A yoga student of any age or ability may walk into your class, and you should be ready to accommodate them. A quality online yoga teacher training will teach you how to make your classes inclusive.

Check out the course content, read reviews and talk to graduates to find a program that will suit your needs. Also, look for a program that offers live Zoom group calls and one-on-one mentoring from an experienced yoga teacher.

Accessibility and Inclusivity in Yoga

Yoga is an accessible practice and has many benefits for people of all ages and abilities. Yet, the populations attending yoga classes, workshops, retreats and events as well as the majority of teachers, remain fairly homogenous in terms of gender, race, ability and socioeconomic status.

As a Accessible Yoga Teacher Training Online, you have the power to make yoga truly inclusive for all. Your choices, the cueing you give, your use of language and teaching spaces all impact the inclusivity of yoga as an accessible practice.

Often, yoga teachers struggle with understanding how to make their classes and the spaces they teach in more accessible to students with different abilities. They may also be unsure how to adapt yoga asana, Sun Salutations and other class sequences to accommodate students with disabilities without risking injury or loss of form. This course will provide a framework for learning and understanding how to incorporate accessibility into your yoga practice, classes and teaching.

Trauma-Informed Yoga

Trauma-informed yoga focuses less on a physical practice and more on fostering trust and safety. It encourages students to notice when they are experiencing dissociation and gives them space to stop whenever needed. It also emphasizes safe touch and the use of inclusive language and a nonjudgmental teaching approach.

A trauma-informed yoga class can include both stimulating and relaxing postures, and it may incorporate elements of mindfulness. It also helps students build coping skills and find balance in their nervous system by helping them discharge incomplete impulses, decrease rumination and anxiety, and expand their window of tolerance for body sensations.

When finding a trauma-informed yoga instructor, ask about their credentials. TCTSY has an online directory of their certified facilitators, and you can also check for certifications from other programs, like Collective Resistance. Make sure they are trained in using a compassionate, respectful, and mindful approach to teaching. Make sure they use inclusive language that prompts choices, and encourages students to stay upright in poses rather than assuming that they should fall into forward bend shapes.

Adapting the Physical Practice of Yoga

Yoga instructors often don’t have a lot of teaching experience with adapting the practice for students with a wide range of abilities and body types. Adaptive yoga is a solution to this problem and could help more students of all kinds feel welcome in yoga classes.

Adaptive yoga is about more than just making adjustments to poses to make them accessible to everyone. It’s about empowering students to know that they won’t be held back in their lives or in yoga class.

This training will give teachers a toolkit of options for how to create classes that are accessible to all. They’ll learn how to offer more options for a variety of physical needs and limitations, including pain and injury. They’ll also learn how to teach students how to re-connect with gravity and the earth, so they can come out of the class taller, stronger, more confident and whole.

Teaching Spaces and Workshops or Retreats

A holistic approach to inclusive yoga that empowers, supports and inspires practitioners to adapt the practice to their own needs, intentions and lifestyle. You’ll learn practical modalities to make classes, sequences, and language more accessible.

This training is also eco-friendly because it eliminates the need for physical travel to and from a retreat or ashram, which decreases waste and carbon emissions. Plus, the ability to take your online course at home instead of a traditional studio increases convenience and accessibility.

When teachers learn how to adapt yoga poses during a teacher training, they also open up a whole new world of possibilities for their future students. From changing how the posture is taught to offering different modifications for each pose, there are many ways yoga can be adapted and made more accessible for all bodies. It’s a big shift from teaching the “correct” form of a yoga pose to empowering students to experience the intended benefits of a pose, regardless of how their body may look on the mat.