Yoga Teacher’s Guide to and Through the Body
An eight-month advanced module for certified yoga teachers. The foundational module of the Deep Yoga Method.
Feb 20 · Mar 20 · Apr 17 · May 15
Beyond the pose
Your 200-hour taught you to cue a body into the shape of a posture. That's the right thing for a 200-hour to teach, and it's a real skill.
This module teaches engagement — the muscles and muscle pairs that let a student strengthen, lengthen, and stabilize, so a posture becomes something a body can grow inside rather than a shape she can approximate on a given day.
The difference shows up on the first Saturday, and it never stops showing up. It's the difference between a teacher who knows the poses and reaches for a modification she was handed, and a teacher who knows the body and builds one — on a Thursday night, for a shoulder she's never seen, with a history she’s learning about for the first time.
What a Saturday looks like
One region of the body, five hours. Say it's the hips.
The anatomy. We start with a lecture on the bones and the muscles, then move to function, pulling the hip complex apart and putting it back together.
An example: For the hips, the psoas is the muscle that restricts more people than any other. So we ask: why does it run from the spine through the pelvis to the leg? What is its main job? Which muscles play most closely with it, and how do we engage them together? Why is it tight and weak in nearly everyone who sits for a living? We find its pair in gluteus maximus and feel how, when the glute contracts, the psoas lengthens — and the reverse.
On the mat. Then we feel it. Warrior 3 is the showcase for the psoas — function, dysfunction, and how to succeed in a hard posture through better alignment and engagement. One psoas is engaging while the other lengthens at the same time. What happens if you flex the extended foot? What happens if you point it? What changes when you squeeze the glute on the extended leg, or draw the thigh and the hip point toward each other? How many muscles can we get working to support the shape? Then we take the hips into four more postures with entirely different shapes — Triangle, Boat, Pigeon, Half Moon.
You teach it. This is more than repeating cues. You teach the posture, then the psoas engagement, then you look at your partner in it. What does she need? What is restricting her? If she were going to hold this for five minutes, how would you help her recruit more muscle and keep her alignment?
Build. The psoas is one part of a complex system. We take each key element of the hip in the same order — anatomy and function, then exploration in your own body, then teaching it to a specific body.
Through the body. The last two hours are energetic rather than anatomical. We take up Little's chapter on the region we've just spent three hours inside, then ask what we feel in the hips — which vayus, which chakras, in the postures we just explored. How do you carry that into a cue, in metaphor, in word choice, in tone, without losing the anatomy? We brainstorm together and build a short sequence from those postures to produce a specific energetic experience.
That's one Saturday. There are eight, and each one takes a different region.
By spring, you will stop reaching for a standard modification and start reaching for another way in. Your student is struggling to balance, and a block takes her further out of alignment. You know more than the standard goal of the posture — you know that if she recruits the glute by flexing her foot she'll be more stable and the psoas will lengthen. And if that cue doesn't land, you know four other ways to ask for the same action.
That isn't a modification. That's teaching a student to use her body.
Eight months, region by region
We begin at the feet, because everything else is downstream of them, and we end in fascia, because fascia is the answer to the question the whole year has been asking: how are all these regions connected?
Each Saturday takes one region and treats it the same way. The anatomy. What the region is built to do and what it trades away. The muscle pairs you cue from. The injuries you'll meet in your own rooms, and what a yoga teacher can honestly do about them. The energetics that live there. And the postures written for that region, studied through all of it.
We read Tias Little's Yoga of the Subtle Body alongside, one chapter a month, and his chapters travel the body in the same order we do.
One · October 17 — Foundations and the Feet
Anatomical terms, and the function of bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and joints. An overview of the energetic maps. Then the feet: the bones, the muscles, what engagement changes, and what different positions of the foot do to everything above them. Reading a body through its feet — what pronation and supination do to a posture. Grounding energy through the feet, and lifting it. Postures: Mountain, Tree, Warrior 2, Goddess, Wide-Legged Forward Fold Reading: Intro and "From the Ground Up"
Two · November 21 — The Hips
From knee to waist: bone structure and muscles, and how to recruit muscles to work together. Using the sitz bones and hip points to direct the pelvis. Building engagement and awareness from the hip socket. The key pairs — hamstrings and quadriceps, adductors and gluteus medius, abductors and gluteus medius, gluteus maximus and psoas — and how and why to teach with pairs at all. Apana, the downward wind, and the root chakra. Postures: Warrior 2, Triangle, Warrior 1, Warrior 3, Bird Dog, Malasana, Boat Reading: "The Pelvic Potential"
Three · December 19 — The Spine
Bone segmentation, and the differences in size and spacing that change what a spine can do. The muscles that support it and the techniques that engage them — including firing the multifidus through the chin and the back of the skull. Teaching from the center line. Anchoring through the skull and the sitz bones. The sacrum's role. The mechanics of twists, forward folds, backbends, and lateral bends, and how to build more engagement and more length in each. The low back: what causes problems, how yoga helps, what to look for. Then the chakras, one energy center at a time up the spine, and the traditional ways of reaching them. Postures: Cat/Cow, Seated Lateral, Seated Twist, Bridge and Wheel, Triangle, Side Plank Reading: "The Sacred Sacrum"
Four · January 16 — The Center
The back, abdominal, pelvic floor, and diaphragm muscles — anatomy, function, and the cues that reach them individually and together. What that engagement does for a student, and what it does for a posture. The specific problems of the pelvic floor and the low back, and what to do about them. And the domes: the arch of the foot, the pelvic floor, and the diaphragm working as one stacked system. Postures: Prone Backbends, Mountain and standing postures with foot, pelvic floor, and diaphragm engagement, Bridge and Wheel Reading: "The Belly Brain"
Five · February 20 — The Shoulder
Shoulder bones and muscles, their function, and the cues that reach them alone and together. What shoulder engagement gives a student and what it gives a posture. The specific problems of the shoulder and the chest, and what a teacher can do about them. The heart chakra. Postures: Twists, Heart Opening, Plank, Down Dog, Side Plank, Chaturanga Reading: "The Diaphragm"
Six · March 20 — Arms and Legs, Head and Neck
The muscles and bones of the periphery, and the effect each has on the spine, the pelvis, and the shoulders. Cues that reach them individually and together. The specific problems of knees, wrists, elbows, and neck, and what to do about them. The throat chakra and the crown. Postures: Hand to Big Toe, Warrior 1, Warrior 2, Triangle, Down Dog, Plank, Tree, Hero, Lotus Reading: "The Lungs and the Lotus Heart"
Seven · April 17 — The Nervous System
The anatomy and function of the central nervous system, and of breathing. Pranayama as a way into the nervous system, taught as practice rather than theory. Then meditation: its history, its benefits, and the techniques worth teaching. The third eye. Practice: pranayama, meditation, guided relaxation Reading: "Blue Throat"
Eight · May 15 — Fascia
The anatomy and function of fascia, the approaches that reach it, and what changes in a body when you address it. This is the session that connects the seven before it. Practice: myofascial release, somatics, yin Reading: "The Crown Jewel"
Energetics is part of the body
Every chakra sits on the spine, and so do the autonomic plexuses; the tradition placed seven wheels of energy along exactly the line the nervous system runs down. That's the closest correspondence between the yogic maps and the dissected body, and we teach it as one subject rather than two.
The feet belong to muladhara, the root chakra — stability, safety, basic needs — and to apana vayu, the downward-moving wind. When we ask a student to give her weight to the ground, we're asking her to stop holding herself up, and holding oneself up is what an overtaxed nervous system does all day. The physiological event is a drop in postural gripping. What she reports is I feel like I can finally put something down.
Grounding isn't the introduction to the practice. It's a practice in itself, and you'll learn to teach it that way.
Across the eight months you'll work with the chakras, the vayus, the gunas, and the koshas — each one mapped to the region where it lives, and each one translated into plain language you can use in your teaching.
What We Don’t Do
Memorize insertions. I don't want your brain power going there.
We learn the names of muscles, bones and ways of talking about anatomy, so we can communicate and so that you can talk to a physical therapist, a doctor, or a trainer without translating. Then we set the names down and teach in ways that everyone understands.
A student who leaves your class having learned the word piriformis and nothing about her own hip hasn’t gotten into her body. I want you to learn this, so you know it in your bones, and muscles, and tissues.
A sign that you know it deeply is that you don’t need to use the latin name to explain what you want your students to do.
The Reading
We read Tias Little's Yoga of the Subtle Body across the eight months, a chapter at a time, foot to crown — and we discuss it inside the Saturday seesion as a means into the subtle body.
Energetics are hard to learn and harder to teach in a meaningful way. But accessing the subtle body ourselves and helping our students to latch onto a deeper meaning, feeling, and experience is non-negotiable for a yoga teacher. It’s what yoga is.
Tias Little has a remarkable set of expertise. Not only has he been one of the most prominent yoga teachers in the world for decades, but he is also a bodyworker and has an MA from St. John’s in Eastern Philosophy, Literature, and Classics. I’ve been lucky enough to study under him for the last few years, which has changed the way I read and teach energetics and anatomy.
Reading him beside our study of specific regions of anatomy gives us a starting point and a blueprint for the complex study of energetic maps, and the subtle body generally. The book becomes the ground the energetic work is built on.
The Teacher’s Circle, included.
Two hours a month, for the eight months of the module, at no additional cost.
One evening. Two hours. A specialized class from 6:45 to 7:45, and a case study discussion from 7:45 to 8:45.
The class is built as a demonstration of how to incorporate what we are learning that month and taught by me. After class, I break down every choice I made in it. Then we stay in the room for case studies, where we bring real teaching situations and work them out together. Every other profession that serves people the way we do trains its people this way. We need it too.
It runs on the second and fourth Monday of every month, and you choose which one suits your schedule.
In person at Shine, or by livestream. In person is better, and I'd choose it if you can. But part of the goal of this training is accessibility. If you live an hour and a half away coming in on an evening in going to be hard, so you have the livestream option.
Note: There is a special discounted package for yoga teachers through our studio. It includes 2 classes per week and the Teacher’s Circle class and case study 2x per month. You can choose to purchase the membership, but this training only includes one class per month and discussion at no additional cost.
Where this training comes from
A few years after I finished my Yoga Teacher’s Certification at one of the largest and oldest training schools in the country, Kripalu, my body was wrecked by Stage 3 breast cancer, and even more so the treatment.
Muscles were cut through, tissue was shrunk, lymphedema and neuropathy were constant problems, and then there was the fear.
I found that my training had given me none of the knowledge or practice that would help a person like me. I knew some Sanskrit, some philosophy, the names of the postures, and how to guide a person into the shape, but not much more.
And so I started using myself as a guinea pig. I felt and experimented in every yoga posture. This muscle has stopped working, and this one is overcompensating. How do I get it to start working?
I stopped trying to get into hard postures or move quickly and started focusing on what my body was doing and how I could better balance its engagement.
From there, I started learning. I earned 300 hours each with Tiffany Cruikshank and Jason Crandell, the two teachers who I felt most understood how to cue engagement. They were also the two teachers who shared a desire to explore what was happening to the body, to break the rules and find new ways to feel and teach. I also studied for years with Dr. Ray Long. What they taught me is that the smallest cue can light up a whole body, and that things students believe are impossible for them are often one adjustment away. I was in a training with Dr. Long where student after student who had never done a headstand floated right up, because of his sequencing and his cuing.
I wanted that for me and for my students, and it's what this module is built to give you.
Sara Szeglowski, MA, MATC, REYT-500· Shine Yoga · Hamburg, New York
Tuition
$2,060, or six monthly payments of $350.
Non-refundable. Payment plans are a binding contract. If something comes up and you can not complete the program, you can enroll the following year, but payment must be completed for this training as scheduled.
Enrollment closes October 1.
Eleven Students Accepted.
Questions
I trained somewhere else. Will I be behind? No. This module assumes a 200-hour foundation and nothing beyond it. Teachers come to us from programs all over, and the first Saturday puts everyone in the same language — that's part of what it's for. If anything, it's the module I'd most want a teacher trained elsewhere to take first, because everything else in the Deep Yoga Method stands on it.
I already did anatomy in my 200-hour. Is this a repeat? In a 200-hour, anatomy serves the posture. You learn the pose, then what's happening inside it, and you leave able to teach those poses beautifully. Foundations turns that around. Here the body is the unit and the postures come afterward — one region a month, eight months, the bones and the muscles and what they do and why, and then how to teach it so a student feels their bodies working.
Do I have to enroll in the 300-hour? No. Foundations is open to any certified teacher on its own. If you pursue the 300-hour certification later, these 56 hours count toward it.
What's the difference if I do enroll in the 300-hour? Two things become yours that aren't available otherwise: individual mentorship with me, included at no additional cost and scheduled at your pace, and the capstone — a teaching practicum with feedback and revision, a researched Body of Work, and a 45-minute final presentation. Module by module, you gather tools. Enrolled, you leave with a direction and a portfolio.
Is the Teacher's Circle required? It's part of the module and part of your hours, so yes — and it's the part teachers tell me they'd least want to give up. If you have to miss one, tell me and we'll catch you up.
I live an hour away. Can I do the Circle by livestream? Yes. The Livestream option is designed for you.
Do I have to buy the book? Yes — Tias Little's Yoga of the Subtle Body. It's the only book required for the module, we read a chapter a month, and we discuss it during the Saturday rather than on a separate evening. The manual for the training is included.
What if I miss a Saturday? We are a small group, which allows for limited date or time changes if everyone is in agreement. Because this is only held on a Saturday afternoon once per month there is also more room for flexibility. Propose any changes when you enroll, and I will bring it to the group.
I've been teaching for fifteen years. Is this beneath me? It isn't a review and I’ve seen very few teachers teach this way. The body mechanics, functional anatomy, posture analysis, reading of the body,, and the region-by-region injury work are graduate-level material, and experienced teachers tend to be the ones who get the most out of the partner work, because they have more teaching to test it against. The only book, let alone training, that layers the Subtle Body onto the Physical Body is the one we’re reading. It’s knowledge and practice that most teachers don’t use.
Do I need to be physically able to do every posture? No. We work with the body you have, and much of the day is observation, partner work, and cuing rather than practice.
Is there homework? A chapter of Little each month, and your own exploration on your mat.