your self, branding, actuating your identity with grace and humility

• Outside the Modules

• Throughout the course, between the modules, Sadhana, your daily spiritual practice is deepened, as this is the platform from which you will teach. Inspiring and sacred books will be recommended for reading and book reviews will be required. Personal Seva will also be a part of the program.