Yoga Teacher Training with Heart Yoga at The Parkdale Centre
(Yoga Register School)

Principals: Pete Yates & Anna Ingram

General Orientation:
The School of Heart Yoga is a Registered Yoga School (200) with the Yoga Alliance. The central concern of the 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 good teachers, 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 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.

Requirements:

• You should have practised Yoga consistently for a reasonable length of time and should be prepared to maintain a steady practice.
  
• You should be prepared to do some home study because there will not be time to cover everything in detail in the classes.
  
• You will need to read and consider any preparatory material before our sessions so that we can quickly move to essentials.
  
• I want to be able to certify you so please attend as required and participate fully.
  
• You must undertake to be alert to safety issues at all times.
  
• The reputation of the school and its qualification will depend on you, so I expect you to work as a teacher in a way that enhances it.
  
• You will be expected to sign an agreement which commits you to upholding the school’s ethical stance.

Assessment:
I will need to see you teaching at some point in order to recommend you for insurance and finally to certify you. Usually, at least two 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 – anything! The only requirement is that it relates to Yoga in a useful way.

A second research project is required for the 500 hour level. A high level of good quality participation in sessions is required. You will need to submit your Practice Journal. Keeping the journal is continued through both 200 and 500 hour levels. For the Diploma (500 hour) there will be a test on Western anatomy and a test on safety.

Certification & Length of Course:
I offer three levels of certification. They are as follows:

• Certificate – at least 200 hours study time of which at least 160 are contact hours. This course is approved by the Yoga Alliance. This means that your certificate will enable you to register with the Yoga Alliance and use the letters RYT 200. (RYT stands for Registered Yoga Teacher.)
  
• Diploma – at least 500 hours study time in total of which 350 are contact hours. (300 hours can be added to the certificate.) 100 hours of teaching experience are required in addition to study time for this level. (I intend to register this course with the Yoga Alliance in due course.)
  
• Completed apprenticeship – 7 years of close contact and continuing education.

Graduates of a School on the Yoga Register (YRS) are entitled to use the letters YRT (Yoga Register Teacher) and benefit from a discounted subscription rate of £25 for annual entry on The Yoga Register (www.theyogaregister.org).

Aspects of the Course:
The organising architectonic of the course is a four-aspect mandala. 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. See material on www.mandala.heartyoga.co.uk.

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.

Pedagogy (Teaching Method):
The following areas will be covered:

• Teaching from your centre
• 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, working through a comparison of different translations;
• Other texts will be touched upon where they seem relevant to the needs of particular students. For the 500 hour level we will branch out into a study of The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Bhagavad Gita and certain of The Upanishads;
• Patanjali will be compared with some of the more original modern spiritual masters, perhaps Krishnamurti, Trungpa Rinpoche, Gurdjieff;
• The 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:
You will be expected to undertake considerable home study in Western anatomy, mainly through reading David H. Coulter’s ‘Anatomy of Hatha Yoga’. We will touch upon pathology when we discuss contraindications to asanas and pranayama. We will learn Yogic anatomy i.e. nadis, chakras, Kundalini, the subtle body, microcosm/macrocosm, Samkhya and how to use it to navigate our experience and that of our students.

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. There is an internet discussion/support group for Heart Yoga teachers and trainee-teacher which you will be invited to join. Feedback will have the following elements:

• Feedback on your practice. As noted above, you should keep a practice journal.
• Feedback on your teaching.
• Feedback on your research project.

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.

Teaching Materials:
You will need to buy Coulter’s Anatomy of Hatha Yoga. Unfortunately it is a bit expensive but incomparable on the subject. (Please purchase from www.heartyoga.co.uk/books.html.) I will supply translations of The Yoga Sutra and background reading and notes. Other materials which you are required to read or may need for research purposes (e.g. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads) are available free on the Net by following links on www.mandala.heartyoga.co.uk or you may buy them. You will need to buy a copy of a very good new translation of The Hatha Yoga Pradipika by Brian Daner Akers. I should be able to supply this at a reasonable price. Vijnanabhairava will be studied on the 500 hour course and you will need to buy it.

Structure of the Course:
The 200 hours of the Heart Yoga Certificate will ideally be made up of ten weekends over two years. Each weekend involves up to 16 hours of work, so it is quite intense. Even though we could do it a little faster, I think it is a good idea to allow the material to be digested at a slow rate. It would be a good idea to do at least one retreat during the training. These hours can be recorded on the transcript of what you have studied that I will give you along with your certificate – so the more the better. We can be flexible about the meeting times, meeting up when it is convenient to everyone in the group. Meetings will be at Parkdale, groups will be small – six persons maximum - and can be residential if you wish. For the 500 hours diploma, eight weekends and two week long retreats spread over two year are required.

Cost:
The total cost of the 200 hours will be £1250. It can be paid in instalments of £125 for each weekend. You may share the life of the household if you wish including our meals and staying at the centre as our guest. There is no extra charge for this. Retreats are extra and payable at the usual rate. The 500 hour weekends are £125 each and the retreats are payable at the usual rate.

Contact:
If you want to apply for this course, in the first instance please contact by us by phone (01902 424048) or by email for an informal chat. If we both think that the course looks promising for you, then we will arrange an interview/meeting to explore the matter further.

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), 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.

Concluding Remarks:
This course will be an adventure. For my part, I promise to give you my best attention and to help and encourage you with this momentous work. May all beings be free!

For further information:
website: www.heartyoga.co.uk
email: yates@heartyoga.co.uk
write: Heart Yoga, Parkdale Yoga Centre, 10 Parkdale West, Wolverhampton WV1 4TE
call (International): 44 1902 424048 call (UK): 01902 424048.