I am so excited to announce my yin yoga training dates for 2022. After a brief hiatus – a pandemic and a baby I am Back with a capital B. I love teaching yin but better, I love to teach yoga teachers or anyone actually, how to teach yin. I have learnt from the best (naturally) – Paul and Suzi Grilley who are the guardians of yin and have also done numerous yin trainings with other teachers – so that MY training is a well-rounded and informative and unique and in-depth version. AND moreover, I am an acupuncturist. You of course don’t need to be a qualified acupuncturist to teach yin yoga, but it really helps me to teach a really valid and in depth, really good yin yoga training. I am so, so passionate about the wisdom of Chinese Medicine and their deep and insightful understanding of the universe, so my training gives a real and substantial insight into this philosophy which can be easily and fluidly applied to yin classes.
The training is accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation of which you get a copy so that you don’t have to take too many notes – as it’s all there, as well as a notebook with numerous poses and their variations, curated in an understandable and informed order. I am always looking to improve the trainings, and this will be my 8th version, so this is 8 times better than the first one. This one is 100 hours, so as well as the anatomy, which I am passionate about, because let’s face it, most 200 hours doesn’t really touch on anatomy properly, eva. Yoga Alliance requirements for 200 hours are minimum 10 hours anatomy which is shocking, me thinks, as yoga teachers come out teaching asana, which is physical. Obvs, yoga is mainly meditation, but yoga teachers are mainly teaching the physical asana and 10 hours about anatomy really doesn’t touch the tip of the iceberg. So yes; my yin training is really grounded in anatomy, and this makes you a better YOGA teacher in all styles of yoga as we take time to look at bodies and understand bodies and what each and every body’s limitations are. Afraid to say, we all have physical limitations, and the “practice, practice and all is coming” is super shallow and super misleading. Let’s face it, none of us, no matter how much we run are not ever going to be faster than Hussain Bolt. I get super irritated by it – because it gives the impression that we can all achieve poses that might not be possible for us, and therefore, like I did for the first 10 years of my yoga life, beat myself up constantly for not being able to do those said poses I left yoga classes feeling worse about myself than when I went in because I couldn’t hold a handstand for 20 seconds. Obviously, practice makes you / me better so first class downward facing dog doesn’t feel so good and sure after your 100th class it does begin, maybe, to feel a bit more like a resting pose. But this too gives the illusion that the elusive poses are within grasp – and some just are not. My anatomy training explains things about the body you probably haven’t considered. We go through all the yin poses, and we examine them in lots of people’s bodies. So you come out with an eye for bodies and an eye for detail. And also, hopefully being to drop the grasping of the oh so Instagram amble poses. When I started practicing yin (under the expert guidance of Paul) I began to see that yoga is about accepting myself in the here and now, and not working towards a better improved, cooler version of myself. And when you accept yourself, wow do you find inner peace. BUT I don’t want to pronounce this as the way to inner enlightenments – it is not BUT it maybe releases you from the unattainable haranguing grasp of the ‘cool’ yoga world. And sure, self-acceptance is a work in progress. I do obviously swing back to the dark side of self-flagellation. And yeah, there will always be a part of me that yearns for effortless press handstand. But ultimately, I wanna be accepting of who I am and that means I also in being ok with myself set boundaries and get my needs met. Win fricking win.
So, I am gonna stop about that and tell you also what the yin teaching involves, on a more practical level anatomy about the hips, spine, torso, shoulder. Anatomy applied to yoga. And then this time round I am adding in some teachings about Restorative Yoga and Mindfulness. This is not my bag, and I am (admittedly self-proclaimed) expert in Yin and Chinese Medicine, so this is what I study and swot up on, and so have other expert teachers who are going to a few hours on this, so that maybe you discover in the training that these are what are gonna float your boat, but also that you can see and experience how Restorative and Yin are different. Yup this another mildly infuriating thing for me – that yin umbrellas relaxing, chill, restorative. But they are different and stem from different philosophies.
And then the last bit of the training is about Chinese Medicine which is my utter passion and my favourite bit to teach, and it is as much about understanding it as feeling and allowing yourself to feel the different energy that people exude. Chinese Medicine and particularly the Five Element theory is so insightful about nature and the nature of humans. It’s livened up with games and some Chinese Medicine techniques too.
I make all the learnings kinaesthetic, visual and oratory. There’s a fair amount of repetition as that helps with the learning. This is because there is a lot of information in the training. I pack it with information. I have been to too many yoga trainings where it is airy fairy and wishy washy and go with the flow and so unstructured that I come away with no substantial learning. I like to learn, and I like to be informed and I like to research so this is what my trainings consist of.
I don’t’ have that much more to say on it other than it will be a blast but also a journey and also a discovery. Any questions – please fire away.
I CANNOT WAIT!!!
YIN IT ALL THE WAY UP