More about the Yoga for Healthy Aging Intensive

by Nina

Above the Fog by Brad Gibson

We announced our first Yoga for Healthy Aging Intensive just one month ago (see Yoga for Healthy Aging Summer Intensive: Register Now!). Since then we’ve heard from a lot of you, and we’ve worked out more of the details, so I thought I’d share them with you today. 

Workshop Size. Since we’re getting a lot of sign ups, we set a limit on the number of attendees to 35. We want to have a reasonably sized group so we can get to know everyone. But this means that if you are interested in attending, you should consider registering soon, because the intensive is already half full.

To register, you can sign up on the Namaste Yoga site. (Scroll down until you see the words SIGN UP in orange.) . Or, you can call Namaste Berkeley at (510) 665-4300.

For people from out of town who wish to attend, we will help you find a place to stay. Send a message to Nina via the Contact Us page for more info. 

Audience. A number of people have written to ask whether this intensive is designed for teachers or for practitioners, and the answer is both! And people from both groups are signing up. We have a supplementary program for those teachers who want Yoga for Healthy Aging Certification (see below). 

Teacher Certification. For yoga teachers who want to earn the YFHA Teacher Certificate, we’ve now spelled out the requirements you must fulfill. We’re taking the YFHA certification process very seriously, and there will be several tasks for you to complete. No certificates will be given until every single task is completed to our satisfaction. Here are the details:

Requirements for YFHA Teacher Certificate

There will be five tasks for you to complete and we will be keeping a checklist for each teacher indicating the status of each task that is completed. 

You will need to purchase, for the price of photocopying only, a reader for the course. You can read the articles and excerpts in the reader during the week and/or take the home with you and read them later. 

We won’t provide pass/fail feedback until after the intensive is over and we have evaluated your take-home final (see step 5 below). 

1. Proof of Teacher Certification

You will need to give us a copy of your teacher certification or, if you don’t have official certification but have several years of teaching experience, you can give us your yoga resume. 

2. Attend Every Session

You will need to attend every single session in the intensive. So we’ll be having a sign-in at the beginning of each session.

3. Write a Sequence

You will have all week to write a full-length Yoga for Healthy sequence (for a 1 to 1.5 hour class), using the Yoga for Healthy essential yoga poses and focusing on one Yoga for Healthy Aging key principle (strength, flexibility, balance, agility, stress, pain management, emotional wellbeing, equanimity, etc.).

Your sequence should be created with a certain logic in mind, and you should be prepared to explain this logic to the other teachers who attend the special Saturday session. 

You will turn in two copies your sequence to Baxter and Nina by Friday night. 

On Saturday afternoon you will bring enough copies of your sequence to hand out to every other student in the class. Each student will then share their sequence with the class (on paper, not teaching it), giving three justifications for the particular design. At this time, Nina and Baxter will give you verbal feedback on your sequence.

4. Teach a Pose

At the beginning of the week, we will assign you a pose to teach on Saturday to the other teachers. At the Saturday session, you will each take turns teaching your pose to the group. When you teach the pose, you should focus on one Yoga for Healthy aging key principle and must teach the complete pose within a specified time limit. 

5. Complete and Mail In a Take-Home, Open-Book Final

At the end of the intensive, we will give you a take-home final that you can complete on your own time. The reader that you purchase will contain all the answers to the final, so you should have no problem scoring getting most if not all of the answers correct.

After completing the final, you will mail or email it to Nina. At that point, Baxter and Nina will pass you if all the work is completed to our satisfaction, and will mail you your YFHA certification.

Although we’re not enjoying the idea of failing people, we are committed to doing so for people who do not complete all these tasks to our satisfaction, as we want to maintain a level of quality regarding teachers with YFHA certification.

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