Learn about sensation-based instruction and refine your teaching skills with Birgitte Gorm Hansen. 

In recent years, we yoga teachers have become increasingly aware of how much anatomical variation there is between human bodies. Each of our students have their unique bone and tissue structure developed in response to their particular movement history. This makes it painfully clear that even though alignment-based yoga gave us a good foundation for teaching yoga safely, no one-size-fits-all principle does the job. Teaching a safe and efficient yoga class means supporting students in becoming sensitive to their own unique body, its changing capacity and its present needs. 

The challenge we are facing today, is how to gradually empower students to feel more clearly what is appropriate for the body they have today. For this we need a teaching language that speaks to internal sensation as a fine-tuned compass for alignment. 

Unfortunately, not many yoga teacher trainings offer a systematic teaching method that help us progress towards becoming more sensitive and attuned to physical sensation. Mostly we are left with hoping that this happens automatically as students become more advanced. Maybe we will learn vague instructions such as “find your intelligent edge”. This kind of instruction, however, does not do much for the student in exploring 

a) where in their body they will have to look to find this “edge”
b) what kinds of physical sensations to look for and
c) which sensations to act on and which to simply feel. 

This weekend workshop offers concrete techniques for yoga teachers who want to educate their students into feeling their bodies more clearly. You will get inspiration for how to empower your students to act in response to what they feel and support their somatic self-inquiry. You will be shown concrete examples of how to use verbal instruction in a step-by step progression inviting your students to gain more trust the intelligence of their own body. 

Birgitte will guide two yoga classes inviting you to develop your own sensitivity to physical sensations. She will take you behind the scenes of her teaching by breaking down each class into its component parts. You will be given concrete, practical examples of how verbal instructions can be sequenced to facilitate a step-by-step sensitization of the major joints in the body. You will receive ideas for short teaching progressions that you can weave into your existing class structure as preparation for a sensitive engagement with a yoga posture. The workshop will mix guided classes with technical presentations and small group or partner exercises. 

The workshop is open for yoga teachers with a minimum of a 100 hours teacher training. We welcome yoga teachers form all branches of the yoga family tree and all levels of teaching experience. If you are in the middle of your first yoga teacher training, have taught for many years without any formal training or have any other type of educational background which you feel would qualify you to attend of this workshop, please write an e-mail to Birgitte.

Program:

Saturday 14:00 - 18:00: Sthira Sukham Asanam: A sensation-based compass for your own practice.  

Sunday 12:30 - 16:30: Teaching from the body: Sensation based instruction.

Price: 1400 kr.

About Birgitte Gorm Hansen

Reknown for her high quality teaching and deep dedication to sensitive and meditative practice, Birgitte stands for an undogmatic and experimental approach to yoga. Her teaching honors the student's embodied experience, meaning that movements are guided more by what you can feel than by what you can do. Her classes are gentle invitations to love the body you have today by way of gentle somatic self enquiry. Her core expertise lies in sensation-based alignment, meditative movement and the fertile field between yoga, psychology and organization. Birgitte has been teaching weekly yoga classes since 2001 and have been in extensive training with 3 master teachers since she began practicing in the mid-1990s. In addition to years of teacher training in yoga and meditation, she holds a MA degree in psychology and a Ph.D in management. By 2015, Birgitte functioned as one of the senior teachers in Dynamic Yoga and travelled all over Europe. Today she lives in Copenhagen with her family and works independently of any yoga school. She offers workshops, courses and yoga teacher training. Read More

In case you want to cancel this course it is not refundable. If there is a wait list we can offer your spot to someone else to get you your money back - but we can not guarantee that we succeed.