300 hr Yoga Teacher Training Syllabus
The below syllabus overview is a summary of the Island School of Yoga Teacher Training course manual, showing what students can expect to learn and what they will be able to do upon completion.
The mandatory minimum requirement is that students have had a weekly yoga practice for a minimum of two years.
Practice of asana, pranayama & meditation:
Approximately 53% of the total direct hours will be spent on the teaching of asana, pranayama and meditation
Teaching Practice & Methods:
Approximately 35% of the total direct hours will be spent teaching the students to teach; use of the basic Sivananda sequence and variations will be used to show students the principles of theming, planning and sequencing a class (including kramas and peak posture). Teaching will incorporate the use of alignment principles as taught by the Iyengar tradition, and will show students how to safely assist and adjust their students, including the use of appropriate props to make asana practice accessible to students of all ages and abilities.
Lectures include:
anatomy and physiology;
The key yoga texts:
neurology, nervous systems and the gunas;
integrating pregnant women;
how to teach meditation and pranayama;
the theory of learning;
the science of holding a space;
communication, listening and observation skills;
nutrition;
ritual and ceremony;
the business of yoga;
Does the course have a particular focus?
Our Code of Conduct states that The Island School of Yoga (ISOY) seeks to “maintain and uphold the traditions of Yoga and to teach yoga from the experience of these traditions and disseminate these teachings to anyone, from any background, who earnestly desires to follow these traditions.”
Our course is designed to introduce students to yoga as a holistic life style, to demonstrate that, in addition to asana practice, all eight limbs of yoga are as relevant today as when written, not just from a physical point of view but also from a psychological and self-help point of view. This will be achieved through use of key yoga philosophical texts, such as Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, the Yoga Hatha Pradipika, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita alongside modern self-help texts. We include three clinical psychology one to one sessions to ease the transition towards self knowledge.
Our students will be asked to attend classes based on other traditions enabling them to experience different yoga teaching methods and to learn from other people's experience of yoga.
What is the overall AIM of the course?
Initially this foundation course is to provide students with every opportunity to become very familiar with the practice and philosophies of yoga and meditation so as to enhance their living and embody the lessons from the teachings. Traditional teaching will be complemented with one to one clinical psychology sessions to help ease the emotional and intellectual journey that begins with contemplative enquiry and the energetic somatic work of yoga and pranayama. With such growth and understanding often comes a need to share the benefits of these practices, in which case the final three months will give students the necessary teaching skill set to safely offer, as a minimum, a Beginners Hatha Yoga Course to their local community.