March 2021 ONLINE 50-hour Advanced Yoga Training in Trauma, Mental Health and Body Image

Are you a qualified yoga teacher, wanting to feel confident and equipped to offer more specialised support for your students, but are unsure exactly how to refine your teaching skills to be most sensitive to working with complex and vulnerable situations and communities? This 50-hour advanced teacher training is designed specifically for you. 

What is the training?

This 50-hour march 2021 ONLINE advanced training is for qualified yoga teachers, focusing on Yoga for Trauma, Anxiety, Depression, and Body Image. The 5-week program will include 10-hours of content per week (which you can complete in your own time up to 6 months after the training dates). The online training includes: 

• Week 1: Establishing a Safe Container + Teaching Yoga for Trauma
• Week 2 Understanding the Impact of Shadow + Integrating Social Justice and Yoga
• Week 3: Teaching Yoga for Anxiety and Depression
• Week 4: Teaching Yoga for Body Image
• Bonus: Week 5: Program Design + Therapeutic Presence + Trauma-Aware Facilitation (this is a bonus 10 hours more than the 4-day in-person training allowed time for).

What will the program entail? 

• 170+ page comprehensive training manual
• Weekly yoga, pranayama and meditation practices
• Several hours of lectures, talks and discussions per week
• Weekly independent guided reflection and diverse practices to integrate your learning
• 3 hours per week of live programs to dive deeper into the content, answer questions, and explore the yoga principles and practices further together (live sessions timing to be confimed 2 months prior to the training according to what suits the majority of the group. All live sessions will be recorded for those unable to attend lives). 
• Weekly Q&A sessions where your questions will be addressed in depth. 
• Bonus: Special guest speakers

Also included in the training:

• Comprehensive 170+ page course manual 
• Membership to a closed facebook group for ongoing peer feedback and resource sharing beyond the training
• Optional priority booking for 1:1 mentoring with Sarah in-person or on Skype following the training (limited number of spots available as Sarah's clinic is often booked out)
• Certificate of completion for 50-hours of advanced yoga teacher training 

All modules are integrated from a person-centred, ethics-oriented, social-justice perspective. The course is designed to create deep shifts in the way you think about yoga, social justice and mental and spiritual health, and support you to be a confident facilitator of safe and empowering spaces for yoga to be shared in the context of challenging personal and psychological experiences in the lives of your students.

Based on contemporary research, social justice principles, and underpinned by the framework of the highly popular workshops and programs below (among many others), developed by your facilitator Sarah Ball over 17 years of teaching yoga and working with trauma, mental health, and eating and body image issues.

Who is it for?

The training is designed for yoga teachers who genuinely want to feel confident and equipped to offer more specialised support for their students, but are unsure exactly how to refine their teaching skills to be most sensitive to working with complex and vulnerable situations and communities. If you're among this community of teachers, then this course is tailored specifically to train you in these areas so you can feel confident and clear in your approach to mental health, trauma, and body image, in your teaching. 

A minimum certification of 200 hour yoga teaching is required to attend the course (teachers-in-training who are currently completing a minimum 200 hour certification may also enrol). The training is designed to ensure there's plenty of opportunity for small and large groups discussions, as well as personal reflection, diverse learning methods and integration of content.

Modules and Topics Covered

Week 1: Establishing a Safe Container + Teaching Yoga for Trauma

• Yoga and Trauma: Understanding and applying the 4 primary principles of the Trauma Sensitive Yoga method
• Methods of working with the nervous system to create greater safety in individuals and groups
• Introduction to trauma informed practice as a wider social movement in the ‘helping professions’.
• How yoga can be adapted in specific contexts to support trauma sensitive principles
• A suite of simple teaching principles and practices that can be integrated into daily life, group yoga classes, and 1:1 yoga sessions
• Methods of teaching public yoga classes with a trauma-informed approach
• The scope of professional practice for yoga teachers in the field of mental health, trauma and body image.

 Week 2 : Understanding the Impact of Shadow + Integrating Social Justice & Yoga + Rethinking Mental Health & Pathology

• Spiritual Bypassing – what is it, and how does it show up in the yoga world
• Working with ‘shadow’ - our own and those of others
• Bringing life experience to teaching: Peer work and the appropriate use of self-disclosure and lived experience.
• Social Justice in Mental Health: The role of critical reflection in influencing how and what we teach
• Providing tools in the yoga space that encourage acceptance self-empowerment, connection, agency and change.
• Mental Health through Multiple Lenses: yoga, western psychology and questioning pathology
• Narratives of mental health: Ways of thinking about anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues using a narrative approach

Week 3: Teaching Yoga for Anxiety and Depression

• How to adapt yoga for anxiety reduction
• How to adapt yoga to support depression
• The ecology of healing: The intersection of the koshas and ecological systems theory
• A bio-psycho-social framework for teaching yoga for mental health
• Working with the needs of the individual: avoiding a prescriptive approach
• When and why to avoid certain practices for specific mental health issues
• Specific practices and teaching methods that work with the nervous system to support relief from psychological and emotional experiences, including anxiety, depression, grief, anger, and burnout
• How to structure classes to cater to diverse mental health needs in one space

Week 4: Yoga for Body Image 

• Yoga and Body Image: How Yoga Harms, How Yoga Heals
• Unpacking the notion of the ‘Yoga Body’
• Encouraging environments of body-positivity and body-acceptance in yoga classes, 1:1 sessions, and personal practice
• Balancing acceptance and change in the yoga space
• Working with the damage wrought by the ‘transformation fantasy’ as it relates to the body and yoga in the west, while honouring the transcendent possibility of the practices
• Practical approaches to welcoming difference and diversity in yoga spaces

Week 5 (Bonus 10 hours!): Program Design + Therapeutic Presence + Trauma-Aware Facilitation (this is 10 hours more of in-depth training than the 4-day in-person training allowed time for).

• The Art of Facilitation: creating and sustaining a safe space
• Designing your own trauma informed programs
• How to work 1:1 with experiences of distress
• The art of therapuetic presence: how to work with the distress of others without moving to save or fix
• Moving beyond imposter syndrome: readiness to teach and knowing when you're skilled enough to teach for specialised groups. 
• Moving beyond "doing good" and unsustainble activism. Learning how to work collaboratively to bring about change.  
• Sustaining your own practice and passion for this work
• Personal practice considerations
• How to surround yourself with ongoing support in this work: Supervision and Sangha 
• Cultivating active hope in the face of the difficulties of our students and communities.

There will also be plenty of time for discussion and questions, as well as ample opportunity to practice facilitating the methods and practices explored in the theoretical modules.

Home study requirements:

In the online training 50 hours of training time is provided during the course content. However, as the in-person training involves 14 hours of prerequisite reading (or listening if you have Audio books) - which sets the tone for the training and provides pre-course context - it is highly recommended that you complete this pre-reading aspect of the training. Even if you do not read two texts, please ensure you read the compulsory pre-training text by David Emerson and Elizabeth Hopper (see below for title). After you read each book, please write a brief  reflective summary of your key learnings from the book and keep the summary with you during the training. Please also keep notes of questions and key ideas as you read, to contribute to group discussions during the training.  ​

1. PRE-COURSE REQUIRED BOOK Overcoming Trauma Through Yoga by David Emerson and Elizabeth Hopper 
2. OTHER PRE-COURSE BOOKS: YOU MAY WISH TO READ AT LEAST ONE OF THE FOLLOWING TEXTS, and write a reflective summary about it, as described above:   

1. Yoga for Depression by Amy Weintraub

2. Yoga for Emotional Balance by Bo Forbes

3. Yoga and Body Image edited by Melanie Klein and Anna Guest-Jelley

4. Yoga and Psyche by Mariana Caplan

5. Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness by David Treleaven

​

PLEASE NOTE: The training is intended to be adaptive for the needs of all participants. If you feel that reading/listening to the required text is not possible for you for any reason (this includes learning difficulties or other life circumstances that might inhibit you from completing this part of the training), please get in touch to discuss alternative methods of meeting the pre-reading component so you're familiar with the premise of trauma sensitive yoga. 

Your Facilitator

Sarah Ball is a registered senior yoga teacher with Yoga Australia. Sarah has been teaching yoga since 2003, practicing since 1996, and regularly facilitates on level 1 and 2 yoga teacher trainings as well as yoga therapy trainings. She is also a qualified social worker, counsellor, and art therapist, specialising in mental health, social justice, positive body image, eating disorders, and trauma recovery, who has developed the popular Yoga for Anxiety and Depression 8-week course, 4-week intro to Trauma Sensitive Yoga, and Body Love Yoga programs. Sarah also teaches the trauma informed practice and mental health subjects in the Bachelor of Social Work program at the University of Wollongong. 

Sarah's yoga courses and facilitation are informed by her extensive ongoing training in a wide variety of yoga approaches. Her programs offer a fusion of trauma-sensitive, body-positive, hatha, vinyasa flow, Vini, yoga therapy, and yin yoga methods, with an emphasis on the power of yoga to inform and transform our lives beyond the yoga mat. She is also an affiliate member of the Yoga and Body Image Coalition and senior facilitator for Off the Mat, Into the World Australia.

Sarah runs a private clinic in Bulli NSW and on Skype, working with counselling and yoga teacher mentoring, specialising in 1:1 and group therapy for anxiety, depression, trauma, body image, emotional eating and eating disorder recovery.

Investment $890 (Australian Dollars)

PAYMENT PLANS AVAILABLE with a $300 online deposit. Sarah will then get in touch to discuss your preferred plan for completing payment by instalments. All payments must be completd within 2 months of the course commencement date 

Terms and conditions of payment can be found here. 

COMPLETED THE TRAUMA SENSITIVE YOGA TRAINING WITH SARAH BEFORE? Please note: A fee reduction of $50 is available for students who have already completed the 1-day intensive trauma sensitive yoga training with Sarah. Please get in touch at info@sarahball.com.au to arrange this option.  

Common Questions about the online training:

When will the course run? The weekly content, practices and live sessions (10 hours per week in total) will be released over 5 weeks, starting Monday March 1st, 2021. Each Monday you will have access to the next week of content, and we will have live sessions that week exploring that specific content. If you intend to follow the training week-by-week in real-time, you'll need to put aside around 10 hours each week to  integrate and make the most of your learning, and interact with the collaborative learning space.

When will the live sessions be? Live sessions will be held on one weekday evening from 7-8:30pm (likely Thursdays - TBC) and one weekend session on Saturday mornings (precise time TBC). All sessions will be recorded in case you're unable to attend live. At the end of each weekly module there will also be one hour of live Q&A, based on questions submitted on the Facebook group. Again you will have the option to tune in live or listen to the recording. 

What happens with the pre-reading component now? The pre-reading is still integrated into the course structure and is highly recommended as part of your training, though the 50 hours will now be covered over 5 weeks of online content, so the pre-reading is not compulsory for online trainees - but HIGHLY recommended. You can submit your 2x250 word reflections anytime prior to the beginning of the training. There are no specific questions for the reflections, just a brief 250 word summary of some the key points you took from each text. I would recommend book depository for the readings. Please note you only need to read two of them, one of which needs to be Emerson and Hopper's 'overcoming trauma through yoga'. Of course, you're welcome to read as many as you like. You can find the reading list under the “Home study requirements to meet 50-hours of Training” above.

If it's 5 x 3 hour live sessions, is the rest of the course online to work through at our own pace? Yes the content weekly so you can work through all other content in your own time and receive the certificate of completion at the end.

How long will I have access to the online content? You will have access to your login for the training and all content for six months, during which time you can return and revisit any of the content or practices as often as you need/wish to.

What Graduates Are Saying About This Training...

"It is a must. Best training I have ever attended. The delivery was exceptional. Every yoga teacher will benefit from this training for self-enquiry, personal growth, and teaching. BEYOND BRILLIANT." Hayley - graduate of March 2019 training 

"There is a reason that Sarah's offerings book out....this training is invaluable to yoga teachers who genuinely believe that 'yoga is for everybody'. Sarah will guide you to dive into these most important topics/issues. Best training I have every done. I cannot more highly recommend it." Kay Callaghan -  graduate of March 2019 training

"Sarah's training really highlighted for me the way that the current yoga climate can be harmful. I was nervous that I would be expected to wrap students in cotton wool and become overly politically correct, but Sarah showed that it's about safety, empowerment, and choice, rather than throwing out everything we love to teach. Sarah's depth of knowledge - and the way she referenced the work/research of others - reflects the commitment she has made to understand these topics thoroughly. It is deeply inspiring. Thank you Sarah for creating such a safe container for us to be vulnerable, share and learn from each other." Kirsty Wright -  graduate of March 2019 training

"This course was awesome. Sarah created an incredibly safe space for learning. The information was delivered with authenticity and honesty. Plenty of rest breaks and options to opt-in or opt-out if things felt too much at any time. Sarah is a pioneer!" Lisa - graduate of March 2019 training

"For anyone thinking about doing this training I say - DO IT! It was such a wonderful, deep, immersive 4-days. Sarah is an incredibly calm, generous and intuitive teacher - very inspiring to me as a teacher. I've learned so many things I can now share in my classes to come from a more inclusive and trauma-informed way towards everyone who attends." Kerri Pietsch - graduate of March 2019 training 

"OMG! What a truly incredible and amazing experience with inspiring content and an incredible group of dedicated yoga teachers whom I'm so privileged to learn with. You definitely won't be disappointed by this awesome opportunity to learn incredibly important content about the work we do as yoga teachers. Thank you Sarah. You bring such knowledge and compassion to the way you explain everything. The whole training was shared with such practical examples that were easy to understand and integrate. An unforgettable experience." Aimee - graduate of March 2019 training 

"Sarah is very well read and has a wealth of yoga and mental health teaching experience. She has a kind and warm approach along with a passion for sharing knowledge on social justice and body image. She is a wealth of knowledge and a wonderful role model! She gives to the subject/training her heart and soul! I'm leaving the training feeling inspired to be even more committed to bring about change and awareness of mental health, trauma and body image through yoga. Amazing training!" Kai - graduate of March 2019 training 

"DO IT!!! If you have a passion to incorporate yoga for trauma, mental health or body image into your teaching or practice, Sarah's training is for you. EXCEPTIONALLY facilitated. Sarah is incredibly open, honest and forthcoming in her wealth of knowledge, wisdom and experience." Carla - graduate of March 2019 training

"Sarah is a melody of embodied presence. You rarely come across a yoga who walks that much talk. It feels like I have been openly embraced by ideas that were so close to me I didn't see them, until this course gave me permission. These topics are close to my heart and were delivered like a feast that might last forever." Kendra Boone - graduate of March 2019 training