200hr Yoga Syllabus

Sacred Paths Yoga is a registered yoga school (RYS) with Yoga Alliance who has set a widely accepted international standard for Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) programs. These standards describe Yoga Alliance’s requirements for a Registered Yoga School that offers a 200-hour program. Topics for a RYS teacher training must be relevant to Yoga Alliance’s five educational categories as defined below. RYSs must provide a minimum number of hours of study in each educational category, and to make up the total 200 required hours (180 minimum contact hours), must also provide additional hours of study relevant to these categories. Here is how Sacred Paths Yoga School has chosen to explore these educational categories in our 200 YTT programs.

The RYS Educational Categories are:

• Techniques, Training and Practice
• Teaching Methodology
• Anatomy & Physiology
• Yoga Philosophy/Ethics/Lifestyle
• Practicum

Techniques, Training and Practice

Contact Hours: 100

In this category we will explore techniques as well as practice and teach: asanas, pranayamas, kriyas, chanting, mantra, meditation and other traditional yoga practices. We will emphasis both guided practice of the techniques themselves as well as analytical training in how to teach and practice the techniques.

Asana:  Trainees will deepen their knowledge of poses including beginner and more advanced variations. Benefits, risks and contraindications will be explored as well as safe transitions, intelligent sequencing, alignment and hands on assists. The five main categories of poses will be covered including standing/ balancing poses, forward bends, backbends, twists and inversions.

Pranayama: Students will practice, experience and learn how to guide several pranayama techniques. They will learn the benefits and effects of such practices as well as how and when to incorporate them into a class. Pranayamas covered in depth will include: abdominal breathing, three-part yogic breath, ujjai pranayama, nadi shodhana, anuloma viloma, and kapalabhati.

Kriyas: Yogic cleansing and purification techniques will be taught and practiced in the form of Jal neti, kapalabhati, agni sara, and tratak. Trainees will be guided on the benefits and how to incorporate these techniques  into their personal practice.

Chanting/ Mantra: We explore mantra as a path to connection, to invoke spirit and to create sacred space. Trainees will experience, practice and learn mantras to share in class such as Om, the Gayatri Mantra, the Bija mantras for chakra clearing and others.

Meditation: Various forms of guided meditation will be shared including breath focus, sensory withdrawal. visualization, mantra, chakra. Emphasis will be on quieting the mind and experiencing divine union on this path of yoga.

Teaching Methodology:

Contact Hours: 25

In this category, we will share how to refine and apply your skills as a teacher. We will discuss the principles of demonstrating asanas as well as how to effectively observe, use verbal cues and incorporate hands on assist in a class.

We will explore the use of language and voice: active vs. passive language and the effective use of each; positive and conscious communication, and habitual speech and communication patterns. This category will prepare trainees to be transformational spaceholders.

Topics in this category will include:

• Communication skills such as group dynamics, time management, and the establishment of priorities and boundaries
• How to address the specific needs of individuals and special populations, to the degree possible in a group setting
• Principles of demonstration, observation, assisting and correcting
• Teaching styles
• Qualities of a teacher
• The student learning process
• Business aspects of teaching yoga (including marketing and legal)
• Teacher/ Student relationship and teacher ethics

Anatomy and Physiology:

Contact Hours: 20

Topics in this category will include anatomical terms and basic overview of the physical body,  classes and discussion on the skeletal, muscular and nervous systems as well as how these systems are benefited by  yoga. Trainees will gain knowledge of the cardiovascular system and the heart and the digestive system and the yogic diet.

This category will also include subtle energetic anatomy and physiology, including studies on the chakras and nadis. Trainees will be guided in studying both anatomy/ physiology along with its application to the yoga practice including benefits, contraindications, healthy movement patterns, etc.

Yoga Philosophy, Lifestyle and Ethics for Yoga Teachers

Contact Hours: 40

Our program emphasizes a whole lifestyle approach to yoga as a practice and offers guidance on how to live this practice on and off the mat. In this category, we will cover the study of yoga philosophies and traditional texts, in particularly Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. We will explore this 8-fold path as a means to quieting the mind to reach liberation. This study will include group-work, discussion and application to our practice and daily life. This category will also include the transformational framework in which trainees can practice self-inquiry and develop themselves as embodied practitioners and embodied guides.

Practicum

Contact Hours: 15

In this category, trainees will actively practice teaching as the lead instructor. They will also observe others teaching, receive and give feedback and assist students while someone else is teaching. Trainees will begin peer teaching from day one as they gradually learn and practice teaching the poses and mini sequences in the Sacred Flow that is practiced in the morning and studied in depth in the Art of Teaching/ Touch classes throughout the first half of the training. They will teach this set 90 minute flow in full to a peer, observed by a facilitator. In the second half of the training, students will create their own full sequence from the tools provided, share a 90 minute class through peer teaching and receive feedback from their peers and facilitators.