Join Our Online Summer Yoga Intensive!
Teaching Yoga to Beginners:
Serving the Needs of the Fastest Growing Audience for Yoga
with Judith Hanson Lasater,
Leeann Carey, and Lynn Crimando & Eva Norlyk Smith!
Teaching yoga to beginners is one of the most rewarding teaching experiences for yoga teachers, but also by far the most challenging.
Teaching a new student proper alignment even in basic poses takes time, and when dealing with the growing number of older students, physical limitations add another level of difficulty. Unless yoga teachers know how to help students at all skill levels and ages, beginning yoga students often get discouraged and may never return to class.
An estimated 3 out of 4 students are now beginners, according to a survey. So needless to say, this is one area where it can be extremely rewarding to develop your teaching practice to create a niche for yourself—and in the process, build an extremely loyal following of students.
Join us for our 20-hour online summer immersion with Judith Hanson Lasater, Leeann Carey, Lynn Crimando, and Eva Norlyk Smith with a focus on all the ins and outs needed to serve the needs of beginning yoga students. Learn the skills and specialized teaching methodology you’ll need to effectively teach beginning yoga students in a group or one-on-one setting.
This course features in-depth information on sequencing principles for beginners, common misalignments in beginning students, modifications for specific poses, innovative uses of props, key considerations in teaching yoga for older beginners, and everything else you’ll need to craft a safe yet challenging beginner’s yoga class.
Join Our Yoga Intensive and Study Online with These Leading Yoga Teachers
Judith Hanson Lasater, Ph.D., P.T.
Judith Hanson Lasater, Ph.D., P.T., has taught yoga and trained yoga teachers since 1971 on six continents and in almost every state of the US. She is one of the founders of Yoga Journal magazine and the President Emeritus of the California Yoga Teachers Association. Ms. Lasater was selected by Natural Health magazine on the occasion of their 40th anniversary, as one of the five people in the USA who has had the most influence on natural health in America during those 40 years. She is the author of 11 books, the most recent of which is Teaching Yoga with Intention, from Shambhala Books.
Leeann Carey, Founder, Yapana Yoga
Leeann Carey is an acclaimed yoga instructor with over 25 years of teaching experience, who has taught and inspired thousands of students and teachers worldwide. She is the founder and creator of Yapana, a 300-hour yoga therapy and continuing yoga education program, which educates yoga instructors how to apply yoga therapy to prevent and heal injuries, and maintain a balanced approach to a healthy yoga practice.
Leeann’s eclectic blend of yoga, forged over many years of study with such teachers as Kofi Busia, Donna Farhi, Erich Schiffmann, and Judith Lasater just to name a few, appeals to a wide range of students. She is often referred to as a “teacher's teacher".
Lynn Crimando, M.A., C-IAYT, E-RYT-500
Lynn Crimando serves as the teaching mentor for YogaUOnline's Wellness Educator Program. She is a yoga teacher, C-IAYT Yoga Therapist, board-certified Health and Wellness Coach, Certified Personal Trainer, and Buteyko Practitioner. She has a private practice in New York City and teaches classes throughout the city on behalf of Health Advocates for Older People. In addition, Lynn is on the faculty of the IAYT-approved Yoga Therapist Training at Yoga Nanda in Garden City, New York. To learn more about Lynn, visit her website: yogalynn.com.
Eva Norlyk Smith, Ph.D., C-IAYT, E-RYT 200, RYT 500
Eva Norlyk Smith is a co-founder of YogaUOnline and creator of the Healthy Back, Healthy Body program, a series of therapeutic yoga courses aimed at restoring posture, balance and core integrity and facilitating healthy aging. She has a background in health psychology and is trained as a yoga therapist in the Integrative Yoga Therapy program with Joseph La Page.
In her yoga teaching, Eva combines the principles of soft tissue release from the bodywork traditions with the soft tissue transformation fostered by yoga. She believes that we truly hold the power to reshape the soft tissues of the body and that yoga offers a powerful approach to restore strength and balance to the body no matter what our age.
What's in the Course?
What's In the Course? Learn More Here
Module 1: Judith Hanson Lasater - Structuring Your Beginning Class: Yoga Sequences for Beginners
Beginning students often share common challenges. These include a lack of body awareness, and the typical physical limitations of the American body, such as tight hamstrings, tight hips, a weak back, and lack of core strength. The older the student, the more pronounced these limitations.
Learning to observe and adjust your teaching to these common issues is key to helping students at all skill levels, and motivating beginning yoga students to develop their practice.
In Module 1, Judith Hanson Lasater introduces yoga sequences to use with beginning yoga students to give them the best experience when beginning a yoga practice.
In this module, you will learn:
- Key alignment principles to begin with to ensure that students develop a proper foundation of alignment
- Best poses to introduce these key alignment principles, and the best languaging and cueing to use
- Techniques for helping beginning yoga students develop body awareness
- Most common 'problem areas' beginning students bring to class and how to address them
- Best modifications for specific poses and when to use them.
Module 2: Judith Hanson Lasater - Foundational Yoga Teaching Methodology for Beginners
Helping new students build a practice from ground up is no easy task. Simple teaching phrases yoga teachers take for granted make little sense to beginning students.
Teaching a new student proper alignment in commonly used poses like Adho Mukha Svanasana takes time, and for some poses, Downward Dog will remain a challenging pose for quite some time. However, many yoga teachers teach mixed levels classes, and can’t spend a lot of time explaining down the basics. The result can be that students develop wrong habits and never get a proper foundation of alignment in yoga poses.
In this module, Judith Hanson Lasater goes over some of the foundational yoga teaching methodology you will need to create your own teaching sequences when working with beginners.
In this module, you will learn:
- The key things to focus on when teaching beginners - it's not just about yoga asanas
- What to focus on when creating a teaching plan for beginners
- How to use variations of most common yoga asanas to get students more comfortable with more simple version at first
- Yoga asanas sequencing principles of particular importance when working with beginners
- A yoga teacher rescue kit for those situations where you have to integrate a new student into a class
- How to spot beginning yoga students who are at greater risk for injury and what precautions to take.
Module 3. Expanding Your Yoga Teaching Skills: The Art of Teaching Mixed Level Classes
In this module, Judith Hanson Lasater shares her insights into how we can teach effectively to mixed level classes. Teaching is like creating the choreography of a dance, says Judith. It’s a movement anchored by different somatic elements that are woven together.
Whether you’re teaching beginners or more experienced students, the essence of teaching yoga is really about giving students an experience of embodiment—helping them explore new ways to be in and relate to their body in ways they may never have known before. Judith shows how you can use these principles in any teaching situation to enhance your teaching to all levels of students. In this module, you will learn:
- How teachers can tune in to students not only visually, but empathically as well
- The key role of languaging – how to correct a pose without making students feel that they are doing it wrong or are unable to do the pose
- Best poses to include to cater to both experienced students as well as people who are just starting out
- How to sequence within each pose to create a gradient of challenges that caters to all levels of students in the class
- How to help people know the difference between challenging themselves versus pushing in yoga poses
- How to incorporate a mix of repetition and something new to strike the right tone in mixed level classes.
Module 4: Tapping Into the Wellness Market: Teaching Yoga to Older Beginners
More and more people over 50 are coming to yoga to reap the many health benefits and finding ways to better manage the aging process. Yoga has much to offer in this respect. But unfortunately, it can be difficult to find a yoga class suited to aging bodies.
A vigorous yoga class geared for younger yogis can be counterproductive for this age group. At the same time, while the 50+ yogis may not be ready for a vigorous physical practice, they also don’t want a class that treats them with kid gloves.
In this course, yoga therapists Eva Norlyk Smith and Lynn Crimando will show how to create classes that reflect age-related changes in physiology while at the same time creating safe sequences and classes that are stimulating, engaging, and physically challenging. In this module, you will learn:
- Joint-aware sequencing that reflects the needs of aging bodies
- Sequencing to progressively build tone, resilience, and fluidity in deconditioned bodies
- A skillful method for adapting yoga practices to mature adult bodies that reflects the dual goals of safety and challenge
- Techniques to build body awareness and proprioception for older beginners
- Key information about health conditions that arise in middle years including heart disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, chronic pain, and joint replacement.
Module 5: Teaching Yoga to Beginners: Using Props to Deepen Your Practice
Ever looked at a yoga student in a yoga posture and known that the alignment is wrong, but just not completely sure why, and what to do about it? We've all been there!
Renowned yoga teacher Leeann Carey, founder of Yāpana yoga, is particularly known for her innovative uses of props to help inform and deepen your yoga practice and expand your teaching skills. Using yoga props can help us access yoga poses we might otherwise tend to avoid, and safely guide us where we’d like to go. Props provide a means for thoughtful inquiry and direct physical feedback, while fostering confidence to grow our practice.
In this module, Leeann Carey offers simple visual assessment tools you can use to trace common misalignments in yoga students. She will then show you how to address these, using props as awareness building tools to helps students wake up dormant areas of the body and calm overworked ones.
Learn how to create a safe space in which students feel comfortable embracing what is present, adjust to the utter kindness of accepting support and letting go into what’s happening now.
Leeann will show how to apply strategic prop placement, give you tips for how to use props to efficiently leverage your own or students’ strengths, while learning how to not just amend weaknesses but also explore these with a soft breath and calm mind. This module consists of six 30-minute recorded videos with Leeann. In this module you will learn:
- Simple assessment tools to identify when to use prop support in standing and seated poses, backbends, twists and forward bends, as well as in cases of hyperextension.
- Common misalignment mistakes in beginners where yoga props can help
- How to address overworked and underworked areas with props
- Innovative uses of props like the wall, a chair, a block, belt, bolster, blanket, and sand bag.
Also Enjoy Our Great Bonuses!
Bonus #1. Restorative Yoga Practice Bundle!
Join Judith and Her Daughter Lizzie for 4 Online Recorded Practices - A $65 Value!
Bonus #2. Audio Bundle with Judith! 4+ Hours of Judith Talks!
A $40 Value!
You'll Receive the Following 4 Audio Classes with Judith, as Well as a Free Report!
Common Yoga Injuries and How to Avoid Them
Practicing Radical Presence - The Art of Teaching Yoga
Handling Difficult Students
Keys to Deepening Your Yoga Practice
Join Judith Hanson Lasater, Leeann Carey, Eva Norlyk Smith, and Lynn Crimando for this 20-hour course - Earn Continuing Ed. Credits with IAYT and Yoga Alliance
For the yoga therapists and yoga teachers among you, we have good news!
This combo course qualifies for 20 CEs with Yoga Alliance and the IAYT. This means that not only do you get to study with Judith Hanson Lasater and other leading teachers online, if you are a yoga teacher, it's also a tax-deductible expense.
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