Teacher Training at the Parkdale Yoga Centre - The School of Heart Yoga
General Orientation
The central concern of this Yoga Teacher Training course is to deepen your practice and experience. I give the course this emphasis because, in Yoga, your teaching is as good as your realisation. As far as I am concerned, you have to teach from your own experience and your own inner being to be authentic, fresh, alive and effective.
To help you
to be an excellent Yoga teacher, then, I need to help you to come as nearly
as possible into permanent contact with your Centre (for want of a better
word) so that your intuition with regard to your students’ needs
is highly acute, and your spontaneous wisdom is operative in teaching
situations and, indeed, in life in general.
So experience is primary and information is secondary. Having said that,
we will be encountering and critically assessing quite large amounts of
information! The aim here is to give you a set of maps which will enable
you to navigate the landscape that the course will open up for you and
which will open up, in turn, for your students. Hopefully though, it will
become apparent to you that the nature of that landscape is such that
it can be mapped in an infinite number of ways, and that at crucial, transformative
points no map can ever be adequate and all maps ultimately have to be
abandoned.
My own teaching on the course will be alert to who you uniquely are and
what your talents are. This means I will be helping you towards your Centre
and your own style of teaching and your own speciality. I don’t want
to produce clones of myself! Still less do I want to school you in any
narrow story about the way the world, life and people work. There is nothing
alive in living inside a story and to teach well and live well it is more
important for you to be fully authentic and fully alive than anything
else.
Where we do
work with information and interpretations of various spiritual traditions,
I will try to make this work experiential for you so that you know what
is going on from the inside. This means that the course will never be
dry and academic, even where we have to process quite large quantities
of information.
Amongst all this, one of the challenges will be for you to actually start
teaching at a point where you feel ready to do so and when I am certain
that you will be effective and safe. You will find that teaching is an
important Yoga in its own right, pushing you towards your Centre.
Aspects of
the course
The course
aims to engage every aspect of the student's being. Accordingly, we will
study and experience cognitive, emotional, physico-sensual and relational
aspects of Yoga. These correspond to the traditional distinctions between
Jnana, Bhakti, Hatha/Tantric and Karma Yogas. Jnana relates to intellectual
enquiry and the study of texts. Bhakti relates to mobilising our emotions
to aid the deepening of our experience and practice. It also relates to
the compassionate motivation behind teaching others. Hatha and Tantric
Yogas utilise the nuts and bolts of the psycho-physical aspects of the
human being to facilitate liberation. They also relate to a celebration
of the ordinary. Karma Yoga relates to the activity of teaching
itself.
Specifics
The specifics of the course come under the broad headings of Practice,
Pedagogy, Philosophy, Anatomy, Teaching Practice and Feedback.
Practice
We will practice
together with a view to extending our range of material, as well as refining
and intensifying our practice. We will use asanas, mudras and pranayama
from Hatha Yoga and various meditations. These will experientially demonstrate
the points we draw out from the discussion of theory. I will give you
more detailed instruction and explanation than I am able to give in a
general class and give you indications of areas to work on. At the core
of all the various practices is the essential simplicity of radical openness
to what is.
Pedagogy (Teaching Method)
The following areas will be covered:
Teaching from your centre – how teaching flows from radical openness
Spontaneity in teaching – your comportment towards teaching
Safety, both physical and psychological, and including contra-indications
Adjustment – when and how to adjust postures etc.
Different types of class
Demonstration
Structuring a class and/or course
Different types of student
Specifics of teaching asanas, pranayama, meditation & savasana
Use of sound, colour and other aspects of environment
Sequencing postures etc.
Philosophy
We will look
at and experientially engage with:
The various conceptions underpinning the different types of Yoga and their
relationships;
The Yoga Sutra – the backbone of the 200 hour course - this
will be a detailed study, illustrated by experiential practice. This will
be engaged with in all sessions, partly working through a comparison of
different translations, including my own;
Patanjali will be compared with some of the more original modern spiritual
masters, e.g. Krishnamurti, Trungpa Rinpoche, Gurdjieff;
The key Tantric distinction between life-affirmation and life-negation;
The guidance given in art, music, architecture and poetry, i.e. the relationship
between Yogic beatitude and the aesthetic;
Anything else necessary.
Anatomy
The following
aspects will be engaged with:
Western Scientific anatomy – in order to inspire positive attitude
to the body;
Yogic anatomy – We will primarily ask: 'What kind of thing is it?';
Heart Yoga experiential anatomy – its application to Hatha practice.
Teaching Practice
There will
be ample opportunity for you to practice teaching and get feedback from
myself and your “students”. This part of the course is assessed.
Feedback
We will incorporate
considerable feedback into all sessions. Some of this will be outside
the formal hours allotted to the course, e.g. it may take place in the
dinner hour or over breakfast! I will also be available through email
or on the phone and you will be encouraged to network with your group.
Feedback will have the following elements:
Feedback on your practice. You should keep a journal which records the
impact of your practice;
Feedback on your teaching;
Feedback on your research project, (see below under 'Assessment').
This will be your chance to use the group as a resource and see
what they have to say about problems you encounter. It need not only be
about problems, though. It’s good to share your revelations and epiphanies!
You can also use this space in the beginning to identify your research
project and clarify your general direction. You will find this aspect
of the course very stimulating and useful.
Structure of Course
The Heart Yoga Teacher Training Course is divided into a number of modules as follows:
Foundation Weekend
This is the first weekend of the course and it is designed for the prospective student to experience our approach and for us to ascertain that the student will benefit from the course.(1 weekend of 16 hours.) (Next Foundation Weekend 4th & 5th August 2007.)
Self-Discovery Course
If, having done the Foundation Weekend, it is mutually agreed that the student will undertake the rest of the training, the next step is to take the four-weekend Self-Discovery Course. (See http://www.heartyoga.co.uk/discovery.htm.) This provides the essential groundwork for the rest of the course, and crucially introduces radical openness to the student. The course engages all aspects of the human being, including the thinking faculty. There is however at this point little reference to any of the classical Yoga texts and a very strong emphasis on experience. (4 weekends, 56 hours total.)
Course Body
This consists of 7 residential weekends. Each weekend involves about 6-8 hours of practice, as well as work on the other aspects of the course, eg, engagement with Patanjali's text, principles of pedagogy, anatomical study and teaching practice etc. (112 hours.)
Assessment
You will be assessed through the following:
You will
be observed teaching at some point in order to recommend you for insurance
and finally to certify you. Usually, at least three observations will
be required.
I want to avoid the academic model so there will be no essays. Instead,
and in keeping with the emphasis on creativity, I want to see a completed
research project at the end of the course. This can take any form whatsoever.
The end result could be a painting, a commentary on a text, a CD rom,
a scientific survey .. the form is not rigidly prescribed. The only requirement
is that it relates to Yoga in a useful way. A presentation of your
work will be given to your group on the last weekend of the course body.
A high level of good quality participation in sessions is required.
You will need to submit your Journal. This journal needs to relate to
your practice and the impact of practice on your life in general.
There will be short tests on Western anatomy and safety.
Homework tasks will be set at the end of each weekend according to need.
Duration
The total duration of the course is 184 hours contact time with approximately 350 hours of homework. The contact hours are delivered over 12 residential weekends. This is completed between 12 and 24 months.
Prospects
Graduates
and current trainees of this course successfully teach children (in schools
and clubs), psychiatric patients including recovering addicts (in hospital
and day care), people with terminal illness, street people and the public
at large. They are employed in adult education, yoga studios, workplaces
and retreat centres and have their own private practices.
Cost
The foundation
weekend costs £150 including accommodation and food and is payable
in advance. The rest of the course costs £1650. £825 is payable
in advance with the balance due before the end of the first year. However,
payment arrangements can be flexible – please ask. Insurance of your
payments against your need to cancel is available.
Application
If you want
to apply for this course, in the first instance please contact by phone
(01902 424048) or by E-mail for an informal chat. If we both think that
the course looks promising for you, you can book in on a Foundation Weekend
to explore the matter further. (Next weekend - 12th - 13th July 2008 &
13th & 14th September 2008.)
The 500 hour option
This option includes immersion modules in which the student joins us on
retreat. There are also modules on Yoga and Sound, Yoga with Children,
Yoga and Mental Health, and Remedial Yoga.
The 1000 hour option
On completion of the 500 hour training , students can continue to train with us by immersion here at Parkdale and/or on retreats.
Pete Yates 11/1/2008
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Contact:
The Parkdale Yoga Centre
10 Parkdale West
Wolverhampton
WV1 4TE
Phone: 01902 424048
