Target Audience

Yoga therapists, yoga teachers, and healthcare providers looking to add yoga into their repertoire.

Purpose

The Accessible Yoga Training focuses on how to make the yoga teachings available to everyone, regardless of their shape, size, ability or background and is intended for yoga therapists, yoga teachers and those in teacher training, physical therapists & healthcare providers.

Benefits of an accessible yoga practice include enhancing muscular strength, balance, flexibility, improving physiological function, reducing stress, anxiety, chronic pain and promotes overall health and well-being.

Explore the many ways that yoga practice can be modified to suit students with disabilities, physical challenges, chronic illness, seniors, and anyone who doesn’t feel comfortable in a regular class. Learn how yoga can enhance healing whether it is in a class, or as an individual student, patient or friend.

Learn how to make classes welcoming to all and about approaching students in a trauma-informed way. Experience sample classes, chair yoga classes and even bed yoga classes. Discover how all of yoga can be used to support health and healing for every body.

Objectives

• Understand the benefits of an accessible yoga practice including: enhancing muscular strength, balance, flexibility, improving physiological functions, reducing stress, anxiety, chronic pain and promoting overall health and well-being
• Determine safe and appropriate variations of common asanas for a range of physical ability (chair, mat/bed, standing)
• Learn specific asanas for flexibility, strengthening and balance training to maintain or improve health and independence
• Understand the purpose and implementation of various props to make yoga accessible to all abilities
• Learn how to create integrated (mixed level) classes making yoga accessible to all
• Acquire knowledge of common medical conditions and the benefits and concerns for implementation of a yoga practice
• Learn the physical and psychosocial benefits of pranayama and meditation and how to make these practices available for all students, regardless of ability
• Learn how to apply the teachings of yoga philosophy in day to day life to reduce stress, create more balance and develop authentic connections with self and others
• Learn how to build a strong community among Yoga students to support the transformational process of yoga

Curriculum

View a sample daily schedule. An additional nine hours of pre-course work will be provided upon registration.

Adapted Asana

• Variations of the most popular asanas
• Techniques for creating integrated Accessible Yoga classes
• Sample Accessible Yoga classes, either on the floor, in a chair, or in a bed

Yoga Anatomy and Physiology

• Overview of common medical conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, respiratory diseases, cancer, H.I.V/AIDS, heart disease and more
• A review of some of the major impacts of aging on all the systems of the body

Yoga Psychology

• How to empower people with disabilities by giving them a deep understanding of the Yoga teachings. Includes study of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and The Bhagavad Gita

Pranayama and Meditation

• How to make the subtle practices available for all students, regardless of ability

Community

• How to build a strong community among Yoga students to support the transformational process of Yoga

Speaker

Sarah Elizabeth Helt is a 500+ hr Registered Yoga Teacher. She began working with Accessible Yoga directly following the first Accessible Yoga Conference in 2015. Sarah currently lives in South Pasadena, California where she teaches individualized sessions for people of all ability levels; specializing in spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, and persons with neurological difficulties; she also teaches group lead classes at various locations in East LA, and is currently lead teacher at Hot 8 Yoga (Pasadena). She is deeply involved in this, and other, teacher training programs. Sarah is inspired by her past in the performing arts to help all teacher find their voice, and by her in-depth study of anatomy to make complicated subjects easier to digest. Sarah is light-hearted and compassionate teacher trainer with a fresh perspective on adaptive asana.