Circle Yoga Shala provides more than one way to secure a 200-hour yoga certification: a twelve-month course that is broken into (4) fifty-hour intensives (located in Little Rock), and a thirty-day residential course here at the school.

For the last decade, we’ve had the privilege of developing teachers who are seen as the most competent of teachers in their markets, and have evolved a program over the course of that time that is equaled by none: there is a difference between training someone to be a teacher, and training someone to be an instructor. To be a teacher of Yoga is to be an example of the process of personal transformation, and a carrier of the ancient wisdom of self-inquiry, compassion and devotion: we train teachers.

Our program is designed to give aspiring students the necessary knowledge, experience, and technical tools to teach a yoga practice that meets the multifaceted demands of today’s practitioners.

It is theoretically coherent with modern methods of education, exercise physiology, and psychology, and at the same time rooted historically in the contemplative wisdom traditions that have been passed down through the ages. As such, it cultivates a practice that addresses the human being in her entirety. By cultivating the foundational capacity for self-enquiry, meditation, and study, teachers trained by us learn to solve problems on their own, and to assist the student’s efforts in the life long endeavor that serious Yoga practice is.

THE METHOD AND ITS ORIGIN

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Our training is linked to a lineage that traces its roots back to one of the fathers of modern Hatha Yoga, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya.

Much of the technical curriculum is derived from the work of Godfrey Devereux. Mr. Devereux teaches something called the Dynamic Yoga Method. The Dynamic Yoga Method is not to be understood as a new “style” of Hatha yoga. It is essentially a way to organize and experience the actions one takes within practice, a basic set of principles that can be taught to students in the beginning of their training to give them a way to gain autonomy in their investigation of Yoga.

Within the realm of technique, trainees are taught to organize the many possible actions that the body can take within the rubric of three main areas: expanding actions (broadening actions), extending actions (lengthening actions), and spiraling actions (the basic medial and lateral rotations of the major joints).

Within the realm of orientation, or how to relate to any particular technique, students are taught that Yoga is practiced as a triune system of dedication to practice, self – inquiry, and surrender. Both the technical training and the orientation are delivered to students via the five basic techniques common in all forms of Hatha Yoga.

These are:

  • Asana: Stillness – practice at the level of body to inquire into the tendency to live mechanically in our movements, and to free the somatic structure from restriction caused by that mechanicalness and/or trauma, so that action in the world can become free from generating tension and be released into spontaneity.
  • Pranayama: Breath – – the surrender of action to the direction of breathing, and the eventual freeing of the breath cycle into its own spontaneous rhythm.
  • Bandha: Integration – the integration and unification of the various levels of the human in the core of the body. Bandha is the technique that transforms perception so that attention is surrendered into the experience of an always-already present, non-dual awareness. Mula, Uddiyana, and Jalandhara, pada and hasta bandhas are common techniques taught.
  • Vinyasa: Rhythm – the art of learning, arranging actions, and moving in concert with the breath in an elegant, sequential fashion, and of surrendering attention into this movement as feeling-awareness and intelligence.
  • Drushti: Uncommon Presence – contextualizing the vagrant tendencies of everyday attention and their accompanying perceptions so that they are surrendered into the impersonal space of pure awareness, where they arise and pass away without resistance or attachment. Drushti is taught as an orientation toward self study and reflection, and also as an actual structural adaptation (positioning the eyes in various places) in the posture practice, and/or the Pranayama practice, and/or the seated meditation practice.

The teacher training directed by this learning method requires only a willingness to orient one’s self toward the classical practices in a way that inquires into the self and its relationships with the totality of being. Such willingness means cultivating a spirit of openness to existence and ALL of its continuously arising conditions; or, as Godfreydev says: yoga is an ongoing invitation (to both teacher and student) to surrender.

The training is structured around several key elements:

  • Technical training: in asana, meditation, and pranayama.
  • Teaching skills: how to language and teach actions rather than guiding a class via practicing together; sequencing classes based on a deep understanding of the techniques and postures as actions rather than forms; hands-on adjustments, holding the space, and adapting to the needs of students spontaneously.
  • History and philosophy: The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, the Baghavad Gita, and the Gospels.
  • Anatomy and physiology: Joint mechanics, the reflexes, and the respiratory system as applied to the actions of practice.
  • The psychology of teaching: The training curriculum takes advantage of adult learning methods and places tremendous focus on character development. Yoga is a transformational practice and as such requires teachers who can anticipate situations in which boundary or ethical issues may arise. Other topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Pregnancy and other special populations.

Each teacher training attendee receives a beautifully produced 200+ page manual containing illustrations and professionally photographed Asanas.

If you have any questions about Circle Yoga Shala’s teacher training program, please contact Matthew Krepps: krepps.matt@gmail.com, or Holly Krepps: kreppsholly@gmail.com. A land line number also available is: 870-861-5175.

Training recognized by the National Yoga Alliance.

OUR FACULTY

  • Matthew Krepps, Director and Founder
  • Holly Krepps
  • Louanne Lawson
  • Jennifer Phillips
  • Rob Officer
  • Mike Danley
  • Robin Buck, Director, Jane’s House, St. Charles, MO