Zama Yoga, LLC

Restorative Yoga Teacher Certification
with Marie Davis and Lillian Beean

Please contact info@zamayoga.com for more information.

Cost: $200

In this training, you will learn about restorative forms of yoga, including Svaroopa, Yin Yoga, Kirtan, and Meditation.

Svaroopa Yoga is a therapeutic style of Hatha yoga that uses familiar yoga poses to create a deep opening in the muscles around the spine. Core tensions in the body begin in the muscles around the base of the spine and then affect the rest of the body. Svaroopa Yoga begins by releasing the muscles around the tailbone and then carrying the changes through the sacrum, lumbar vertebrae and the rest of the way up the spine through the shoulders and neck. As the spine begins to release tension, the effects radiate throughout the entire body. The result is a definite reduction in muscular tension. The body feels supple, new and flexible. The focus is on alignment, using blankets and props. The poses are held a little longer helping the muscles relax and allowing for a deeper release into the pose. This style of yoga is very approachable for every body. While it is a therapeutic form of yoga and really can help heal many types of injuries and illnesses, people without a health issue will also receive many benefits from practicing Svaroopa Yoga.

Yin Yoga contains the ancient, and some say original, form of asana practice. The sages who pioneered the path of yoga used asanas to strengthen the body, so that they could sit for long periods in contemplative meditation. If you have ever sat for a long time with legs crossed, you know the hips and lower back need to be strong and open. The sensations you felt were deep in the connective tissues and the joints. These are the deep yin tissues of the body, relative to the more superficial yang tissues of muscles and skin. Yin Yoga opens up these deep, dense, rarely touched areas. Recently Yin Yoga has been "re-discovered", and more and more students of yoga are adding this challenging form of practice to their regular sadhana. Years of a dedicated asana practice will make anyone healthier, stronger, and more flexible, but at some point the muscles will have reached their limit of flexibility. New depths in postures, deeper ranges of motion, or an increased flow of energy may only be achievable by focusing on the deeper tissues of the body. This is why so many students are finding Yin Yoga to be the perfect compliment and balance to their more active, yang practices.

Kirtan Yoga is a spiritual practice, also called Devotional Singing or Chanting. Kirtan is not about artistic achievement and perfection but rather about reaching a meditative or ecstatic state of mind. It regards the feeling to be just as important as the tune. Kirtan is generally practiced as call-and-response – a lead singer chanting a line which then is repeated by the rest of the group. The songs as such are mostly relatively simply structured and repetitive, usually starting slowly and then building in pace and intensity. Kirtans are usually sung in groups, though they can also be practiced individually. Chanting in a group of people, however, is more common and tends to be a more intense experience.

Meditation is a self-help process of gently quieting our busy mind to enable us to 'see' more clearly. We learn to calmly approach potentially stressful situations with fresh insight. Meditation also provides direct experience of our precious core. As we gain a sense of our deeper self, problems appear rather superficial. We then comfortably begin to release their grip. This positive cycle of experience and release creates an exciting new outlook on life and enables us to pursue our purposeful place in it. The process is healing and liberating. The only requirements are a desire to be freer and a willingness to take the time for yourself.

At the completion of this certification training, the student will be able to:

• Use Hatha Yoga in the Svaroopa style techniques
• Use Yin Yoga techniques
• Lead in Kirtan chanting
• Lead meditation sessions