Teaching Yoga for All Body Types
Teaching Yoga for All Body Types
The traditions of yoga do not exclude based on weight, shape, income, color, ability, gender identity, or anything else that may marginalize us. However, many groups of people have less accessibility and fewer opportunities to develop a yoga practice. Yoga teachers can overcome many of these challenges by pursuing advanced yoga teacher training to become a more inclusive yoga teacher.
Learn to Teach Inclusivity
There is skill and experience needed to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for your students. Advanced yoga teacher training gives you practical knowledge and hands-on practice to become a leader in your yoga community while advancing your career as a yoga teacher.
Anatomy and Physiology Knowledge to Teach All Yoga Bodies
With advanced anatomy studies and advanced yoga teacher training, including functional movement, you will learn to teach yoga that aids in daily actions. For example, squatting, reaching, and balancing are components of asana. Pursuing Advanced YTT and knowledge of how asana translates into mobility and strength gives all body types room to grow and stabilize, improving activities off the yoga mat.
Functional yoga closely relates to accessible yoga, where every body type can participate, regardless of physical or mental state. Accessible yoga removes all obstacles, and the student becomes the purpose instead of the pose. Perceived and real limitations vanish.
Methods for Teaching for All Yoga Bodies
As a yoga teacher, learning to modify your pose cues and sequencing to fit your audience creates inclusivity. Modifications can apply to specific poses by offering your students the opportunity to use props, change their base of support, raise or lower their arms, and generally seek comfort for their bodies. The pose then takes on a new form to fit the individual instead of a textbook perfect shape.
Modifications also include props. The safe use of mobile blocks, bolsters, and straps give the body more space to move, transition, and reach. Stationary props like chairs and walls make balancing more accessible. Other poses can transition to the floor for a new perspective and to remove any vulnerabilities of imbalance. Vṛksāsana and Garudāsana are perfect for supine positions, and you can find a variation of Natarajāsana on the belly.
Modifications also apply to the transitions between poses. Moving from Adho Mukha Svanāsana to Vīrabhadrāsana I is typically cued as a fluid movement. Changing your guidance to transition Adho Mukha Svanāsana to Bharmanāsana, then to Anjaneāsana, and lifting the knee and shifting the feet a bit can also help a student find Vīrabhadrāsana I.
Watch Your Language as a Yoga Teacher
Purposeful language helps remove any stigmas that may accompany different body types and abilities. For example, an inclusive yoga teacher may replace goal-focused language such as "full expression," "find your edge" and "you should feel" with inviting phrases that focus on the individual. An inclusive yoga teacher may try using phrases like "what would it feel like if" and "Find movement within the pose that feels true to you" instead.
Pursue Advanced Yoga Teacher Training
Having an RYT500 designation (Registered Yoga Teacher with 500-hour yoga teacher training) as a yoga teacher is more than a title. With advanced yoga teacher training, yoga teachers learn to understand the many nuances of the body.
For example, aging takes a toll on mobility, injuries need time to heal, and one's spirit may struggle. Fluctuations in weight, strength, and confidence appear throughout a lifetime, and yoga can accommodate all of these stages. Teaching for all yoga bodies and life stages requires empathy, but most importantly it requires advanced teacher training and knowledge of the physical body.
Your Students Will Benefit from an Inclusive Yoga Teacher
Becoming a yoga leader for all body types creates a safe space for all. Fears and hesitations of students are replaced with comfort and personalized instruction. Students can create meaningful movement within their bodies, boosting yoga's true callings and purpose to find peace.
As your community grows, yogis of all varieties and life stages come together. Yoga for all body types creates a group that celebrates themselves and serves their physical and spiritual needs at any given time.
Did you know you can learn do Advanced YTT Online at Prema Yoga Institute?
Prema Yoga Institute has gone virtual. You can advance your skills as a yoga teacher online with Online Advanced YTT Trainings. For example, our Functional Anatomy Training is now available online and trains yoga teachers how to:
Develop your confidence teaching to all different types of bodies
Think critically about biases that often go overlooked in anatomy and movement science
Gain support and education to skillfully move away from a "one size fits all" type of teaching
Learn to better see and "Read" bodies in order to better meet your student's varying needs
Interface more effectively with doctors and health care professionals
Advance your teaching towards a Yoga Therapy Certification
And more (click here for details)
Additionally, The Functional Anatomy Training counts as 50 CE Credits with Yoga Alliance OR towards your RYT500 at Prema Yoga Institute.
Visit Prema Yoga Institute to learn more about our training, which is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022!
PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
If you found this information useful, visit our Blog often or subscribe to our Mailing List for similar content.
Person-Based Yoga for Every Body
Person-Based Yoga for Every Body
These days, students often practice yoga primarily as asana (or “poses”) in the modern studio yoga session. As valuable as it can be to enjoy a mindful physical practice, the physical asana group class can be exclusionary to some and lacking in spiritual guidance to others.
How can we become more inclusive yoga teachers and create a yogic environment that supports all bodies and all minds? By training to teach for individual anatomy, spirituality, and agency for our students.
Today's yoga teacher can evolve to be more than a teacher of poses and sequences. Opportunities abound to advance your yoga teaching knowledge, which only serves your community better to include a more diverse population. Additionally, the possibilities for influencing more yogis are endless by expanding your knowledge with continuing education and advanced yoga teacher training.
Person-based Yoga Better Serves Your Students
What is person-based yoga? It is simply the consideration of all the differences between individuals. Person-based yoga removes the "shoulds" that so often infiltrate yoga. Notions that we should wear certain clothes, have goals, look like prescribed shapes, and meet perceived physical and mental requirements do not exist in people-based teachings.
Advanced anatomy studies teach the differences between bodies - the biodiversity of the human form. Two identical skeletal systems may have vastly different ranges of motion and strength because of the differences in how muscles, tendons, and ligaments influence the joints and bones. Understanding the differences between individual anatomy creates a method to teach the person and not the pose.
Knowledge of functional anatomy also shines a light on the accessibility of yoga for everybody. Adaptive yoga principles give everybody space to participate with the focus on themselves, without the interference of limitations, perceived or otherwise. The use of props and modifications for asana provides confidence and stability for every person in their yoga practice. This lines up nicely with the concept of being a yoga teacher that teaches the human, not the textbook pose.
Addressing Your Students' Spiritual Needs
While the biodiversity of the individual's inner and outer anatomy creates personalized asana, the mind must also be addressed. People gravitate to yoga for many reasons, but fears about ability, being excluded, or carrying trauma can diminish the experience. Advancing your yoga teacher training to include training on ancient yoga may give you the skills to convey the mindfulness accompanying asana, further serving your student's well-being. Confidence and independence replace any fear or hesitation.
Deeply exploring the Yoga Sutras and the history of yoga in advanced yoga teacher training reminds us that yoga is not just movement - it's peace, quiet, and true liberation. The Yoga Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, and other historically significant scripture is investigated with continuing education. Everybody benefits when asana is paired with pranayama techniques, guided meditation, and the true nature of yoga.
Advancing Your Yoga Teacher Training to Become a More Inclusive Yoga Teacher
Advanced yoga teacher trainings dive deep into the details, expanding your teaching skillset. You become more qualified yoga teacher to lead your students and fellow teachers. Your students will have a personalized experience based on your understanding of the body and mind. Real and imagined barriers to the yoga journey disappear as everyone is included.
Advanced yoga teacher trainings also make your teachings safer, more functional, and realistic. Your students are empowered to be comfortable with their bodies and experiences, which carries outward into all aspects of life.
While you are here – learn about Advanced YTT at Prema Yoga Institute
Did you know you can advance your skills as a yoga teacher online with Online Advanced YTT Trainings?
For example, our Functional Anatomy Training is now available online and trains yoga teachers how to:
Develop your confidence teaching to all different types of bodies
Think critically about biases that often go overlooked in anatomy and movement science
Gain support and education to skillfully move away from a "one size fits all" type of teaching
Learn to better see and "Read" bodies in order to better meet your student's varying needs
Interface more effectively with doctors and health care professionals
Advance your teaching towards a Yoga Therapy Certification
And more (click here for details)
Additionally, The Functional Anatomy Training counts as 50 CE Credits with Yoga Alliance OR towards your RYT500 at Prema Yoga Institute.
Visit Prema Yoga Institute to learn more about our training, which is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022!
PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
If you found this information useful, visit our Blog often or subscribe to our Mailing List for similar content.
Advanced Yoga Teacher Training: Teaching Biodiversity in Anatomy
Advanced Yoga Teacher Training: Teaching Biodiversity in Anatomy
Biodiversity, the variety of life, is the simple premise that every being is different on many different levels. From our genetic makeup, our experiences through life, our personalities, to the cells in our bodies, biodiversity is abundant.
As a yoga teacher, advancing your training to view yoga asana through the lens of biodiversity is paramount and will allow your students to experience a safe and fulfilling practice. When teaching asana with unique body structures in mind, yoga inclusively addresses functional movement in a welcoming manner.
Advancing your training as a yoga teacher to learn about the biodiversity of the human form becomes the guiding force for teaching yoga and uniting your yoga community.
Anatomical Biodiversity in Yoga
On a grand scale, biodiversity begins as differences between species and humans. No two are alike, even twins. Within the individual, biodiversity is seen across the sagittal plane - the body's left and right sides are asymmetrical. There are differences in bony structures, soft tissues, and the consequences of injury within ourselves.
The skeletal system is the human framework, and each person's frame has obvious and more subtle diversity than others. Height and weight are easy to distinguish.
When examining anatomy on a deeper level, it's evident that lengths, angles, and torsions of bone vary greatly. Tendons, ligaments, and all manner of muscle and fat cover the skeleton as well as have differences in length, flexibility, weight, and strength.
Aging, injuries, scar tissue, arthritis, and disease alter anatomy, perhaps enhancing the asymmetry that already exists. Processes like aging and arthritis take their time, slowly shifting the body and influencing the range of motion and comfort. Injuries and subsequent scar tissue is often sudden and creates that biodiversity quickly. Joints may also be hypermobile with a tendency towards dislocations and sprains.
Respectfully teaching yoga with the intricacies of anatomy takes education and practice, often beyond your initial yoga teacher training.
The Hip Joint as an Example of Individual Biodiversity
Examining the hip and femur, we find that the neck of the femur can vary wildly. Not only the length of the femur's neck, but the angle at which it attaches to the shaft of this long bone differs.
The attached muscles, such as the piriformis, quadratus femoris, biceps femoris, and the gluteus family of muscles, connect the upper part of the femur to the hips, pelvis, and down the leg.
Within the hip, the femur head interacts with the acetabulum of the pelvis, resting in the labrum, surrounded by strong ligaments and cartilage.
When the hip joint moves, the pelvis interacts with the femur and creates a range of motion - how far and in what directions the femur moves. Ligaments in the joint, the shapes of the bones, and the surrounding muscle mass and weight define those boundaries.
Injuries like labrum tears and fractures influence the range of motion, too. The hip joint also interacts with the knee, ankle, and spine. Even perfectly similar hips and femurs in two different individuals create different experiences in movement due to the surrounding structures.
How Biodiversity in Anatomy Interacts with Teaching Yoga
When we know these layers of anatomy and place them over yoga asana, it becomes clear to advanced yoga teachers that "one size of a yoga pose does not fit all."
Cueing asana without consideration of the individual's complex anatomy does not serve the student. Not all bodies can point their feet in the textbook direction for a pose. Not all bodies can reach full expression or textbook alignment and remain safe and comfortable.
The yoga pose must adjust for the body. Allow the hip joint and its neighboring joints to determine the comfortable place for asana. Hip-centric poses such as Virabhadrasana II, Malasana, and Kapotasana transform into safe, nurturing, and unusual-looking variations from the models seen in books.
Enrolling in advanced yoga teacher trainings to learn about biodiversity in anatomy will allow you to create a more inclusive practice. Your advanced guidance will encourage your students to feel and breathe their way into asana, their biodiversity within will create their alignment and comfort.
Become a More Inclusive Yoga Teacher with Advanced Yoga Teacher Training
One challenge for yoga teachers is creating a welcoming space while teaching a varied group of students. The art of teaching yoga advances when extensive anatomy and biomechanics knowledge makes yoga accessible to all body sizes and shapes.
Advanced yoga teacher training programs not only focus on anatomy, they include Ayurveda, pranayama, practical skill development, and a deeper look into the rich history of yoga. A rounded curriculum reinforces the guiding principles of mind and body that you will take to your students.
The human form is a wonder, indeed, and continuing your yoga education supports everyone's development and understanding of yoga.
Start your journey and build your skills with advanced yoga teacher training online.
Did you know you can advance your skills as a yoga teacher online with Online Advanced YTT Trainings? We’d love to invite you to better serve your pupils by enrolling in Prema Yoga Institute’s Functional Anatomy Training.
The Functional Anatomy Training is now available online and trains yoga teachers how to:
Develop your confidence teaching to all different types of bodies
Think critically about biases that often go overlooked in anatomy and movement science
Gain support and education to skillfully move away from a "one size fits all" type of teaching
Learn to better see and "Read" bodies in order to better meet your student's varying needs
Interface more effectively with doctors and health care professionals
Advance your teaching towards a Yoga Therapy Certification
And more (click here for details)
Additionally, The Functional Anatomy Training counts as 50 CE Credits with Yoga Alliance OR towards your RYT500 at Prema Yoga Institute.
Visit Prema Yoga Institute to learn more about our training, which is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022!
PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
If you found this information useful, visit our Blog often or subscribe to our Mailing List for similar content.