300-Hour Advanced Yoga Teacher Certification · Hamburg, NY
Elevate Your Teaching, Expand Your Impact
Knowledge deep enough to change how you teach. And more than one way to deliver it.
Beyond the Group Class.
Most advanced yoga teacher trainings prepare you to do one thing better: lead a group class. This one is different.
For good reason.
For many teachers, teaching a group yoga class is a powerful, often life-changing experience. But it isn't for everyone. Many certified yoga teachers have just as much to give as the most popular teacher at the studio, but they are limited to teaching a class that's a mismatch for them, or maybe the group class isn't the best format for them at all.
Maybe you would thrive leading a retreat, or doing one-on-ones, or partnering with an organization to serve a specific population.
Most of us come to teach yoga because yoga has had an impact on our lives and we want our students’ lives to be changed too. But, over the last eleven years of mentoring teachers, I've seen teachers struggle to teach a format that doesn't match that teacher's gifts, and that leads to burnout.
And by the way, for those of you wanting to make yoga your career, these other ways of giving yoga is the path towards a sustainable career. As you know, there are only so many 6 pm group classes.
Each specialty module pairs clinical or somatic subject matter with a teaching format you'll learn to deliver:
Foundations: The Teacher's Guide To and Through the Body — functional and energetic anatomy, applied across every teaching context.
Rest & Retreats — restorative yoga and yoga nidra, paired with how to design, market, and lead retreats.
Pain Management, Cancer, & Private Sessions — evidence-based pain protocols, paired with how to structure and price private work.
Women's Health & System Integration — hormonal health across a woman's life, the pelvic floor and deep core, paired with how to build partnerships with healthcare and community organizations.
Fascia & Somatic Practices Across Modalities and Populations — the science of why yoga relieves stress and pain, with deep dives into somatic technique, myofascial release, and yin.
Two ways to study with us
There are two ways to study with us. You can take any module or elective as it interests you, and every hour counts if you decide on the certification later. Or you can apply to the 300-hour certification now, and the program is built around you from the start: the Foundation Module, a circle of teachers, mentorship with me, and 10% off every training you take after.
If you know you want to grow as a teacher over the next few years, the second path gives you far more, for less.
Take Trainings as They Come
Any module or elective, including the Foundation Module on its ownEnroll in the 300-Hour Certification
Apply by October 26 for priority seating. Begins with the Foundation Module, November 21.What enrolling saves you
| Foundation Module | $2,060.00 |
| Teacher's Circle, seven months at $99 | $693.00 |
| Mentorship, four hours at $145 | $580.00 |
| Program planning session, 30 minutes | $72.50 |
| Bought separately | $3,405.50 |
| Enrolled | $2,695.00 |
| You save | $710.50 |
That's before the Body of Knowledge, your manuals, the retreat programming, and the feedback on your teaching, none of which are counted here.
Every module and elective you take after that is 10% off for as long as you're enrolled: $112.50 off each specialty module, and $225 on the two that are required.
Why every certification begins with the Foundation Module
Every specialty module assumes you can do three things: read the body in front of you, cue the muscles that help it strengthen and lengthen, and bring the physical and the subtle body together. The Foundation Module is where you learn them.
When you design a private session in Module 3 for a woman recovering from breast cancer surgery, you’ll need to know which muscles have stopped working and how to wake them up. When you develop a retreat in Module 2, you’ll draw on the nervous system we study in February. Women’s Health and Fascia & Somatics each begin in a Foundation session, too.
The modules change with the work you want to do. The Foundation stays the same, because the standard is the same, and because your students deserve a teacher who knows the body they’re living in.
How to build your 300-hour certification
Students coming into a post-certification training often expect it to be the same structure as their 200-hour program.
It isn’t.
Students training to become teachers all need the same thing in order to get up in front of a group of students and teach them how to move their bodies through yoga.
Once you're a teacher, you're ready to carve your own path. You might not be interested in teaching restorative yoga or women’s health, or any number of the things that entail yoga today. You don’t have to study it. Instead, you build your own program.
Every student wanting a 300-hour certification completes the same core. This is what makes the program what it is. What a modern teacher most needs is offered here. You build from that foundation.
Required Hours and Elements
Foundation Module: Yoga Teacher's Guide to and Through the Body, 54 hours. Eight sessions over seven months, November through May: one Saturday a month, plus one full weekend in February. We explore the physical and energetic body and how it works doing yoga, so you can customize your teaching to the student in front of you.
As part of the Foundation Module, the Teacher's Circle — choose between the second and fourth Monday of the month for the seven months of the Foundation Module. the Teacher’s Circle is 14 hours of the 54 total, and consists of a class built for teachers and specific to what we are learning that month, followed by a case study circle (one hour, where we bring real teaching situations and work them out together). Note that the 2x per week group class membership that is included in the 300-hour application does not count towards the 300 hours, but regularly taking classes is one of the best way to improve as a teacher.
Two or More Specialty Modules, 30 hours each. Each module pairs clinical or somatic subject matter with a teaching format you'll learn to deliver — retreats, private sessions, organizational partnerships, or somatic modalities. You choose which modules based on the work you want to do. Two is the minimum.
Individual Mentorship with Sara, 4 hours minimum. Scheduled across the certification at your pace and according to what you need. We work through a blueprint together so that every session counts and supports your path and your final project.
Teaching Practicum, 5 hours minimum. Whatever modality you are interested in, whether it’s teaching alignment-based classes, private sessions, retreats, or something else, I’ll observe you teaching and provide feedback. Your plan and revision based on feedback will become part of your Body of Work.
Retreat, 12 hours. An immersive experience where you get to know each other and have the space to not only absorb the information, but also to decide what you most want from the experience. The programming is included if you enroll in the 300-hour Certification Program, but there may be an additional room and board fee if we retreat off-site.
Independent Study & Your Body of Work, 15 hours minimum, 30 maximum of reading, research, sequence development, and portfolio work outside of class. This will become a part of your Body of Work.
Final Presentations, 10 hours. A 45-minute presentation of your teaching philosophy, your specialty, and a teaching demonstration. Presentation will be made to your peers, and you will participate as a peer.
Required total: approximately 160 hours.
Not ready to apply? Every module and elective is open to any teacher with a 200-hour certification; no application required. Simply enroll in the trainings that interest you. If you decide later to pursue the certification, the hours you've already done count toward it.
You Build the Rest
The remaining hours — roughly 140, depending on which modules you choose — come from a menu designed to let you shape the training around the teacher you're becoming:
Additional Specialty Modules — 30 contact hours each. Go deeper into more populations and formats.
Weekend Electives — 5 to 12 hours each. Self-contained deep-dives into specialized topics: teaching beginners, healthy aging, the business of yoga, hands-on assists, philosophy, sequencing, and more.
You're building to 300 hours. Everyone exceeds it — most land between 305 and 330 — because this approach is much less about collecting a certificate and much more about learning. It’s addictive!
Two Ways This Might Look
A teacher heading toward private work with chronic pain patients should not be taking the same 300 hours as one building a retreat business. That's the principle. Here's what it looks like in practice.
The Generalist
This is the teacher who wants depth in multiple populations — chronic pain and women's health, or rest and somatics — and plans to build a practice around that expertise, providing a variety of services—privates, retreats, community partnerships, and classes.
They might add the following onto the requirements to gain that level of knowledge:
Four specialty modules ( rather than one)
Six weekend electives,
The Specialist
This is the person who has a population they want to work with and an approach they want to learn to deliver.
If this person is interested in Women’s Health and delivering private sessions, they would add the following onto the required components:
Module 3 (chronic pain and private sessions)
Module 4 ( women’s health and integrating systems),
10 or more electives, which would teach them different ways to work with their population.
This teacher would also want more mentorship hours and more time to develop their Body of Work and presentation because they would want to know everything they could about how to best serve their population and have a presentation they can deliver to Women’s Health providers and organizations to build their clientele.
The program looks different for each person because you are different. The required core is the same because the standard is the same.
What a Saturday in the Foundation Module Looks Like
One region of the body, five hours of exploration. Say it's the hips.
We start with the bones and the muscles and ask why the psoas runs from the spine through the pelvis to the leg, what its job is, and why it's tight and weak in nearly everyone who sits for a living. We find its pair in gluteus maximus and feel how one lengthens when the other contracts.
Then we feel it in postures. Warrior 3 is the showcase — one psoas engaging while the other lengthens. What changes when you flex the extended foot instead of pointing it? What happens when you squeeze the glute on the lifted leg?
Then you teach it to a partner, and look at what their body needs. You explore. You try different approaches to help make the posture accessible to your “student.” How can you help them grow in this challenging posture based on what you learned today? How can you make it more accessible or challenging, not generally, not based on the shape of the posture, but based on the person in front of you?
The last two hours are an energetic exploration: How does the subtle body shape what the hips feel like—generally, according to energetic maps and the structure and function of the nervous system, and individually? How can we use language to support an energetic experience that’s mapped onto the anatomy? How does anatomy support the energetics? How does the energetics support the functional anatomy? We lean heavily on Tias Little’s book, which we read together: Yoga of the Subtle Body: A Guide to the Physical & Energetic Anatomy of Yoga
That's just a little bit of one session. There are eight, and each explores a different area of the body.
Enrollment closes November 9, 2026
Built like a graduate program
I'm your project advisor. I'm both the teacher you see on the weekends and your advisor across the whole certification. I'll know what you're building, where you're stuck, and what's gotten clearer since you started — which is what lets me personalize the reading, the mentorship, and the capstone to your needs.
Lecture that goes deep. Every module and elective has its own manual and its own reading list. Everything begins with knowledge, and then it's applied until you know it in your body and teaching it becomes second nature.
Practicum with revision. Whatever you're offering — classes, peer sessions, private work, a retreat — I'll observe, give feedback, and support your revision. Not a performance review. A process of getting better.
Your Body of Work
Most advanced trainings end with a quiz. This one ends with something you built.
Working with me across the certification, you'll develop the thing you want to bring into the world — a specialized workshop, a retreat program, a private practice model, a proposal for a healthcare system or a school district. Not an assignment. The offering you'll be teaching a year from now.
This is the part I'd point to if you asked what makes this training different. A 500-hour credential on its own is worth less than people think; I tell my own teachers to list their trainings and their expertise instead. What's worth something is being able to say I built the chronic pain series that runs at the recovery center. That's what we're making here, and it's required to complete the certification, because a certificate with nothing built behind it isn't worth much.
Your portfolio includes: a statement of your teaching philosophy · research supporting your approach · three signature sequences, private session plans, or other applications, with rationales · a specialized workshop outline · marketing materials for your offerings · a reading list built for you.
"Sara helped me see there was so much more possible than the Saturday morning class. I now teach retreats and specialized workshops. I've created something I didn't know was possible and is really what I want to do." — Emily
If this sounds intimidating…
Some of you just read that and thought this is a lot. Some of you thought this is exactly what I've been looking for. Some of you thought both, at the same time.
If you did your yoga teacher certification with me, you know how this goes: we progress little by little, and I am with you every step of the way.
My trainings have a high standard, and I will expect you to work hard.
I also believe in kindness, safety, and support, because that's the only way anyone learns and grows.
You will not be handed a topic and wished well. We'll work out what you're building, and then we'll build it together.
Tuition
Foundations (required) — 54 hours — $2,060 on its own, or included in 300-hour certification program enrollment.
Specialty modules (2, 3, 4, and 5) — 30 hours each — $1,125 each ($1012 for certification program enrollees)
Weekend electives — 5 to 12 hours — $150 to $299 ( 10% off when enrolled in Certification Program)
Retreat — $300 at Shine, approximately $1,200 for a destination retreat (Retreat content and programming included for Certification Program enrollees, travel and accomodations not included if off-site)
Enrolling in the 300-hour certification. When you’re accepted, you enroll for $2,695, or seven monthly payments of $385, November through May. Your enrollment includes the Foundation Module, the Body of Knowledge, seven months of the full Teacher’s Circle, four one-hour mentorship sessions with me, observation and feedback on your teaching, and a 30-minute session to build the rest of your program around the work you want to do.
What it saves you. Bought separately, the Foundation Module ($2,060), seven months of the Teacher’s Circle ($693), four hours of mentorship ($580), and the planning session ($72.50) would cost $3,405.50. Enrolled, you save $710.50, and that’s before the Body of Knowledge, your manuals, and the feedback on your teaching, none of which are sold on their own. Every module and elective you take after that is 10% off, which is $112.50 off each specialty module.
A program that follows you. Rather than one tuition bill for all 300 hours, you pay for each additional training as you take it, and many teachers take some alongside Foundation. That’s deliberate. As you train, you find out where your passion lies, and your program follows it, rather than a fixed curriculum guessing at what every teacher needs. You begin with the Body of Knowledge and leave with your Body of Work, built for the teacher you’re becoming, and there’s no debt hanging over a three-year process.
Standalone mentorship, for teachers not pursuing the certification, is $145 an hour. Book five or more sessions, and you’ll receive the mentorship guide we work through together.
Dates. 300-hour applicants are seated first: apply by October 26 for priority seating. On October 27, any remaining seats open to teachers taking the Foundation Module on its own. Applications and registration close November 9.
Can’t join this year’s Foundation Module? If you’re ready to commit, apply now for next November’s class. Once you’re accepted, your seat is held and your price is locked, and you can pay in full or in seven payments that begin when you enroll. I’ll give you the Body of Knowledge at your planning session right away, so the trainings you take this year become part of your program from the start. The Foundation Module, its manual, and your seven months in the Circle begin next November.
Already completed the Foundation Module? Your tuition counts in full. Once you’re accepted, enrollment is $635, or seven payments of $90.71, and it includes everything above, plus the updated Foundation manual. You’re also welcome to audit one or two Foundation sessions of your choice this year.
Enrollment is non-refundable. If something comes up, your enrollment can move to the following year once.
If cost is a barrier: limited scholarships are available, and I'd rather work it out than lose a teacher who'd thrive here
Do I need a 200-hour certification to apply? Yes, and it can be from any yoga school. The exception is the weekend electives — those are open to teachers by default, and if you're not a teacher but want to explore a subject deeply, write to me first and we'll talk about whether it's a fit.
Do I have to take two specialty modules? Yes. Two gives you the breadth an advanced teacher should have while still leaving room to specialize.
Can I transfer advanced training hours from another school? I'm afraid not. This program is different from most, and our outcomes reflect our content and our practices.
Are payment plans available? Yes. Enrollment in the 300-hour certification is seven monthly payments of $385, The Foundation Module on its own is six payments of $350. Electives are paid in full as you take them. All specialty modules include a payment plan option for students in the certification program and by request.
Is there financial aid? Limited scholarships are available. Talk to me when you apply if cost is a barrier.
How much time will this take outside of class? Reading, personal practice you document, and the work of building your offering. Plan on a few hours most weeks, more as you approach your presentation. This is not a training you can attend and absorb passively, and that's deliberate.
When can I register for the Foundation Module on its own? On October 27, for any seats that remain. 300-hour Certification Program applicants are seated first. After 10/27, enrollment will be opened to the public. There are eleven seats total.
What if I can’t join this year’s Foundation Module but want to join the Certification Program? Apply now for next November’s class. Once you’re accepted, your seat is held, and your price is locked. You’ll receive the Body of Knowledge and your planning session right away, so the trainings you take this year count toward your program from the start. It’s just a different way to build your program.
I already took the Foundation Module. How do I join the 300-hour? Contact me to let me know you are interested. If you already trained with me, you are automatically accepted in the program—though an application gives me a bit more information about where you are now and what your goals are. Once you’re accepted, enrollment is $635—enrollment minus Module 1 tuition, or seven payments of $90.71. You’re welcome to audit one or two Foundation sessions of your choice.
Questions?
Coming Up
Every training carries Yoga Alliance CEUs and counts toward the 300-hour certification. All are open to teachers with a 200-hour certification from any school. See the calendar for times and to add dates to your own calendar.
Ready?
The Foundation Module begins November 21, 2026.
Apply by October 26 for priority seating. Applications close November 9.
The Yoga for Healthy Aging elective is November 7–8.
Questions? Email me: sara@shineyogawny.com