500 hours Advanced Mindfulness Yoga Teacher CPD Training

The three core themes of the 500 hours training are:-

• Mindfulness yoga applied to six musculo-skeletal problems through eight practice sequences (Sudaka and Sadhita)
• An exploration of how to apply Mindfulness teaching to hatha yoga
• How to develop your meditation practice and bring it into your yoga classes drawing from the Buddhist tradition (Sudaka and Sadhita)

Supporting these themes are the retreat-like conditions. We meditate and do the yoga sequences everyday before breakfast and conclude the day with meditation, readings and poetry. 

Learning Mindfulness yoga - our approach

We further our understanding of yoga and mindfulness to work with pain, stress and difficult situations. We have carefully adapted and designed the eight yoga asana sequences to be applied to six commonly encountered musculo-skeletal problems that you will typically find in your yoga classes. Using yoga, mindfulness and meditation as tools, we learn how to alleviate the physical and emotional issues related to these common conditions. 

Acquiring the skills of Mindfulness, meditation, yoga asana and breathe-work, we develop the knowledge to be able to help others. We will be looking again at the theory as well as the practice of how mind works and how the interplay of bodywork (yoga) and meditation can help us.

On a deeper level, we learn to transform our mind and therefore see our suffering, in or out of yoga, as a way of understanding ourselves, coming to terms with the existential situation as human beings. Our training offers a practical vehicle for spiritual transformation. We are principally concerned in providing conditions for the development and deepening of greater awareness, confidence and self-discovery.

Preparation for the Mindfulness yoga 500 hours training

When studying this material we have two things in mind.  

• Firstly, it is up to us to integrate it through practice - which means a whole hearted engagement and committment to the study. 
• Secondly, to be concerned to help others through the experience gained from our own practice.

As we gain experience, our capacity to help others deepens. Through this training we learn the real relevance of mindfulness applied to yoga. We can then pass on clearly to others the tools and ideas that they can use to help themselves. As our teaching and practice gather genuine depth we become tmore effective teachers of these arts. For they are indeed ‘Arts’. The art of meditation and yoga asana. We ask existing 200 hour yoga teachers to do some preparatory study and begin to keep a working diary of their meditation practice.

The pre-course study guides you through some preliminary investigations and readings. We ask all students to read Living with Awareness and Living with Kindness by Sangharakshita, Satipatthana by Analayo, and be familiar with the content of the 200 hour Bodhiyoga Teacher Training Manual (we will send you the PDF when you book).

In the 500 hours Manual, are found our course based around main themes for the week of intensive traning:

• An exploration of structural alignment and assessment of our bodies
• An overview of anatomy
• the Yoga asana sequences- remedially applied  
• Meditation teaching drawing from the Buddhist tradition

Through the combination of practices and theoretical frameworks we offer a comprehensive and detailed multi-dimensional 500 hours training.

An integrated approach to Yoga, Mindfulness and Meditation

The full programme is designed to show existing yoga teachers how to apply mindfulness yoga to deal with specific musculo-skeletal issues. More broadly we show how to work with pain, stress and adversity in our own experience and others'. We also show how to integrate meditation and mindfulness teachings into yoga teaching practice.

Remedial Yoga

Each day there is an extended period of meditation and yoga practice led alternately by Sudaka and Sadhita before breakfast.

Over six sessions we carefully analyse and look at the application of the remedial or therapeutic yoga sequences to work with common problems and conditions encountered in your students. We explore low back and upper back, hips and shoulders, knees and neck issues. This enables you to work safely, help your students rebuild strength and stability in their bodies as well as design more intelligent classes.

Applied Mindfulness 

Through three afternoon workshops we explore how to apply Mindfulness to yoga.

We do this through Mindfulness practices, teaching and use of languange of how to concretely employ Mindfulness in yoga. We recognise that yoga and Mindfulness relate to separate though related spiritual lineages and show how to relate them in our yoga posture work. We rely on the Buddhist Satipatthana teachings to do this.

Meditation teaching

Meditation teaching forms an aspect of the 500 hour training. Here we learn how to work directly with the mind, thus laying the seeds for deeper transformation beyond the physical work of hatha yoga asana. As the Bodhiyoga system of practice is essentially a contemplative yoga, the skills we acquire from meditation aim also to translate into and transform our yoga. We learn how to teach and communicate four key practices:-

• How to set up meditation posture
• Body Scan
• Mindfulness of Breathing
• Loving-kindness (Metta bhavana) practice