3pm-5pm, one Sunday a month, winter to summer 2022

Dates:
16/01/2022
20/02/2022
27/03/2022
24/04/2022
22/05/2022
19/06/2022

Are you wanting to explore your relationship to pleasure in a yoga practice, to try making this your main guide on the mat? Or are you curious about how poetry, song, music can weave into a movement practice, how you can let the two blend together and produce so much richness and ease? Or perhaps you’re keen to meet sacred and nourishing contexts to your yoga practice outside the standard (and often patriarchal, casteist) canon? Join Simran, a poet, yoga teacher, and translator, for this New Year, online co-practice series.

This series is an invitational, accessible space for exploring the lusher side of a yoga practice together: the territory of joy and pleasure in the body, expressive and creative approaches to asana and flows, and above all, movements emerging from your own live, resourcing, luscious experiences of sensation through the body. There’ll be space to reflect and share, and space to enjoy beautiful, hugely engaging sacred and popular music and poetry – the electrifying qawwali of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abida Parveen, Kabir’s playful, confronting poetry, Nanak’s gorgeous, extraordinary lyrics, even soaring Sufi power ballads from the last decade of Bollywood, and much else.

We’ll use frameworks shaped by the widest range of contexts – prana and ‘desire-energy’ in 20th century Tibetan tantra, sacred medieval love poetry from Sufi and bhakti traditions in North India, the work of Audre Lorde, and even affect theory. We’ll hold space to cultivate, relish, explore and trust the sensations of pleasure and desire that can come through movement and the rest of a yoga practice; and we’ll see how poetry, song, music, and other artforms – sacred, popular, and both! – can support and expand across the board.

We’ll come together once a month over six months, for a practice led by Simran and a mellow, carefully facilitated space for reflecting on or sharing about how your practice has been feeling – in that session, over the course of the month, or more widely. Alongside this, each month you’ll receive a lovingly curated package of songs, poems, short readings and even videos of particularly iconic performances across artforms to enjoy however you like. These will come with lots of easy-reading resources – including new, radical and accessible translations not available elsewhere!

This course is open to everyone: there is no level of yoga experience required, but the course is intended to be a monthly top-up and check-in, supporting and resourcing your own movement and/or rest practices – whatever they might look like. Please reach out if you have any questions, and particularly to discuss any accessibility requirements – we look forward to hearing from you!


Pricing
We believe in the importance and value of this training, and would like to offer a scaled pricing system, which enables attendees to pay which tier feels most appropriate for them. Please note there are NO further discounts available (i.e. no student discounts, etc).

Community price £139
Standard price £169
Supporter price £199


About Simran
Simran Uppal (they/them) is a yoga teacher, writer and organiser based in East London. As a yoga teacher, Simran works predominantly as a faculty member for 200hr and advanced 300hr teacher trainings with Nourish, an inclusive and community-oriented teacher training company based in Oxford. They’ve also led a wide range of CPD and public workshops in the US, across the UK, and more widely. They focus on critical approaches to the philosophical and social contexts of modern yoga, experiential and embodied forms of education, and creative, expressive movement and rest practices rooted in their own experiences of devotion, bliss, and joy in the body.

Description
Thursday 23 June - Thursday 21 July 2022
Thursdays 6:30-9:30pm

Leading students into a state of rest is a subtle, profound art. It is also a skill that can be learned. When we understand the roots, development and structure at the heart of practices like savasana and yoga nidra, we can hold a much safer, inclusive space to welcome our students into resting well together.

This training has been carefully designed to train yoga teachers in offering simple yoga nidras comfortably, confidently, and creatively.

Course Outline
This module is offered as part of the 300 hour teacher training, but can be taken by any teacher wishing to improve their skills in this area as Continuing Professional Development (CPD). The module will run as five weekly sessions of three hours, and combine theory, practice and skills development.

1. Recipes for rest – how rest is experienced, barriers to rest, getting creative to help our students find rest
2. History of yoga nidra – from pre-modern origins to recent techniques, and managing student trust and safety
3. The structure of yoga nidra – a simplified structure for creating safe and simple practices, and techniques for grounding and post-practice comfort
4. Mapping the territory – exploring koshas, tattvas, chakras, European holism and other maps that have been used to understand the nidra ‘landscape’
5. Getting creative – finding inspired and responsive ways to offer the practice without getting out of your depth

Nourish Yoga Training's 300 hour Advanced Teacher Training is registered with Yoga Alliance (International), and is completed as a series of standalone modules which can be taken over 3 years. More modules are forthcoming in 2022.

There are limited spaces available. As this course focusses on preparing you to deliver yoga nidra, live attendance is required. You are able to miss one session and a recorded session can be provided for the missed module only at no further cost. If you need to miss the final week, which includes a teaching practice and feedback session, a catch up session maybe be provided at the trainer's discretion, and will incur an extra charge.

Pricing
We believe in the importance and value of this training, and would like to offer a scaled pricing system, which enables attendees to pay which tier feels most appropriate for them. Please note there are NO further discounts available (i.e. no student discounts, etc).

CPD Community Price £169
CPD Standard Price £199
CPD Supporter Price £229

About Theo:

Theo Wildcroft, PhD is a yoga teacher, writer and scholar working for a more sustainable relationship between our many selves, the communities that hold us, and the world that nourishes us. She is currently registered with the IYN (RYT500) and Yoga Alliance (E-RYT® 500, YACEP®). Her research considers the democratization of yoga post-lineage, and the many different ways yoga communities are responding to concerns about safety in practice. She’s a lover of vulnerable people, of wild things and wild places, and of the simple miracle of life itself. Countless people have downloaded her yoga nidras, which are profound but gentle, take you on unexpected journeys, and are always spontaneously created. Drop in and listen for real.