Yin:  a study of stillness

Enhance your teaching, enhance your practice, and discover new ways to explore your body-mind connection. Yin Yoga is a deep, rewarding practice that synthesizes the contemplative power of meditation with the energetic properties of yoga and pranayama. Rooted in ancient Eastern cultures, Yin Yoga is a unique counterbalance to our fast-paced world. Suitable for practitioners of all levels, Yin is a perfect complement to active lives and yoga practices. Are you looking to enrich your teaching skills or do you simply seek the peace and balance this beautifully intelligent practice offers? Let our 50 hour journey lead into transformation, offering both profound healing and inner peace.

As in all Raga Yoga trainings, this 50hour module offers a strong emphasis on functional anatomy and technique. We are dedicated to prepare you to be extremely knowledgeable when it comes to alignment, intelligent sequencing, individuation, adjustments, historical understanding and powerful cueing for your students.  Raga Yoga is a Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider (YACEP).

Whether you’re just getting started or continuing on your teaching journey, this certification program provides a fulfilling immersion into this precious practice, its history, philosophy, and much more.  Our YA certified 50-Hour Yin Yoga Teacher Training will prepare you to be a yin yoga instructor while you earn up to 50 CEUs.

Anchored in the work of Paul Grilley and Bernie Clark and supported by accessible Integral Anatomy* study, this training will help you gain the skills you need to practice, design, and teach a yin class with confidence. 

Yin yoga explores and honors the edges where resistance arises: This resistance may be physical, emotional or psychological.  On a physical level, yin yoga targets our deepest layers of connective tissues, including our fascia, ligaments, joints, cartilage, and bones. All tissues need exercise to regain and maintain optimal health, and these deeper tissues are no exception. Safely and effectively exercising the deeper, yin-like tissues need to use yin-like stresses.

This training course goes beyond the basic information about anatomy and physiology offered in most Yoga Teacher Trainings. Our focus will be on how the body moves, what limits movement, when these limits can be extended and when they should be accepted. This understanding is important not only for yoga students and teachers but also dancers and athletes or anyone who helps people move functionally.

In Yin yoga there is time… time to explore sensations, time to learn the appropriate depth for you in each posture, time to develop the habits of attending, noticing, and adjusting. Yin provides you the time to get to know your body, and how best to care for it.  So, we’ve decided to slow this training down.  We want this training to reflect this foundational aspect of the practice. So, we’ve slowed it down, offering weekly digestible, habit-forming, skill-building sessions; giving you the time and care your body and mind deserve.

At the end of the program, you will be able to:

• Skillfully sequence and teach a yin class from a functional rather than aesthetic perspective
• Describe the benefits of yin as it relates to connective tissue and stress
• For a given yin pose, identify the target area, common adaptations, variations, key proppings, and cautions
• Draw the thigh and torso mandala by memory with labels for key target muscle groups
• Describe key philosophical principles of yin yoga, including the principles of yin and yang, ch’i, and the Tao
• Demonstrate proficiency in key teaching skills for facilitating an effective, welcoming and safe yin experience
• Describe the history of yin practice, including modern leaders in its development
• The three principles of the yin yoga practice
• The reality of human variations and what it means for you
• How to stimulate energy flow and remove blockages
• To develop mindfulness and hone your ability to attend

*Integral Anatomy for Yoga Teachers will include:

• Explorations and measurements of your personal ranges of motion and what may be stopping you from progressing
• Understanding the unique physiological and biomechanical limits to one’s range of motion
• The differences between a functional versus an aesthetic approach
• The difference between flexibility and mobility
• What is hypermobility and why does it matter
• A deep look at the major joint and how they work
• Special focus on the hips, spine, and shoulders
• The importance of human variation and understanding its effects
• De-bunking movement myths and traditional ideas of how people should look