108-Hour The Heart of Practice:
A Teacher Training Yoga Retreat
This training is part of our 500-Hour Advanced Yoga Teacher Training Certification at Pavones Yoga Center - A Yoga Alliance Registered School (RYS-500)
Director Indira Kate Kalmbach, E-RYT 500 | Assistant Director Chris Crotty, M.A.
Dates: Spring 2014 (TBA)
Highlights of this training include:
- Asana and Pranayama practices that support Self-awareness.
- Facing life challenges with self-compassion.
- The Vayus and specific sequencing for the different movements of Prana.
- The neurobiology of meditation: scientific research into mindfulness practice.
- Tools for teaching pranayama and meditation across populations and levels.
- The role of the heart on the yogic path: physical and emotional impact.
- Balancing high-energy vinyasa with silence, stillness, and meditation-in-motion.
- Time spent in silence as a way to step outside of "conditioned mind" and to foster inner freedom.
The Heart of Practice is an eight day yoga teacher training retreat that can be taken as part of the 500-Hour Advanced Yoga Teacher Training, or as a retreat for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of yoga as a path of self-inquiry. During The Heart of Practice, we come together as a community of practitioners to explore how the path of contemplative practice contains both movement and stillness, and how the awareness that arises from careful attention to all experience reveals a heart and mind with a natural capacity for wisdom.
The Heart of Practice emphasizes mindfulness as a foundation for stillness and awareness that supports the yoga as path of personal transformation. Because at its center yoga is a practice of learning to become aware of, contain, and properly channel or direct energy, we will explore the five directions of Prana and the energetic footprint of each manifestation of energy. We will learn and practice posture sequences for each of the vayus: prana, apana, samana, udana, and vyana. Through mindful awareness, we awaken to principles of alignment that go beyond posture, examining the interplay between an alignment of the heart and the guiding light of our own inner wisdom. We will spend time examining the ways we condition well-being or discontent in our own live and investigate the role of stillness and meditation as companions to posture practice.
As a student and teacher of yoga how does the way we approach our practice inform our lives? We will explore this question through the lens of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and through sitting and walking meditation, asana practice, and structured time in nature. As a yoga teacher, you will learn new ways to bring mindfulness and meditation into your classes. As practitioners, we will learn how to develop greater stillness, ever evolving our capacity to live life fully present within the challenges and changing conditions of our lives. All Pavones Yoga Center teacher trainings are offered in true residential retreat style. Accommodations, meals, yoga classes, and training sessions all take place onsite. The training combines various experiences in nature as a way to deepen our connection to the earth and inspire the sense of awe and natural curiosity that foster healthy learning. Whenever possible, our training experience follows the rhythms and cycles of nature, for example by celebrating new beginnings on the new moon and allowing time for meditative practices on the full moon. By being on nature's schedule you will find an increased ability to heal, transform and grow.
For eight days, we will immerse ourselves in twice daily physical asana practices, daily technique breakdown sessions, philosophy, pranayama, meditation, and experiential workshops. The vinyasa or active classes in the morning will awaken and inspire; they will also draw from the posture sets that we will learn throughout the course. Evening asana practices are restorative and therapeutic. This blend of yin and yang styles will give you a range of options for designing your own classes.
Program Cost: $2,000.00*
*This price includes all related expenses including onsite accommodations in a shared room, all meals, and all program costs.