Living Yoga Advanced Teacher Training (LYATT)

Our current training ends in summer 2021. These are postponed dates to accommodate The Great Pause. We will announce details of our next in person training once it is safe to meet. Please contact [email protected] to register your interest, sate your curiosity or ask your questions. See you downstream! Be safe, be well.

Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.’ – W.B. Yeats

‘Embodiment is the act of awakening and enlivening the consciousness of our whole being’ – Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen.

This training weaves embodiment into the practice and teaching of Yoga. It offers you a tool-kit for transformation. It is artful, scientific, poetic, authentic, and accessible. We use somatics, movement patterns and embodied anatomy as our guiding threads. Working with patterns allows change to ripple through the body-mind like dropping a stone into a still pond. Grace, ease, poise, strength and balance are naturally and organically restored.

We welcome qualified teachers from all traditions who wish to enrich their learning. We also consider experienced students who are not yet teachers and who wish to deepen their Yoga journey.

We offer you three ways of studying with us:

What We Offer

From a nuts and bolts perspective, the course is built on the study of asana, vinyasa, pranayama, meditation and restorative Yoga. Your learning is supported by somatics, embodied anatomy,  developmental and functional movement patterns, subtle-body anatomy, embodied voice, philosophy, and teaching methodology. We map embodied knowledge directly onto Yoga and teach you how to move, practice and teach from this storehouse of wisdom.

Our Ethos and Principles

  • We respect and value all traditional schools and teaching while embracing modern masters and the continuing innovation and creativity that has allowed Yoga to evolve and grow.
  • In this practice, we use our bodies, minds and spirits as living laboratories. They help us engage in a personal investigation of what it means to be a fully-alive human being.
  • We use the kosha model as described in the Taittirīya Upanishad to support the full continuum of your learning and development.
  • We believe that a great Yoga teacher is a truly unique blend of explorer, seeker, artist, scientist, guide and educator. This training seeks to cultivate your unique, individual presence, voice, style and expression so that your teaching becomes a creative, self-renewing process.
  • Although the practice starts with the holy trinity of me, myself and I, we trust that it naturally extends to your relationships with others and to how you want to be in the world.
  • We know that optimum learning happens in a warm, non-competitive, relaxed yet highly professional environment. We deeply appreciate that every one of our students has a distinct and individual learning style and offer skilled practices to accommodate a diversity of learners.
  • Our teaching methodology is grounded in a pedagogic model that was created by master teacher Donna Farhi. It values curiosity, inquiry, innovation, adaptability, and exploration over more authoritarian models.
  • It is our mission to develop highly skilled, intuitive, educated, professional Yoga teachers where self-inquiry, self-trust and self-care are paramount.

Practicalities – Support – Supervision – Resources

  • The training is offered in modular format with multiple tracks so you can customise the content to suit your interest, schedule and budget. This is a choice we make so that students at all stages of life have access to world-class teaching.
  • We have a very high teacher: student ratio with a minimum of three fully-qualified teacher assistants who have all undertaken the training before, and two lead teachers on each module*. As a former participant said ‘There is always someone nearby to ask or notice if you need help’.
  • We offer formal supervision in small groups for each module.
  • Each module stands alone in terms of content and delivery AND can be interwoven into the larger body of work and practice. You get to choose where you dive in and how deep you want to go. We offer you to possibility of re-joining us at any time.
  • We work a six-hour teaching day to maximise retention, focus and concentration. Experience has shown that ‘packing in’ too many hours in one day in order to reduce the duration of the course, is counter-productive to real learning and integration.
  • We explicitly leave integration breaks over the course of the training
  • Our manuals are full colour and extremely comprehensive supports for your learning. They’re essentially small books. Past students say they return to them often for inspiration and further integration.
  • Our group process include study buddy groups, supervision and formal feedback processes.
*This is with the exception of Module 1 Induction and the Integration Modules 9 and 13 which Lisa leads with the assistant faculty

Daily Structure

Each of the modules has a specific theme and guiding thread and starts with a supervised self-practice. Our individual teachers shine their own light and depth of understanding onto your learning. Mornings consist of a short lecture, somatic enquiry, warm-up and guided asana/vinyasa practice. Afternoons can include the following: Q&A, guided practice, partner work, practicum, re-patterning, meditation, restorative and Yoga Nidra.

Learning Outcomes

  • Evolution of each student’s personal practice with the support of embodied and intuitive wisdom. Deeper meditative practices and increased choice in practice.
  • Deeper understanding of the body-mind (or soma) and how to practice and teach Yoga from this perspective.
  • Deeper knowledge of the evolution of human movement and how appropriate alignment can instinctively and spontaneously arise when we move from within. Movement abilities which potentially increase poise, ease, grace, power, co-ordination, strength, balance, integration and authenticity.
  • Clear insight and knowledge of anatomy and physiology and how to apply it in an embodied and individual way. This includes physical and subtle-body anatomy.
  • Refined kinaesthetic, proprioceptive and intero-receptive intelligence. Increased skills to sense, feel, map, track, register, visualise and embody ourselves.
  • Analysis of posture and movement patterns – how to read bodies, offer embodied solutions and troubleshoot common issues.
  • Enhanced awareness of what constitutes safe practice for self and others. Injury prevention and rehabilitation. Creative sequencing that models safe practice and addresses learning challenges.
  • Understanding asana as a vehicle for prana. Learning how to create, sustain and circulate pranic energies within the physical forms of yoga.
  • Identification of old patterns or samskaras (in the physical, mental and emotional bodies), entrainment and integration of new patterns.
  • Heightened touch skills: how and when to offer touch and how to apply skilful modifications.
  • Embodiment and channelling of the voice and inner presence in teaching. Refined language and communication skills.
  • Solid grounding in this teaching methodology and the lineage of this pedagogic model: being an effective educator, learning styles, trust, permission, process and more.
  • Enhanced understanding of the lifestyle ethics of a yoga teacher, the dynamics of the teacher-student relationship, and how to responsibly practice and teach in the modern world.
  • Embodiment of self-compassion and loving kindness as the basis for a life-practice of yoga. Acknowledgement and knowledge of our heartfelt desires and how to follow them.
  • Confidence and trust in one’s own abilities as a teacher and practitioner

About Our Course Teachers

Our faculty is comprised of inspiring, highly trained, dedicated, passionate individuals. Lisa has chosen them for their hearts, minds and spirits. Together, they offer you a wealth of knowledge and decades upon decades of experience.

Lisa Petersen

Lisa is the founder of Living Yoga. She currently calls herself a somatic pioneer, embodied anatomist and Yoga educator. Lisa is known for her clarity, presence, humour and passion as well as her ability to simplify complex anatomical theories and see patterns.

Lisa counts her lucky stars that she encountered Donna Farhi in 2000 and continues to study with this master teacher to this day. She is immensely grateful to have learned embodied anatomy directly from Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen between 2008-2010 and from Amy Matthews since 2006. Lisa co-taught Farhi’s 2013 and 2015 Advanced Teacher Training and incorporates Body-Mind Centering® extensively into her teaching.

Her style is warm and personable. Her workshops and trainings are innovative and authentic as she guides her students towards personal transformation both on and off the mat. Lisa is passionate about finding the balance between being and doing, movement and stillness, strength and fluidity, discipline and freedom. She offers immersions in Yoga, somatic movement and embodied anatomy internationally. She is a qualified Yoga Teacher, Yoga Therapist, Somatic Movement Educator and Pre- and Peri-natal Instructor. www.living-yoga.ie and www.somatics.ie

Christine Howitt

Christine is a Yoga teacher and shiatsu practitioner based in Manchester. She lays down the foundations of the LYATT along with Lisa. Christine is well known and respected for her instinctive approach to teaching. She offers a deep well of power as she takes her students on an embodied journey into themselves. Christine is a founder-member of Bodywyse Alternative Health Centre and teaches classes and workshops nationally as well as working one to one on a therapeutic basis. She is also part of the faculty for the Yoga Campus North Teacher Training. Her Buddhist roots have led her to develop a clear, keen and well-honed kindness, with which she treats students and colleagues alike. www.christinehowitt.info

Sandra McGuffin

Sandra McGuffin is a Yoga teacher and Somatic Movement Educator in the tradition of Body-Mind Centering®. Sandra’s Yoga journey over the past decade has taken her on a path of deep self-study. Her investment in and commitment to her own process are an inspiration to witness. Sandra’s passion for anatomy is insightful and infectious. When coupled with her natural creativity, innate talent, honesty and desire to share, a gifted teacher emerges. Watch this space.

John Sharkey

John Sharkey is an international educator, author and authority in the areas of Clinical Anatomy, Exercise Physiology, human movement and the manual treatment of chronic pain using European Neuromuscular Therapy. John is a graduate of the University of Dundee, University of Liverpool and University of Chester. He completed undergraduate and post-graduate studies in the areas of Exercise Physiology, Clinical Anatomy and holds a post-graduate certificate in education. He is currently a senior lecturer within the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Life Sciences, University of Chester/NTC, Dublin and is the programme leader of the Biotensegrity focused Thiel soft fix cadaver dissection courses department of anatomy and human identification, Dundee University, Scotland.

John has been delivering human anatomy dissection courses for many years teaching the geometry of anatomy and movement from the unique Biotensegrity-Anatomy for the 21st Century perspective. His presentations are respectful, dynamic, entertaining, educational and insightful.

Eleanor Dawson

Eleanor is a multi-faceted musician and Yoga teacher based in Co. Dublin. Trained as a classical musician, and in Yoga in the tradition of TKV Desikachar, she teaches students and Yoga teachers in Ireland, UK and in Quebec, Canada. Eleanor was privileged to work with the late Peter Hersnack, who remains her principal inspiration. She is Co-Director of the UK-based Association for Yoga Studies and deeply involved in the dissemination of Peter Hersnack’s teaching internationally. Eleanor’s innovative, enquiring approach to teaching of Yoga and sound is rooted in her rigorous training in both music and Yoga. She works with voice and resonance to present Yoga as an embodied spiritual teaching for living. Her approach is tender, creative, sensitive and good-humoured.

Terms and Conditions

Code of Ethics for Yoga Teacher Training