Teacher Training

Jane's House Basic Teacher Training Program is designed to give aspiring teachers the necessary knowledge, experience, and technical tools to teach a yoga practice that meets the multifaceted demands of today's practitioners. Jane's House is an affiliate training school to Matthew and Holly Krepps', Circle Yoga Shåla Teacher Training Program.

It is theoretically and historically coherent with the wisdom that has come down through the ages, and can therefore help to cultivate a practice that is physically stimulating and challenging, while being safe and restorative to the human body and its inherent design.Its interpretation of that ancient wisdom opens the capacity in the teacher to manage and assist the student's efforts in the life long endeavor that serious Yoga practice is for those who are interested. It also cultivates in the teacher the important capacity for self-enquiry, meditation, and study, so that problem solving is not an impediment to practice or teaching. And it clarifies for both teacher and student how an activity like Yoga can be spiritually edifying to anyone, with any particular belief system or faith.

Since its inception, Jane's House Studio has provided quality teacher training to sincere students who desire to share yoga with others and for those senior students who wish to deepen their practice. The Studio offers a two hundred hour training program that meets the certification standards set by the national Yoga Alliance's Yoga Teacher Registry. The Yoga Alliance's minimum standards for Registered Yoga Teachers (RYT) are available on their website: www.yogaalliance.org

The training is structured around several key elements:

Technical training (particularly in posture practice, meditation, pranayama, sequencing a class, and hands-on adjustments).

History and philosophy (particularly with reference to the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali and the Baghavad Gita).

Anatomy and physiology as applied to the practice.

The Method and Its Origin

Jane’s House teacher training curriculum is derived from the work of Godfrey Devereux. Mr. Devereux teaches something called the dynamic Yoga method. Mr. Deverux’s teaching is not to be understood as a new “style” of Hatha yoga. It is essentially a way to organize and experience the actions one takes within practice. That organization itself is also set within the context of the Yoga Sutra. After many years of practice (of various kinds), Mr. Devereux has endeavored to formulate a set of basic principles that can be taught to students in the beginning of their training to give them a way to gain autonomy in their investigation of Yoga (largely in respect to posture practice, but not totally).

Within the realm of technique, students are taught to organize the many possible actions that the body can take within the rubric of three main areas: expanding actions (broadening actions), extending actions (lengthening actions), and spiraling actions (the basic medial and lateral rotations of the major joints). Within the realm of orientation, or how to relate to any particular practice, students are taught that Yoga is practiced as a triune system of dedication to practice, self - inquiry, and surrender. Both the technical training and the orientation are delivered to students via the five basic techniques common in all forms of Hatha Yoga. These are:

• Asana: practice at the level of body to free the somatic structure from restriction caused by unconscious repetitive behaviors and/or trauma, so that action in the world can become free from generating tension. Asana is practically taught as the technique of re-aligning the body in relation to the basic structure of the skeleton and the normal range of motion in the joints, and using the musculature to support that positioning in both movement and in stillness.
• Pranayama: practice at the level of breath, to surrender it into its own natural freedom, which is apart from conception, and physical and /or psychological imposition. Ujjayi Pranayama, Nadi Shodhana, Surya and Chandra Bedhana are examples of common techniques that are taught.
• Bandha: practice at a deep, subtle level to surrender the transformative energies of the human being into the core of the body. Bandha is the technique that reveals the inherent unity of the gross and energetic aspects of the human being, transforming perception so that attention is surrendered into the experience of an always-already present, non-dual awareness. Mula, Uddiyana, and Jalandhara, pada and hasta bandhas are common techniques taught.
• Vinyasa: the art of learning, arranging actions, and moving in concert with the breath in a specific, sequential fashion, and of surrendering attention into this movement as feeling-awareness and intelligence.
• Drushti: practice at the level of mind contextualizes the vagrant tendencies of everyday awareness, and the endless permutations of phenomena in the world of time, so that these tendencies and perceptions can be surrendered into the impersonal space of pure awareness, where they arise and pass away without resistance or attachment. Drushti is taught as an orientation toward self study and reflection, and also as an actual structural adaptation (positioning the eyes in various places) in the posture practice, and/or the Pranayama practice, and/or the seated meditation practice.

The teacher training directed by this learning method requires only a willingness to orient one’s self toward the classical practices in a way that will benefit others. Such a willingness means immersion in these techniques with a spirit that cultivates an openness to existence and ALL of its continuously arising conditions; or, as Godfreydev says: yoga is an ongoing invitation (to both teacher and student) to surrender

Psychology of Teaching

The psychology of teaching: character development and learning methods.

Jane's House training curriculum has recently been revamped to take advantage of adult learning methods. This methodology is also taught to attendees by trainers experienced in those methods. Yoga is a transformational practice and as such requires teachers who can anticipate situations in which boundary or ethical issues may arise. A session on such is also included in the training. Other topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Pregnancy and other special populations, studio and financial management.

The teacher training program begins in September. A total of seven (25) hour intensives will be conducted within one year. These courses form 200 hours of the mandatory core curriculum of the Basic RYT teacher requirements. In addition, 10 hours are completed through home study. There is also a required reading list of books that must be completed prior to certification. One (15) hour intensive with Matthew Krepps is required.

To be recommended to the Yoga Alliance as a yoga teacher certified by Jane's House Studio, it is necessary to attend all of the training intensives, complete 200 hours, pass a comprehensive final examination, and must, in the opinion of the teacher training instructors, be able to competently and compassionately teach a basic yoga class. Attendance at the trainings or completion of 200 hours does not in itself guarantee certification to the Yoga Alliance.

While there is no time limitation for the completion of Yoga teacher training, the trainee is expected to attend training sessions on a regular basis and it is suggested that the training be completed within a year. If the teacher trainee does not attend training sessions for a period of one year, his or her application will be considered dormant and he or she will have to reapply for the program.

Each teacher training attendee receives a beautifully produced 200+ page manual containing illustrations and professionally photographed asanas.