18 November - 16 December 2023 | Saturdays, 10:00-13:00 am GMT

Join a revolution of yoga teachers who are socially-aware, accessible and inclusive.

Training to be a yoga teacher is a transformative journey, and sharing the benefits of yoga with others is often an experience that defies words. However, often contemporary yoga practices, cultures, and communities are exclusive and inaccessible to a wide variety of people, for a wide variety of reasons.

All too often, students may feel like they don’t belong in a yoga space.

This training is designed to address this, by guiding yoga teachers towards the skills and framework necessary to dismantle the dynamics of yoga culture that prevent people from feeling included and welcome.

In Teaching Inclusive Yoga 1: Justice & Social Action, we examine the frameworks, critical contexts and approaches which inform the practice and teaching of contemporary yoga. We’ll be working with a blend of practice, teaching skills/methodology and yoga humanities.

Course Outline
1. Welcome, What is Inclusion (Harriet): We’ll come together and ask the question, what is inclusion? We’ll consider some of the ways contemporary yoga spaces can be exclusive and violent, and map our trajectory forwards through the course.

2. Trauma Sensitivity & Inclusive Teaching Language (Theo): This week we’ll work through a brief overview of how we can be more trauma-aware in our mainstream/general classes, and more inclusive in our language. In particular we’ll consider invitational language and how to implement it in our teaching.

3. Frameworks for Yoga and Race (Simran): Drawing on the foundations we’ve established, we’ll explore wider theoretical frameworks around inclusion, equity, and liberation. How can we structure our understandings to support the most radical and inclusion and social change work? We’ll engage critically with questions around race, and yoga, and consider how to live and act in real solidarity against racism.

4. Disability & Age (Theo): This week we’ll be covering the basics of accessibility and inclusion as it relates to experiences of age and disability. We’ll look at some common barriers to practice, explore key principles for making our classes more accessible, and think about wider issues of ageism and ableism in society, and how we can be better allies to older and disabled students.

5. Service, Action & Communication (Harriet): Anger, action and service are central concepts to navigating our way forward. This week we’ll consider how to put our new-found knowledge into practice, including in how we communicate and market ourselves and our teaching.

Who is this course for?
This course is suitable for anyone interested in deepening their knowledge and understanding of the social & cultural context of contemporary yoga. It is particularly suitable if you are looking to develop your understanding of social justice within yoga spaces, and how to put these ideas into practice in your teaching. We welcome interested students, teacher trainees, and yoga teachers.

This module is offered as part of Nourish’s 300 hour teacher training, but can be taken by any teacher wishing to improve their skills in this area as Continuing Professional Development (CPD). The module will run as five weekly sessions of three hours, and combine theory, practice and skills development.

Nourish Yoga Training's 300 hour Advanced Teacher Training is registered with Yoga Alliance (International), and is completed as a series of standalone modules which can be taken over 3 years. There are limited spaces available. If you are taking this course as CPD or part of our 300 hours, you are able to miss one session and a recorded session can be provided for the missed module only at no further cost.

Pricing
We believe in the importance and value of this training, and would like to offer a scaled pricing system, which enables attendees to pay which tier feels most appropriate for them. Please note there are NO further discounts available (i.e. no student discounts, etc).