JOIN THE LIVE IN PERSON SERIES

The Inspiring Yoga Teacher 

A Blueprint for Teacher-Student Transformation

New dates coming in September 2024

a mini- apprenticeship into shared inquiry teaching offering a set of blueprints for beginners classes that act as a springboard for your own innate creativity to emerge.

DateS & timeS :

September 2024

Each weekly lesson plan provides a template and a thorough teaching curriculum that models how to build the foundation for a yoga practice in a warm, informative way that is easy to digest and leaves your students hungry for more. 

These eight classes comprise the foundations course you’ll learn to teach by first becoming a student of the course and developing an embodied, experiential understanding of the material. The Inspiring Yoga Teacher shows you how to work in a pedagogic model of shared inquiry, unpacking what that means in terms of practice, language, cueing, pace, sequencing and hands-on adjustments.

By becoming a student of the shared inquiry teaching process in a dedicated, peer-group environment, you’ll learn how to help your students listen to their own bodies, honour their unique physical structure and make wise decisions about modifying, adapting or staying in a pose to suit their individual needs. Once learnt, they can apply these skills in any asana class. The series carefully builds a sequence of foundational asana, inquiries and practices that are the vehicles used to explore these fundamental skills.

The classes are structured to progressively flow from each other like a series of over-lapping waves. Each class informs the last class and acts as a springboard for the next one. You will explore structural alignment (how to set poses up) and engaged alignment (how to run force through those poses), with your breath as the backdrop and animating force from which all movement emerges.

Each class is structured so that it can be unpacked and expanded to serve you and your students. It includes accessible options that can be tailored for different age groups, abilities, injuries, energy levels, time of day and season of the year.

Classes are prop-light in deference to teachers who are working in gyms, church halls and other non-studio settings. They are aimed at a beginner-improver level, and based on class plans honed through teaching real people of all sizes, shapes and ages over a period of twenty years. In essence, they contain Lisa’s favourite play-lists for each theme. Together they offer you an extensive and eminently practical tool-kit.

You will receive an extensive manual to inform your learning, with clear explanations that address teaching methodology, choices and considerations. The manual contains detailed instructions for each asana as well as a reference guide for further learning and a glossary of terms.

'Each of us is an artist of our own days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.’

John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

Class Details

Moving and Breathing with Ease

September 2024, Exact dates to be announced

Learn how to move and breathe with ease. This class introduces simple yoga postures to release, lengthen and rebalance your whole body. It explores how to free tension in the hips and pelvis and find strength in the legs. It invites you to
listen, slow down and rest. Class One offers you the gift of space, breath and inner calm. You will explore lying, kneeling and standing poses.

Building Strength and Support

Exact Dates To Be Announced

Learn how to build strength and support from the ground up. This class focuses on the connection between your feet, legs, pelvis and spine. It introduces the importance of good posture and how to find length and strength in your spine. You will investigate how to feel grounded, supported and stable in movement, and how the benefits of yoga cross over into real life. You will explore lying, kneeling and standing poses and a simple flow sequence.

Aligning the Spine

Exact Dates To Be Announced

Discover how your spine supports you. This class explores what makes you feel strong and stable in yoga postures. It investigates how to mobilise and stabilise your spine and how amazing and unique your spine is. It explores how to create relaxation and vitality through your breath, and the relationship between breath, posture and movement. You will explore lying, kneeling and standing poses and a simple back bend.

Moving from Centre

Exact Dates To Be Announced

This class focuses on how to move from a stable, yet fluid core. It examines the connection between your core and the rest of your body. It explores how to move freely in areas that feel tight, tense, stuck or painful. This class offers you an opportunity to experience how your breath moves your body and how alignment is always an inside job. You will refine your knowledge, explore a balance pose, and learn a longer sequence called a Sun Salutation.

Making Friends with Back Bends

Exact Dates To Be Announced

This class focuses on dynamic strengthening practices that contribute to easeful, upright posture and movement. It takes the spine through a full range of motion to restore each part to optimum balance and combat the strain of prolonged desk
work. Class Five continues to investigate how to breathe for optimum support as movement becomes more challenging. Learn how to be safe with yourself and practice with self-care and kindness as you progress your yoga practice. You will progress your Sun Salutation and learn another spine strengthening sequence. 

Unwinding with Twists and Spirals

Exact Dates To Be Announced

Learn how to unwind your body. Twisting movements can be complex – especially if you have a current or past injury. This class explores how to move safely into twisting in a way that
honours your unique anatomy and plays to your strengths. Discover how support precedes movement and find comfort and ease as you twist. You will explore Sun Salutations and a new standing pose, as well as seated poses in this class.

Creating Space with Side Bends

Exact Dates To Be Announced

Learn how to create space in your body and find length in your spine. This class refines your understanding of how to move from your centre in a balanced way. It explores how to move through areas of your spine that may feel stuck, stiff or rigid, and how to unlock new levels of freedom in your breath. You will learn a new breathing technique and refine your learning in lying, standing and seated poses.

Coming Home to Yourself

Exact Dates To Be Announced

This class explores how to gently release tension in the hip and pelvic region. Class Eight offers practices to lengthen the spine and and deepen your connection to your breath. Move, breathe,
rest and enjoy your our newfound knowledge. You're not just practicing yoga - you're coming home to yourself.

‘Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.’

Plutarch

Who will benefit from this series

  • Teachers who are relatively new to teaching who need guidance in curating a well-rounded
    foundation course.
  • Experienced teachers who are keen to refresh and enhance their teaching repertoire, and
    discover new creative sequences.
  • Graduates of Donna Farhi’s, Lisa Petersen’s, or other teacher trainings who are looking to
    refresh their foundations template, find new inspiration and embody new practices.
  • Teachers who wish to learn how to incorporate somatic inquiry in a class, and how to
    seamlessly incorporate somatic exercises into a yoga warm-up.
  • Teachers who wish to be in community with like-minded peers, and held in the framework
    of a horizontal teaching model. As you enter this space, you are in co-authorship with the
    material.
  • AOT graduates who are eager to learn how to offer a foundation series through the lens of a
    shared-inquiry pedagogic model.
  • Yoga teachers globally who are moving away from drop-in classes and wish to offer
    intelligent foundation courses for new comers that integrate the best of cutting edge somatics
    with contemporary yoga practice.
  • Teachers who are disenchanted with the drop-in model and want to feel greater satisfaction
    in working in a cumulative learning model (as well as the greater income security that comes
    with pre-registered bookings)

What do I get?

28 Hour live online training including:
  • 8 x 1.5 hour experiential classes.
  • 8 x 1 hour support circles at the time of delivery
  • 8 x 1 hour additional support circles after you have trialled the material
  • Edited and upgraded recordings available for one year.
  • An extensive manual with clear explanations that address teaching methodology, choices and considerations.
  • Clear, direct, practical, accessible, directly applicable knowledge and practices infused with heart, presence and an infectious joy for movement and the body.
  • A chance to be in co-inquiry with a teacher trainer with two decades of teaching experience, including 10,000 hours of actual teaching, and over 15 years of clinical practice.
  • This course is available for 28 hours of Yoga Alliance Continuing Education credit through the Subject Matter Expert pathway.

Become a student of the shared inquiry teaching process in a dedicated, peer-group
environment consisting of 28 hours total live online training.

Lisa Petersen

Lisa Petersen is a somatics innovator and yoga teacher who is passionate about guiding people towards personal transformation both on and off the mat. She is internationally known for her integrity, clarity and presence. Her teaching is informed by a rich understanding of embodiment, experiential anatomy and developmental movement patterns. She is moved by finding the balance between being and doing, movement and stillness, strength and fluidity, discipline and freedom

Places on the live classes are limited!

Reserve your seat now and join us live for the class
 and experience somatics in action.