yoga teacher training school in India

How Yin Yoga can help you combat the winter blues

How Yin Yoga can help you combat the winter blues One of the main benefits of a yoga practice is its calming influence on the mind as well as the body. Asanas (poses) are intended to bring the focus inwards to prepare us for meditation where our busy minds can find some peace. Perhaps we simply want to take some quiet time for ourselves after a busy party season; maybe we’re struggling with the long darkness of winter or feeling helpless during a period of change in our lives. Whatever is causing you stress and anxiety, yoga will always be [...]

How Yin Yoga can help you combat the winter blues

Five Ways to Live a More Yogi Life

Five Ways to Live a More Yogi Life One of the first things every yoga teacher training student learns in their philosophy class is about the ‘Yamas and Niyamas’ – the values and daily practices that should underpin their lives as yogis. They learn that asanas (poses), pranayama (breathing) and all the stages of meditation only come after ten Yamas and Niyamas in the classic ‘eight limbs’ (in Sanskrit, ‘Ashtanga’) of the Yoga Sutras. This is the text said to have been written by Sage Patanjali in the second century BCE and the fifth century CE, outlining the theory and [...]

Five Ways to Live a More Yogi Life

Why India is the best destination for your yoga teacher training

Why India is the best destination for your yoga teacher training A friend of mine refers to India as the ‘mothership’ – the place to which all humans gravitate, particularly those with their hearts and minds open to everything the universe has to offer. It’s safe to say that it’s definitely the mothership for those who are interested in yoga, as this its homeland – yoga was first mention in sacred texts, or Vedas, over 5,000 years ago (some say up to 10,000 years ago) in the Indus Valley. Yoga as set of beliefs and practices was further refined here [...]

Why India is the best destination for your yoga teacher training

Six tips for teaching your first yoga class

Six tips for teaching your first yoga class So you’ve completed your 200-hour yoga teacher training and are at the cusp of beginning your yoga teaching career? Even though you have probably taught fellow-students in small groups during your yoga teacher training, your first real class can be an intimidating experience. While your practice teaching sessions might have been nerve wrecking, you were teaching in a safe and encouraging environment. So now what happens now that you have become a yoga teacher and are about to teach your very first class back home? How do you transfer what you’ve learned [...]

Six tips for teaching your first yoga class

Five reasons to become a yoga teacher

Five reasons why to become a yoga teacher Yoga-teaching is seen as ‘living the dream’ to many people, because they will be focusing on doing the thing they love every day, and (hopefully) getting paid for it. Some are lucky enough to travel the world doing it, teaching in paradise locations. Whilst as a career choice it’s not all palm-fringed beaches and namastes at sunset, yoga teaching has many benefits that you may not have even thought of. Here are five of the main ones… 1. It is immensely rewarding Essentially, every time you take a class, you are helping [...]

Five reasons to become a yoga teacher

Why More and More Men are turning to Yoga Teacher Training

Why More and More Men are turning to Yoga Teacher Training As opposed to my own 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training earlier this year where there was only one male student, I noticed that there were several men both attending and teaching the course at Sampoorna - Yoga Teacher Training School India in November this year. On International Men’s Day, I spoke to a few of them to find out how they’d got into yoga, a largely female-dominated activity in the west, in the first place, and what had made them want to take, or ultimately teach, the yoga teacher training [...]

Why More and More Men are turning to Yoga Teacher Training

Why you’re never too old for yoga teacher training

Why you’re never too old for yoga teacher training I enrolled on my 200-hour yoga teacher training at the age of 52 and I almost didn’t, because I knew how many young people, mainly girls, were interested in it and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them or bond with the group. Happily for me, I stuck with it and found my own ways of connecting with my fellow students. Yes, most of them were in their 20s and at the start of their adult lives, but there was a sprinkling of women at [...]

Why you’re never too old for yoga teacher training

What do we mean when we say namaste?

What do we mean when we say namaste? It’s one of those things we do almost without thinking, at the start and end of a yoga class, palms pressed together at our hearts, bowing our heads. Some have even turned it into a piece of theatre at the end of a class, prostrating themselves to floor in a gesture intended to show complete humility and gratitude. I remember the first time someone explained to me what the gesture and the word actually meant. A teacher at Sampoorna - Yoga Teacher Training School in India told us that it was an [...]

What do we mean when we say namaste?

Six reasons why everyone should take a yoga teacher training course once in their lifetime

Six reasons why everyone should take a yoga teacher training course once in their lifetime Most people will think of yoga teacher training as something you would only undertake if you were actually thinking of embarking on a career as a yoga teacher, or were looking to deepen an already advanced practice. What they might not know is that whatever level you practise at, a yoga teacher training course will have a profound effect on your life, not just your physicality. You will have a much happier relationship with your body. You may have pushed your body doing physical exercise [...]

Six reasons why everyone should take a yoga teacher training course once in their lifetime

Tortoise (Kurmasana)

Tortoise (Kurmasana) Type: Seated forward bend Level: Advance Steps: Sit straight with your legs bent and wide apart. Bending forward put your right arms under your knee and thighs. Press your legs against your shoulder bones and bend your torso and head down towards the ground. Props & Assistance: • Sit on a folded blanket if you have tightness in your hips or lower back Preparatory poses: •Archer •Standing forward bend •Seated forward bend •Wide legged seated forward bend •Staff •Downward dog Follow up poses: •Childs •Downward dog •Corpse Benefits: •Strengthens the back •Tones the abdominal organs •Encourages flexibility in [...]

Tortoise (Kurmasana)
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