Yoga Teaching Skills

18/05/2023

I welcomed a new private client yesterday. It turned out to be the kind of client who I repeatedly design in my dreams:

* keen to learn about yoga postures and basic anatomy combined with the reasoning for the practical choices of what I teach in response to their request

* willing to practice on their own with discipline and intention, aligning that intention with a positive outcome

* the willingness to invest in their wellbeing and good health.

I felt slightly ’High’ for some hours afterwards and inspired to share!
🫶🏻☘️🧘🏻💯🤝

—🧘‍♀️— 🧘🏻 — 🧘‍♀️— 🧘🏻 — 🧘‍♀️— 🧘🏻 — 🧘‍♀️— 🧘🏻 — 🧘‍♀️— 🧘🏻 — 🧘‍♀️— 🧘🏻 — 🧘‍♀️

IF ITS POSSIBLE FOR ME, IT'S POSSIBLE FOR YOU:

I created health for myself. Yoga has been one of my main ingredients in my health formula.

After I’d lived most of my life with chronic illness, I’m now living a life in congruency with health.
The really good kind of health. �The lasting kind. �
I finally started to trust my body.
I feel healthy on the in- and on the outside - in my soft core and in my physical body. I know what soft core can feel like, just as I know what a healthy physical body feels like: practicing yoga with discipline taught me after I'd received excellent teachings myself, with a big portion of food for thought.

If it’s possible for me, it’s possible for you.
You can make it happen, starting right now.

My personal and customised teachings in “Yoga one-on-one” include additional features like nurturing attention, love and care and a selection of the gems that I carefully choose and weave into the class content. I want you to feel truly seen, heard and supported on a profound level.

Yoga for health is about cultivating a relationship with your body that feels healthy by itself, rests on connection and a mutual understanding. Cultivating this relationship is about learning to feel, notice, observe and appropriately respond to what your body is communicating.

It gets exciting and fulfilling when you invest time and effort. Fruits grow after the blossoming. Wanna reap the fruits? Then you’ll need to persevere and believe in order to succeed.

That kind of work will bring about change in your life. It will bring about good health. It will open doors for you and remind you of possibilities and opportunities that you had forgotten about, or had never heard of before, to come to a state of good health.

Classes with me are one of a kind. As a teacher it is my responsibility to give you something that you can take with you, that serves you, adds to your skills of self care and self love and allows you to create a more valuable life resting on good health. The lasting kind. The kind of health that enables you to trust life fully and completely.

10/09/2022

ABOUT ACCEPTANCE. AND AWARENESS.

I have been working with M. for the last 3 months. Being 68, he’s young at heart and full of spirit. He’s wiling to learn, understand and integrate. These are great conditions for a successful "yoga and beyond" adventure with me.

M. used to believe in “no pain no gain”. That attitude had always been the driving force behind all his sports. He had known for some time that he needed to combine his sports activities and ageing with a complimentary movement activity. For some years now he’d suffered from crippling stiffness and mind-dulling immobility in his lower back and pelvis.

When working with people with physical discomfort and pain, classical postures are most often far-fetched. For a posture to be effective and stimulating the healing process, it needs meticulous exploration which rests on patience and mutual feedback and honesty.

We spent several sessions on basic back and pelvis mobilising postures and covered the preparation for M.’s daily self practice with photos and rehearsals of the postures.

Besides all that, I carefully listened in every session to what he liked to share with me. About the pain and what it made him feel like. What he loves doing, is good at and struggles with. His relationships with people and his family. I observed him thoroughly to catch visible emotional charges. All this teaches me how to even better serve him skilfully and aware.

In this week’s session everything was well aligned: his trust in us working for him, the personal connection we’d built over the weeks, the practice experience he’d gained through our work and his willingness to change his mindset in order to change his body’s habituation and response-ability. Feeling the alignment mentioned above, I knew M. was ready for a much needed change.

NO PAIN, YET A LOT TO GAIN.

I pointed out the physical resistance in his joints and (muscle) tissue when doing simple leg raises in a supine position. M.’s immediate response was to push through. His pelvis would pivot with the sacrum lifting off the floor. That all based on compression and/or tightness. He didn’t feel the hurt. I encouraged him to stop moving right where he met the resistance. He slowly but surely became aware of it and did it. He practiced to NOT PUSH THROUGH BUT ACCEPT.

I guided him with my softest possible voice, slowly and patiently while he repeatedly practiced leg raises. He did his utmost best. I could see how hard he had to work for that different outcome based on a changed attitude.

The best about all of this is that

HE LOVES CHALLENGES.

And this is a huge one for him! Therefore,

HE LEFT WITH A MISSION.

He will continue to practice with this new attitude. He will accept and not push through when feeling resistance. He can slowly rebuild his relationship with the body parts that need healing. I wish him great luck and look forward to guiding him further in his healing yoga practice! When he can heal, we all can. I’m right here for you, get in touch when you’re ready to start your healing!

24/08/2022

It's been 4 years now that our YOGA TEACHING SKILLS programme has been available. Our approach to learning yoga practice with its different modalities reflects clearly in the programme. Once you learned you will move into the next state: embodiment. Once you embody, you built a good foundation to learn how to teach others.

Teaching yoga has become incredibly popular over the last 20 years and the market grew exponentially. Every yoga teacher needs to take responsibility for what they teach and how they convey class content and - context. I am appealing to the conscience of everyone searching for a reliable training to consider their choice carefully, aware of the responsibility.

As in the end YOU WILL BE TEACHING REAL PEOPLE. That implies bodies with different needs, abilities and limitations, personalities with backgrounds, dreams and preferences and souls that want to come home in the spiritual space that yoga practice should offer.

Our Yoga Teaching Skills training is designed for people who honour their individuality and are willing to invest self-practice and -study. It is not the one-size-fits-all training. You will know when you're ready to teach others, no x-hour training, certification and accreditation can catapult you there. I will mindfully and wholeheartedly guide you in making your dream come true!

You can send your application in a DM.

25/04/2020

CONFESSIONS OF A MINDFUL YOGA TEACHER
My intentions why I teach what I teach became even clearer to me in the last couple of weeks. I’m not in a room with my students when teaching remotely.
*
I need to formulate my instructions carefully and with clarity.
*
I need to speak slowly and repeatedly invite students to explore.
*
Every instruction requires complete anticipation of action and impact.
*
The sequence of instructions need to allow space for my student’s individual contributions to make their practice fulfilling and deeply nourishing.
*
The red line connecting movement, stillness, sensations and awareness is sensitivity, accompanied by softness, subtlety and generosity. To be sensitive, one has to be honest. It is so easy to give in when the incredible capacities of our minds dictate the agenda, instead of becoming aware of what is actually going on, i.e. what we’re actually feeling. ~Anke

Do you feel inspired to read more? https://www.yogashala.nl/en/healing/

24/04/2020

This is an example of a nourishing and calming practice that a lot of people are in need of these days!

A supine based series in continuous flow. The movements follow the free flow of the breath. Applying sensitivity to the movements and feeling sensations gene...

13/03/2020

YOGA PRACTICE VS. PANIC & ANXIETY
..IS THE REASON WE DECIDED TO NOT CLOSE THE STUDIO (YET?). WE LEARNED THAT THROUGH DIFFICULT TIMES THE CONTINUATION OF YOGA PRACTICE, INCLUDING BREATHING TECHNIQUES AND MEDITATION, GREATLY SUPPORTS FACING CHALLENGES WITH COURAGE, COMPASSION, DIGNITY AND SOLIDARITY!

Please read this carefully! We herewith inform you about the temporary measures we took in the studio in response to the to the Covid-19 threat we're all facing these days.

03/03/2020

One of my private students of today has been diving deeply into my YogaTeachingSkills-program for a couple of months now. She started teaching quite early in her training based on what she knew by then. Her main learning sources have been
* a weekly one-on-one teacher training class with me
* regular and consistent self-practice
* joining one of my weekly Dynamic yoga (based) group classes
* appropriate workshops @ Yogashala and abroad.

All questions that arise when she's engaging in one of the sources, all insecurities she faces when (imagining) teaching and her curiosity for more in-depth knowledge of techniques, movements and the 'how?' to it when exploring with and in her own body are an ideal starting point for a next teacher training class.

This makes the approach I choose utterly efficient, rich and customised. All of the topics that we will cover during the training will be of interest to the individual student as the order they will come along will be generated organically.
I will support each student to reach their full potential as a yoga teacher by guiding them on the most effective and efficient path to their destination. No one needs to study or practice anything that won't add any value to their skills or know-how of what to teach in order to transmit yoga most directly and successfully.

02/03/2020

Joining my teacher training program will expose you to teachings based and relying on INTEGRITY!

APPLIED INTEGRITY
is what we focus on when teaching @ Yogashala.

Did the thought of joining a yogastudio, or a yoga happening, or an online yoga class for the sake of an integrated experience ever cross your mind?

When searching for 'Integrity' in Google, one of the 'choices' is 'the state of being whole and undivided'. This very much resonates with my intention when I teach, as it reflects the experience that practicing yoga can bring us - feeling whole and in unity.

When looking into it a bit further, the question 'How do you explain integrity?' is answered as follows: '... integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions.' (source: Wikipedia).
This very much resembles what we can practice on the yoga mat. We can practice it by using the ability of our mind to navigate through the abilities of our body.

Chris and I have been teaching and will continue to teach you based on
* what we know by personal experience (not by hear-say)
* what proved to work well of what we've been applying for as long as we've been practicing and teaching (what adds up to more than 50 years in total)
* recognizing and respecting your individuality, preferences, needs and non-verbal communication. ~ Anke

12/02/2020

The process of guiding someone on their path of learning the skills of becoming a yoga teacher is a very rewarding one. I've been able to discover the truth of the quote "When one teaches, two learn." in depth.

Students bring their unique qualities, inquiries and intentions to the classes, caused by their very personal background and learning abilities, preferences, strengths, likes and dislikes, enthusiasm and reasons for withdrawal from action.

It is a pleasure and a challenge at the same time to deliberately offer every student in the order that makes sense for them and meets them right where they are at that very precise moment exactly what they need. This makes my approach that is summarized at my website YogaTeachingSkills.nl organic and customized, rewarding and fruitful.

I've been raving to good friends and Chris (my partner and collaborator) about it. And have to say that I couldn't imagine teaching all students together in one group the promised content that one needs to teach yoga that makes sense. I can say that because, also based on some of what I mentioned above, all individual teaching trajectories are not to be compared with one another. Just the idea of meeting all students in a group course makes me conclude that every single one of them would be short of something, miss out on something they'd really need, wouldn't be met at their uniqueness and surely wouldn't nourish their passion for yoga without the necessary compromises that arise in group setting.

All info at yogateachingskills.nl, or send us a pm! ~ Anke

07/02/2020

I love teaching people in private and group setting who take up learning the practice of yoga for the experience of it. For all of us all proper learning requires repetition as it is the method our bodies 'embody' by creating neuromuscular pathways.

I often encourage students to create an image of what I then instruct them in detail as neuromuscular pathways are created and strengthened through imagery as well. To integrate several movements and later on stillness of body parts into one shape that we call a yoga posture should be based on repetition. Every teacher should realize that you only should call yourself a teacher if you got something to teach. On top of that I strive for doing it with integrity. Compromising that process of Vinyasa Krama is not an option for me.

Integration with integrity is what has been grown into a strong muscle of my personal 'body of inspiration'. Every day when I teach, I consider new options of how to simplify the process of the learning experience without sacrifying its quality. That varies between individuals and therefore it is extremely rewarding when I get to help clients to their contentment and Yogashala becomes their yoga home. ~ Anke

07/02/2020

"Human beings need to change from getters and takers to givers and sharers. For many of those who practice yoga it is in their practice that this will need to begin. They will need to learn to not demand anything from their body, while learning how to know how to give it what it needs."

These words deeply resonate with me, I'm quoting my long-term yoga teacher Godfrey Devereux here. I wonder how many yoga students and experienced practitioners practice based on this realization. I even more wonder how many yoga teachers teach based on being aware of this and really make an effort to translate it into teachings that gradually change our behavior. So that we indeed change our actions on and off the mat to give and share with others, all other living beings, nature and the universe while giving our body what it really needs.

My teachings are continously evolving as it are the words I choose to instruct a practice that is an expression of my intentions in life and being with others. The profound tools that (Dynamic) yoga provides for that journey make every practice that I design while teaching it (as I never prepare my classes - it simply flows out of me...) a deeply nourishing and satisfying one. The core group of students who have been practicing @ Yogashala for many years are living proof! I'm very grateful for having these people in my life 🙏🏽 ~ Anke

07/02/2020

1-4 May 2020; Radical Ecology is a homecoming into an Embodied Solidarity with the Wholeness of Life. It is an experiential journey of embodiment.