Self-Paced 15-Hour Yoga Assists and Conscious Hands-On Adjustment Online Continuing Education Course

Online Yoga Course
This training will empower you so you will be able to assist with skills, safety, and confidence. You can start anytime and learn at your own pace from the comfort of your own home. Make a powerful impact in your classes and offer teachings to guide your students into greater stability and ease in their asana for a lifetime of healthy yoga.

Highlights

• Online course focusing on yoga assists and conscious hands-on adjustments
• Receive 15 Hours Yoga Alliance Continuing Education credits upon successful completion
• The program is also suitable for non-yoga teachers
• Learn at your own pace
• 98 videos and over 10 hours of recorded content
• Lifetime access to the materials
• No live sessions

30 days with instruction

Program

Certification
The course/hours count as Continuing Education hours for Registered Yoga Teachers (RYT®) only.

How the training works
Get started today, it’s easy! You will receive all of the videos and content to move through the program at your own pace. Soma Yoga Institute has a wonderful course management platform for you to use. The team is here to answer your questions via email and would happily set up a time to chat on the phone if questions arise. Complete the program at your own pace and receive your 15 hours of CE when you are done. You will find the content lively, engaging, and directly applicable to your own personal practice and teaching.

Course information

Empower
Develop the art of using a verbal assist combined with a physical adjustment to impact the learning and retention of your students. This course is designed to empower your teaching and empower your students.

Teach with confidence
Develop potent teaching skills that can help your students experience freedom, stability, and strength in their poses. Learn modifications for hands-on adjustments that apply to different students’ levels of experience as well as different body types.

Deepen your knowledge
Deepen your knowledge of alignment and anatomy to assist with safety and integrity and touch with confidence while understanding how to address common postural habits and misalignments in yoga poses. And teach your students how to retrain movements for long-term joint health.

Studio ready
Content will be delivered to you in clear, concise, and practical lessons. The course will include video, slides, lectures, Q&A, discussion, and homework actionable items for the direct application of the techniques into your group classes.

Learn at your own pace
This course is self-paced so you can take as long as you like to view and practice the material. To complete the full curriculum, content and assignments expect to invest approximately 15 hours of your time, most students complete the program in 4-6 weeks. If you take longer to complete the certification aspects of this program, that’s just fine. Once complete you will get 15 CEs with Yoga Alliance.

Lifetime access
You will have a lifetime of access to the material so you can re-learn and deepen your understanding and application of the principles again and again.

Can you really learn assists online?
Yes, absolutely. The course is designed for you to use as a learning tool. In each module, you will discuss one alignment concept and offer assists and adjustments that help your students understand how to put this alignment into their poses. Each assist comes with detailed instructions and short 1-5 minute videos that you can watch again and again until you understand how to apply the technique.
You will find a friend, a willing student, or another yoga teacher to practice on. The training will discuss how to be receptive and solicit feedback from your student to ensure that the assistance you offer brings them into a place of greater ease. Their feedback will be essential in helping you grow as a teacher.

15 hours of study
The course is structured so you may move through the material and assignments at your own pace. The course provides approximately 15 hours of curriculum and assignments.

Course overview

Section one: Founding and working with hypermobile bodies

• Introduction to the program
• The art of assisting and adjusting. Student self-applied assists, verbal assists, and teacher hands-on adjustments. Types of adjustments. Safety and guidelines for practice
• Establishing your foundation, feet, and hands
• Importance of muscle integrity and creating safety in the hypermobile bodies
• Stability and grounding assists (16:37)
• Assisting Savasana (59:02)

In section one you explore: Urdhva Hastasana, Virabhadrasana One, Utthita Parsvakonasana, Janu Sirsasana, Wall Cobra, Natarajasana Prep, Setu Bandasana, Low lunge, Ustrasana, Forearm Stand, Ardha Matsendrasana, Bhujanasana, Step by step therapeutic adjustment instructions, benefits, and cautions of each assist including how to keep your body safe

Section two: Leg rotations, aligning the lumbar spine, and assisting the hypo-mobile body

• Pelvic stability – finding balance through internal and external rotations of the legs
• Assisting and adjusting the hypo-mobile body
• Balancing the rotations of the legs in asymmetrical poses
• Rotations of the legs in backbends
• Stabilizing the pelvis in twists

In section two you will explore: Adho Mukha Svanasana, Virabhadrasana One, Virabhadrasana Two, Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana, Uttanasana, Prasarita Padotanasana, Plank, Baddha Konasana, Setu Bandasana, Bhujangasana, Handstand. Step by step therapeutic adjustment instructions, benefits, and cautions of each assist including how to keep your body safe

Section three: Upper body

• Core stabilization: focus on the gears of the pelvis and ribs
• Shoulder opening: focus on the gear of the shoulder
• Aligning the head: dialog between the head and the heart
• Integration and rotations of the humerus (upper arm bone) at the glenohumeral joint (shoulder)
• Safety for the rotator cuff
• Side waist lengthening and rotations

Culminating conversations – what adjustments would you offer?
In this section you will explore: Urdhva Hastasana, Virabhadrasana One, Utthita Parsvakonasana, Janu Sirsasana, Wall Cobra, Natarajasana Prep, Setu Bandasana, Low lunge, Ustrasana, Forearm Stand, Ardha Matsendrasana, Bhujanasana, Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, Utthita Parsvakonasana, Table Twist, Adho Mukha Svanasana, Vasistasana, Trikonasana, Urdhva Danurasana. Step by step therapeutic adjustment instructions, benefits, and cautions of each assist including how to keep your body safe

FAQ

What are the benefits of online teacher training courses?
Did you know that in in-person yoga trainings with demonstrations, lectures, and hands-on group activity, it is likely that you will retain approximately 30% of the material being offered? Retention rates of what you learn increase substantially when you continually review what you learn.

Yoga teachers, these online courses have been designed with you in mind. This curriculum is in place to augment your yoga teacher training and bring home the important concepts so you remember, refresh and apply the principles directly into the classes you are currently teaching. Online training provides an unparalleled forum for you to review the material again and again until it is fully digested.

The lively group online community keeps the program interesting. With unlimited opportunity to ask questions you are sure to come away from a stronger more knowledgeable yoga teacher. The Q & A forum helps you with areas that need refinement. When you put into practice what you are learning your information retention increase to 75%. Online programs also save time and travel costs. With the videos and lessons to review for a lifetime, it is an effective investment in your development as a yoga teacher.

Do I have to be teaching yoga currently to take this class?
No, you will still benefit greatly from the study of asana, alignment, and modification. And, who knows the course may just re-inspire you to begin teaching again. If you are currently teaching yoga, you will be able to apply the lessons each week with focused direction and guidance to your classes.

I am not a yoga teacher, can I take this class?
Absolutely. All students of yoga will benefit from watching the course and practicing with the videos especially if they are interested in learning alignment.

Instructors

Liz Heffernan
Liz Heffernan, E-RYT 500, C-IAYT is an international yoga teacher and Integrative Yoga Therapist. She draws from over two decades of personal yoga practice, 25 years of teaching and extensive training in the Hatha yoga systems of Kripalu, Ashtanga, and Anusara. She currently directs and leads Yoga teacher trainings and workshops worldwide, provides unique one-to-one mentoring for yoga teachers, instructs daily yoga classes and offers private therapeutic sessions. Additionally, Liz serves as a mentor/faculty for the Kripalu School of Integrative Yoga Therapy Professional Yoga Therapy program.

Peggy Profant
Peggy Profant, C-IAYT Yoga Therapist, E-RYT 500, and certified Anusara yoga teacher first discovered the practice in 1980 and began teaching it to others in 1997. Ashtanga, Iyengar, and Anusara are the schools in which have influenced her practice. As one who lives courageously from her heart, she passionately teaches her classes with meaningful yogic themes while keeping a keen attention to alignment. In addition to yoga, being in nature and with her family is where she finds her deepest joy and peace.

What’s included

• 98 videos and over 10 hours of recorded content
• 15 Yoga Alliance Continuing Education credits upon completion of the course
• Exploration of 45 different asana and over 80 hands-on adjustments
• Over 10 hours of recorded content
• Exceptional verbal cues to accompany each physical adjustment
• A safety-conscious, anatomical, and bio-mechanically informed perspective
• Cautions and benefits associated with certain adjustments
• Application to a variety of body types
• Handouts for reminders and taking notes
• Access to members-only Facebook group page for Q&A and informed discussions
• Lifetime access to the materials

What’s not included

• Accommodation
• Food