Advanced Yoga Teacher Training - Learning Motivational Interviewing
Advanced Yoga Teacher Training - Learning Motivational Interviewing
Motivational Interviewing is a yoga professional's secret communication tool.
Becoming an RYT (registered yoga teacher) is not the end of your introductory training; it's the beginning of the learning experience. There is immense opportunity for continued education, advanced yoga teacher trainings, and niche coursework available to you.
Teaching yoga goes beyond simply directing asana and into developing relationships. Your influence on your students' journey can be powerful, compassionate, and healing. One way to start purposefully communicating with your students is with Motivational Interviewing (MI).
Advanced YTT: What is Motivational Interviewing?
Between intense listening and dishing out directions lies Motivational Interviewing (MI). Motivational Interviewing is communication to address indecision or ambivalence without giving advice or engaging in confrontation. The practitioner uses a specific skill set to engage the student and draw out strengths, concerns, and meaning. The student is then able to facilitate changes if they so desire.
Motivational Interviewing is a partnership that understands that people are autonomous and are the foremost expert on their minds and bodies.
Motivational Interviewing encourages exploration of priorities, goals, and the like to create change. MI practitioners remain without judgment, show empathy, and support all decisions made with the utmost respect shown to the student.
Learn The Fundamental Processes of Motivational Interviewing
There are several fundamental processes in Motivational Interviewing. The practitioner is there to listen and reflect on the experiences and perceptions of the student. The process of communication becomes focused after both parties agree on a purpose. Evoking is the process of helping the student determine their reasonings for change, with the student's thought process leading the way. Lastly, the planning stage of Motivational Interviewing looks at the tools needed to follow through with change and create success steps.
Motivational Interviewing is particularly effective when a student is ambivalent, lacking confidence and desire to change, and the pros and cons of change are muddled. These signs are seen when people confront lifestyle changes, mental health challenges, and illness and imbalance.
How can using Motivational Interviewing in Yoga enhance the teacher-student relationship?
The practice of yoga encourages inward reflection, listening to your body, and connecting to yourself during a yoga session. What would it be like if your teachings could have insights into your student's inward journey?
Joining yoga and Motivational Interviewing builds trust and opens up that inward journey. Students have a safe space to communicate, without commentary, about their yoga intentions, journey, or challenges. You become the teacher that is a trusted source of empathy and individual guidance.
Motivational Interviewing provides clear feedback from your students and allows you to adjust your teachings to meet your student's strengths. As ambivalence fades and students make decisions, they become the central character in their yoga journey. You are still there to ask open questions and receive information, but the "shoulds" that many students do not benefit from are gone.
Learn more about Motivational Interviewing with Advanced Yoga Teacher Training
The skills and understanding of MI come with training, practice, and experience. Choosing to advance your knowledge base with advanced yoga teacher training opens up a world of possibilities for your career and community. Imagine reaching your students and supporting their progress based on their words and thoughts, thereby overcoming ambivalence and uncertainty. Motivational Interviewing makes this happen.
If you’re curious to learn more and advance your yoga teacher training, reach out to us at Prema Yoga Institute.
In fact, we’d love to invite you to enroll in our online courses. Our Advanced YTT has healthcare in mind, for example, our Yoga in Healthcare includes meditation and mindfulness teaching skills, that empower yoga teachers to interface more effectively with doctors and health care professionals.
Visit Prema Yoga Institute to learn more about our training, which is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022! Courses count as CE Credits with Yoga Alliance OR towards your RYT500 at Prema Yoga Institute.
PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes and trainings. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
Prema Yoga Institute is longer limited to New York City and 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.
How Teaching Mindfulness and Meditation Can Complement Healthcare
How Teaching Mindfulness and Meditation Can Complement Healthcare
What would it look like to parallel mindfulness and meditation with modern Western healthcare?
Yoga teachers are adept at noticing and guiding the human body and understand everyone is an individual. Humans are also unique in the imbalances that bodies carry from injury, stress, and disease. We do our best to support those bodies with healthy and appropriate asana guidance, sprinkling in various pranayama, meditation, and inspiration for the mind.
When there is an illness present, patients and their families rely on medical professionals for a diagnosis and treatment plan to bring the body back into balance. Their oath to provide care and compassion is unsurpassed, but managed care often has a singular focus on the body's illnesses, sometimes overlooking the emotional stress of illness or discussing prevention first.
Yoga teachers have the unique opportunity to support patients' mental health in conjunction with their physical healing. Mindfulness and meditation are the tools and coping strategies to create a holistic healing experience.
Mindfulness and meditation
Being mindful is simply about awareness. Being conscious of one's surroundings, emotions, reactions, and physical sensations is mindfulness. The present moment becomes the focus, not the never-ending stream of interruptions in the brain. Meditation is a training technique to find this peace and clarity, and can take many shapes. Moving meditations allow the mind to find a rhythm to match the body; seated meditations follow the rhythm of the breath.
Both mindfulness and meditation are evidence-based solutions to many health challenges. They work to overcome the stresses of pain, tests, waiting, possible treatments, and potentially bad news. The medical community calls mindfulness and meditation integrative and complementary practices, acknowledging their importance as part of a larger healthcare plan.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) outlines several appropriate circumstances in which mindfulness can work with several health challenges.(1) For example, cancer patients may use meditation to sleep better and experience less stress, menopausal women may use mindfulness to reduce their symptoms, and generalized anxiety/depression/pain may lessen with meditation practices.
Using spiritual support for the physical body to heal as a Yoga Teacher
Yoga teachers can use mindfulness exercises and techniques to support the mental health of students. Their bodies can then heal without the disruption of additional anxiety and uncertainty.
To compassionately teach meditation and mindfulness, consider additional course work to continue your yoga teacher education. Advanced yoga teacher trainings may include instruction and practice on pranayama, mental health, Yoga Nidra, Ayurveda, and more. You can teach yoga and work alongside Western medicine to serve your community.
If you’re curious to learn more, reach out to us at Prema Yoga Institute. In fact, we’d love to invite you to enroll in our online courses. Our Advanced YTT has healthcare in mind, for example, our Yoga in Healthcare includes meditation and mindfulness teaching skills, and will empower you to interface more effectively with doctors and health care professionals. Visit Prema Yoga Institute to learn more about our training, which is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022! Courses count as CE Credits with Yoga Alliance OR towards your RYT500 at Prema Yoga Institute.
PYI is an accredited program based in New York city, teaching students around the globe through online classes and trainings. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!
Prema Yoga Institute is longer limited to New York City and 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.
1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). 8 things to know about meditation for health. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Retrieved September 10, 2021, from https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/tips/things-to-know-about-meditation-for-health.
Yoga Nidra in Healthcare Settings
Yoga Nidra in Healthcare Settings
Is there a path to blending modern Western medicine and the teachings of yoga? Certainly! In fact, many medical practitioners suggest a general yoga practice as a parallel addition to medications, procedures, and lifestyle changes.
Yoga has an increasingly prominent position in Western medicine as scientific studies confirm what the yoga tradition already knows - yoga helps to heal. Yoga Nidra, specifically, has an abundance of evidence suggesting its power to influence the body and mind.
What is Yoga Nidra?
This "yogic sleep" is neither a state of sleep nor full awareness. Yoga Nidra lulls you into that blissful stage between being awake and drifting off, those moments just before you succumb to sleep. In medical terms, this is the hypnagogic state. In this state, suggestions from our subconscious rise to our attention.
Not only is Yoga Nidra the intersection of sleep and awake, but the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system join here, too. While the body is deeply relaxed, there is mental activity. Finding and exploring this hypnagogic state is more complex than meditation alone, and has benefits beyond generally relaxing.
Yoga Nidra is a guided experience, compete with pranayama, a detailed body scan from the fingers inward, intentions, visualizations, and sensory exploration. Pupils are encouraged to avoid traditional sleep during Yoga Nidra to enjoy the complete experience.
There are endless ways to describe the benefits of Yoga Nidra. You become relaxed yet energized and fully connected to yourself. Tension and subsequent pain may disappear. It's commonly described as a restful three-hour nap in 20 minutes.
What Science Tells us About Yoga Nidra
The scientific method and peer-reviewed sciences have explored the powers of Yoga Nidra, with promising discoveries:
Meditation and Yoga Nidra appear, on the surface, to have similar effects on the mind. However, Yoga Nidra seems to be more effective in easing anxiety and promoting overall relaxation. (1)
Insomnia is another condition that can benefit from Yoga Nidra. The sympathetic nervous system is not as active due to Yoga Nidra, creating more peaceful sleep. (2)
While studying menstrual irregularities, researchers found a positive correlation between Yoga Nidra and blood pressure and hand grip, and the ratio of heart rate to expiration and inspiration. (3)
For the diabetic patient, Yoga Nidra combined with medication creates better control of blood glucose fluctuations when compared to medications alone. (4)
Many other studies examine the relationship between Yoga Nidra and depression, post-traumatic stress (PTSD), and pain management. Perhaps the most positive aspect of participating in Yoga Nidra is the absence of contraindications. Everyone can participate and benefit.
Bringing Yoga Nidra into a Healthcare Setting
You may have first discovered Yoga Nidra in a yoga teacher training or studio setting, but now this practice can be found in hospitals, clinics, and even corporations.
For example, The Veterans Affairs Hospital system is integrating Yoga Nidra to aid patients with PTSD and trauma. The VA system is also actively researching this application.
Yoga Nidra is also used in The Christ Hospital for insomnia, addiction, and PTSD. Their cancer units also integrate yoga therapies, like Yoga Nidra, into a care plan.
World renowned hospitals like Johns Hopkins and the Cleveland Clinic have wonderful resources about yoga therapies and Yoga Nidra for patients. Large corporations like the tech firm Next Jump incorporate Yoga Nidra to encourage healthy sleep for their employees.
There is a collection of science that supports the benefits of Yoga Nidra for a myriad of ailments. While researchers are beginning to understand the mechanisms of how the practice works, patients, yogis, students, and workers alike can all reap the benefits.
Learn More about Yoga in a Healthcare Setting with Advanced Yoga Teacher Trainings
Yoga as a part of a wellness process blends seamlessly with many health treatments. To learn more about yoga in healthcare, browse Prema Yoga Institute’s Blog often or subscribe to our Mailing List to stay up to date about the benefits of yoga in a healthcare setting.
In fact, PYI is currently holding our Yoga in Healthcare course. We invite you to consider enrolling in this course or some of our online advanced yoga teacher trainings at Prema Yoga Institute. Our courses are accredited and will count as CE Credits with Yoga Alliance or towards your RYT500.
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 have any questions about this topic, contact us at Prema Yoga Institute.
1 Ferreira-Vorkapic, C., Borba-Pinheiro, C. J., Marchioro, M., & Santana, D. (2018). The impact OF Yoga Nidra and Seated meditation on the mental health of college professors. International journal of yoga. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6134749/.
2 Datta, K., Tripathi, M., & Mallick, H. N. (2017, April 12). Yoga nidra: An innovative approach for management of chronic insomnia- a case report. Sleep Science and Practice. https://sleep.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41606-017-0009-4.
3 Monika, Singh U, Ghildiyal A, Kala S, Srivastava N. Effect of Yoga Nidra on physiological variables in patients of menstrual disturbances of reproductive age group. Indian J Physiol Pharmacol. 2012 Apr-Jun;56(2):161-7. PMID: 23387245.
4 Amita S;Prabhakar S;Manoj I;Harminder S;Pavan T; (n.d.). Effect of yoga-nidra on blood glucose level in diabetic patients. Indian journal of physiology and pharmacology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19810584/.