The Program

The certificate diploma is achieved when all workshops of the Dedicated Practitioner and the Advanced Practitioner is completed. The Professional Practitioner is limited for those who want additional skills and wish to invest in their professional assets.

All workshops in the certificate program alternates between sessions of pre-recorded practices, lectures live on Zoom, dharma buddy-work and individual assignments.

Expect some personal sharings in the workshops. The depth of privacy is of choice, and all sharings are kept confidential in each group. However, these workshops are not therapy but a training, where elevating your skills to amp your resources is the overall focus. 

Mandatory reading for all workshops is Inner Spark the book by Kristin Vikjord. Find it HERE or in your preferred online book shop. There will also be a presentation (pdf) for each workshop.

The Dedicated Practitioner consists of YF Immersion A and level 1, with the total of 2 workshops (total 65 hours). 

Immersion A: Finding Ease in Unease

In significant transition times or difficult periods of life, it is challenging to find ease and achieve emotional wellbeing (Sukha). Eastern thinkers and practices knew that recovery from suffering required knowing yourself. Western schools of psychology acknowledge this and believe in empowering emotional wellbeing through accessing your own agency. This workshop is for you who want to step deeper into your own process, getting to know yourself more, or unravel yourself from emotional struggles. Embedded in a container of practices of meditation, essential breath work, and mindful Yoga, you’ll learn how to reconnect to your inner spark and to empower emotional wellbeing.

Topics we’ll cover:

• Understanding the dance between ease (Sukha) and unease (Dukkha)
• Contemporary psychology meets the essentials of Buddhist psychology
• Know your patterns to transform your wounds to wisdom: 4 questions for self-inquiry
• Understanding readiness for change in your own process of change, including mastering strategies, boundaries and expression of these
• Tools to empower emotional wellbeing

Level 1: Mindfulness for Yoga Teachers

The integration of yoga and mindfulness takes us beyond the realm of asana and physical practice. We invite ourselves to an attitude of awareness, where kindness, compassion and curiosity is practiced for us to open the gateway to be in the moment, to freedom. This training is for yoga practitioners wishing to integrate the principles of mindfulness into their own practice, and for yoga teachers wishing to enrich their way of teaching. Through classical mindfulness practices as well as moving meditation, you will learn to practice self-inquiry to touch base with how you embody yourself in this particular moment of life.

You will learn the four ennobling truths, about the dance between ease (sukkha) and unease (dukkha), the four foundations of mindfulness and the eightfold path to sustain skillfull living. In addition to learning classical mindfulness practices like various mindfulness meditations, body scan and 5 minute breathing space, youґll learn how to practice and teach mindfulness as part of asana practice, as moving meditation. You’ll also learn how to teach mindfulness as a yoga teacher in your yoga classes.

In this 50-hours program, the focus is on experiencing and learning the tools offered by insight tradition, mindfulness and compassion based practices, synergized in yoga practice, and how to apply them as skillful means in your everyday life.

Program outline:

• Theory of insight tradition: the four noble truths, the four foundations of mindfulness, Buddhas eightfold path to end suffering
• Mindfulness practices as skillfull means
• The integration of mindfulness in asana – moving meditation
• Teaching methodology – how to teach Mindful Yoga

Advanced Practitioner

The Advanced Practitioner consists of YF Immersion B, level 2 and 3, with the total of 5 workshops (total 75 hours).

Immersion B:Applied Psychology for Yogis

The field of contemporary yoga and mindfulness-based practices invites students into the psychology of their being. Arguably, contemporary yogis need the competence of applied psychology.  We know a lot about how our brain works and about the psychology of the psyche.

This workshop dives into the meeting point between western scientific language and eastern experimental based practices. This workshop is for you who want to understand more of the underlying mechanisms at play when we practice meditative practices such as yoga, meditation, and pranayama. You’ll also learn the efficacy of these practices on our neurobiology, thinking, and behaviour. How does it work? And when does it not work?

Topics we’ll cover:

• Basic neuropsychology: autonomic activation and the function of the stress response
• The Polyvagal theory and what you need to know about it
• Brain structures and their functions
• The model of being, what to expect from practices and when

Level 2: Guiding Transformational Processes

Guiding someone in a transformational process is an intimate reciprocity. It requires trust, respect, a skill set of how to facilitate, and knowledge about what impacts such a process. This workshop is for you who are interested in or facilitates others in transformational processes.  You’ll learn the golden rules of supporting others in their process, aside from method-specific interventions and practices. And you’ll learn how to guide safely, and how to contain difficult emotions.

Topics we’ll cover:

• Essential aspects of mental health and the psyche when guiding transformational processes
• Understanding group dynamics in teaching larger groups
• What aspects to stay away from when guiding a transformational process
• Compassion fatigue in helpers
• Preparing well to enable spontaneous teaching

Level 3: 3 workshops in 2022

Yoga and Depression and Anxiety

Yoga for depression and anxiety is an important module for most practitioners and teachers these days. Both because many have questions about which practices are recommended for such difficulties, and also because there is much unnuanced advice out there about what is beneficial and when. This module will help you discern between different intensities of both depression (hereunder also burn-out), and anxiety, including: how to recognise it, how it expresses and how to support oneself through yoga and mindfulness, and how the languaging in the philosophy versus psychology elaborate on states.

Topics well cover:

• Yoga and mental health, context of practice
• Pathology and diagnostics: the what, the how, and the understanding
• Contraindications: when do we not prescribe asanas, meditations, and other tools from yoga and mindfulness

Yoga and Eating Disorders and Addiction

Coming soon

Yoga and Trauma and Abuse

Coming soon

Professional Practitioner

The Professional Practitioner consists of YF level 4, with the full Mentoring Program (total 30 hours). 

Mentoring Program

Individual sessions / group sessions /dharma buddy work

Support and investment for professionals to deepen your understanding and skills in one to one teaching, and small group teaching for particular populations. For YF-certificate students, yoga therapists and yoga teachers teaching in clinical settings, prison yoga or similar. Focus on case-discussions and developing individual skills.

Topics we’ll cover:

• Evolving an fine-tuning your facilitator skills with focus on your individual process, story and challenges
• Elevate your skills in containing and tolerating negative emotions, both within yourself and the one you are helping 
• Case debrief and support 
• Prevent compassionate fatigue
• Counseling and guidance for when feeling stuck with a client or in a process
• Prevention compassionate fatigue, secondary trauma and re-traumatization

In addition, there will be direct contact and individual follow up with course director, if needed, apart from scheduled sessions.