Journey Into Power
Showing posts with label Journey Into Power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journey Into Power. Show all posts

Leading a Powerful Power Yoga Class (what you need to know, in 9 minutes)


 I created this 9 minute video to give you the information you need to lead a powerful power yoga class. These are the essential items which seem too simple to be real, but believe me - simple is best and simple is often challenging to put into practice.
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Yoga Alliance Aligned Baptiste Power Yoga Teacher Training Manual Template

 

If you've been following along, you'll know that my yoga studio will be holding our first yoga teacher training in March of 2023. As part of the process of becoming a registered yoga school recognized by Yoga Alliance, I purchased a teacher training manual template from a mutual friend. I spent six months rewriting, reorganizing, redesigning and collaborating with our YTT team to create a document meeting the current Yoga Alliance curriculum requirements and reflecting the training we will be delivering.

All Y'All Yoga's Yoga Alliance registration process is now work in progress.

With that process started and that manual "completed", I set to work on this template which aligns to the Yoga Alliance 2023 curriculum guidelines and encompasses Baptiste Power Yoga teaching methodology, ready for anyone to edit to reflect the mission and ethos of their studio. 

This template is ready for you to edit, reorganize or rewrite to meet your yoga teacher training goals. I have reformatted this document into four different file types:  

  • Adobe InDesign 
  • Microsoft Word 
  • Google Documents
  • Canva Template

The images used within this template were created by me or taken from Wikimedia and used under Creative Commons Share Alike Attribution. The document color palette was designed to be readable when printed in black and white or color and the yoga postures are represented by gender neutral stick figures.

If you are interested in purchasing a copy of this YTT Template, please reach out to me.

 JenTechYoga 2023 YTT Template Inquiry

 Here are thumbnails of the pages and the table of contents and sections in the manual. Click to see them full size (readable).


 
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Becoming a Registered Yoga School



I'm the kind of person who has to actually see the 'big picture' before I can break things down into a logical arrangement according to a calendar based time line. This is a long way of saying I have to write down all the things that are required before I can figure out how to convey the requirements.
Starting in August of 2020, All Y'All Yoga started on the path to becoming a Registered Yoga School. This starts with becoming familiar with the Yoga Alliance Requirements, the Lead Trainer requirements, and the documentation required when applying to become an RYS.

  • TRAINING MANUAL
  • DAILY SCHEDULE
  • POLICIES (6 IN TOTAL)
  • LETTER OF INTENT
  • SAMPLE CERTIFICATE
  • BACKGROUND/EXPERIENCE FOR LEAD TRAINERS AND FACILITY
  • TRAINEE SELECTION PROCESS
  • TRAINER:TRAINEE RATIO
  • CURRICULUM & HOURS ALLOCATION
  • ASSESSMENT METHODS
I achieved the Yoga Alliance YAECP® credential in August 2022 after completing Fit To Lead with the Baptiste Institute and clocking 1000 hours teaching, after becoming registered with Yoga Alliance in November of 2015. Having this step completed, I embarked on digesting all the content Yoga Alliance requires as part of a 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training program. I wrote it all down on my home office whiteboard so I could look at it every day and slowly begin to formulate a process for turning these topics into a daily schedule, training manual, curriculum & hours allocation and assessment methods.

After many months of attempting to transform topics into a timeline, I came upon a formula for slicing the buckets of hours YA assigns to each major topic. I took the hours tied to each major topic and divided them into what I felt might be an appropriate distribution of time for each topic, weighting the topics and sub topics according to my perceived importance and complexity.


Our yoga studio will include training in Yin and Yoga Nidra as well as Baptiste Power Yoga, therefore the YA major topic of "Techniques, Training, Practice" got further divided into sub topics: Asana (Baptiste Power Yoga), Pranayama & Subtle Body, Meditation, Yin/Restorative and Yoga Nidra. 

Color coding the major topics and sub topics helped me see how the topics link to one another while I was working out how to distribute these major topics and sub topics over the course of the 200 RYT program.
 
Working within the constraints of when the studio has classes already on the schedule, and when we could have the studio space available to lead the RYT curriculum within an agreeable frame of time, we reached this scheduling conclusion. This schedule would allow us to deliver the YA content over the course of 7 weekends in 2023. Creating a YTT schedule where the days of training are long but not egregious was the goal.



Working with graph paper, I arbitrarily picked a small "bucket of time" to be represented by a single square in the graph paper notebook I was working in. This single bucket of time ended up being a 15 minute block of time, since 15 minutes is easy to work with in the context of hours of training and breaking up training vs teaching vs assessing over the course of a day.


Working through the major topics and required sub topics with colored pencils and graph paper allowed me to see how many "buckets" of time each day of training would have available through the 7 weeks. Once I had the major topics laid out in color, I began to lay out the sub-topics such as Skeletal System, Physiology, Bio-mechanics, History, Philosophy, Ethics and so on. Using Friday Evenings for the sub-topics that lend themselves well to lecture-based teaching seemed an ideal path. Once I'd set the Friday night schedules, the Saturday & Sunday schedules began to become clearer. 

I'd created a bulleted list of topics, sorted by importance, which I want to impart to our trainees regarding how to lead Baptiste Power Yoga. Using this bulleted list, I began to divvy up the large time buckets of Teaching Methodology and Practicum into smaller slots of time. Doing this will allow me to teach a concept, have the students practice the concept and then we can discuss how the practice went and receive feedback. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Looking at the bulleted list of prioritized topics in a spreadsheet format allowed me to build the Leader's Daily Agenda documents which we will use to keep us on time while delivering the training. Topic documentation, prioritization, and daily scheduling was also used to define the portions of the YTT dedicated to Yin/Restorative and Yoga Nidra.
 
I bought a copy of a YTT manual from a fellow Baptiste Power Yoga Studio owner to use as a template for the All Y'All Yoga YTT manual. I've edited, rearranged, removed and adding content to it since August and I have learned a lot about working with Adobe InDesign to create CharacterStyles, ParagraphStyles, Color Swatches, edit Anchor Options to keep images anchored to text fields. Working from an actual YTT manual gave me a foundation to start from, the confidence to strip away and add in content currently required by Yoga Alliance, as well as the content specific to All Y'All Yoga.

If you are also on the path to becoming a Registered Yoga School, perhaps this post will be helpful for you to organize your YTT weekends to meet the content requirements of Yoga Alliance. I know it is unlikely that your weekend start/stop times will be the same as those at All Y'All, but the concepts I've laid out for a way to organize the major topics, sub-topics and then divvy them up into a timeline will possibly be of use to you.

This Google Sheet will help you formulate your responses to the Yoga Alliance Application. Once you've completed the "Explanation for your RYS" for each of the core competencies, you'll be ready to copy and paste this content into the Yoga Alliance website when you are completing your Yoga School Registration application.
 

I created an offline template which can be used to pre-fill out your Daily Scheduler data. The Yoga Alliance website for creating the Daily Schedule doesn't allow for submitting this data and saving your progress. It's entered all at once. The spreadsheet I made will help you organize your data in such a way that you can enter your data into the YA website and know that you will be uploading your complete schedule content. This document is an Excel spreadsheet and not a Google spreadsheet, as I couldn't figure out how to create dependent drop down lists in a Google spreadsheet.

 
If you found any of this useful and you feel called to contribute, here is my PayPal account information. (click below)

 
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Baptiste Power Yoga and American College of Sports Medicine Physical Activity Guidelines

 

Yoga Class - Breath and Body Yoga
Photo - Breath and Body Yoga Austin TX

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) serves as the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world. "With more than 16,000 members and 34,000 certified professionals worldwide, ACSM remains dedicated to advancing and integrating scientific research to provide educational and practical applications of exercise science and sports medicine." ACSM makes the guidelines for what energy cost physical activity needs to meet in order for it to qualify as moderate physical activity. 

Dr. Sally Sherman Ph.D. and her team led the scientific study of the physical fitness aspects of Baptiste Power Yoga and have published the paper "ENERGY EXPENDITURE IN YOGA VERSUS OTHER FORMS OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY". She gathered 40 yoga participants and connected them to laboratory equipment that would measure their oxygen intake as well as their heart rate. The participants performed Journey Into Power in a non-heated room, with a pace of five breaths per pose. Each breath was a two-count for the inhale and a two-count for the exhale. The data shows that Journey Into Power meets the metabolic criteria to be categorized as moderate-intensity physical activity. The physical activity guidelines for Americans were published In 2020 and now it includes vinyasa yoga as a viable way to meet the guidelines. This was not the case in the previous guidelines so that was big news. 

Dr. Sherman has also worked to publish another study titled "Feasibility of Integration of Yoga in a Behavioral Weight Loss Intervention: A Randomized Trial" which concluded that yoga was good for weight loss and participants preferred 20 to 40 minute classes over longer (60 minute) classes. 

This is all very good news that power yoga or vinyasa style yoga is becoming more integrated into the popular mindset of what is physical exercise. The physical aspect of a yoga practice is just one of the beneficial parts, but having more people become aware of the physical benefits of yoga will ultimately lead to more people doing yoga and reaping the mental and spiritual benefits of a yoga practice over time.

Post settings Labels Baptiste Power Vinyasa, Journey Into Power Published on 4/27/22 3:52 PM Permalink https://www.jentechyoga.com/2022/04/baptiste-power-yoga-recognized-by.html Location Search Description Options
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Theming a Baptiste Journey Into Power Yoga Class - How do they do it?



A masterfully themed yoga class is a beautiful thing to behold and to experience. I recently had that experience in a class led by Leandra Antonutti where she wove the concept of a lizard losing or shedding its tail into the class theme. She linked a lizard losing its tail into our practice by having us do lots of lizard-based poses but she also spoke to where a lizard doesn't make losing its tail right or wrong and it doesn't try to fix it. She then spoke to how people often get caught up in experiencing a loss of some kind and we go into trying to fix it rather than seeing the loss as an opportunity to regenerate, rebirth and begin again. I had the experience of "HOW DID SHE DO THAT?" while I was practicing.

I like to break things down and try to figure them out, so once her website went live, I took the time to dive into the pacing of what she said, when she said it, how often she gave us silence and when she spoke to the physical cues of the yoga practice of Journey Into Power.

I know this is WAY overboard behavior. I was hoping to find a magical pattern in her lovingly themed classes so I compared the theme in "Give Up The Small Fights" with "Shed Your Tail", but I did not find an obvious A+B+C=D pattern. What I did find gave me enough of a structure to play with creating themes for my classes.

First there's the theme - clearly stated - "The theme of today's class is X". For this I called it the concept. Where I saw a clear link to Baptiste Methodology, I simply called that methodology. Any phrases that supported the action tied to the concept, I called those action/access. Anytime a phrase was used to describe something counter to the action/access, I called those constraints. 



From here I started color coding and underlining the types of phrases throughout the class. I made notes on when she was speaking to anything OTHER than the physical yoga practice. Making notes with timestamps of when she was speaking, when she was quiet and what pose we were in when this was happening. I then used the Journey Into Power outline (which she didn't teach strictly from) and color coded the sections where she spoke to THEME, METHODOLOGY, ACTION/ACCESS or CONSTRAINT. I was looking for a pattern, but none was obvious even after comparing the lizard class with the small fights class.




Luca Richards is holding a Grow Tips Live - How to Deliver an Impactful Theme In Your Classes on September 9th. I'm excited to learn about how Luca themes classes, now that I've dissected two of Leandra's powerfully themed classes and come up with a hypothesis of sorts.

Until then, I used the CONCEPT, METHODOLOGY, ACTION/ACCESS, CONSTRAINT quadrant to theme two classes so far. The feedback I received on the first class was that I should not use the word 'maybe' when offering modifications for poses as the word 'maybe' is disempowering, and that I should speak to my experiences around the theme of the class. Here is the worksheet I used for the second class I themed with the quadrant method so you can see my thought processes.



With time and practice, it will get easier to speak to themes, action/access concepts and constraints without needing notes. For now while we're teaching from a standing desk in the yoga studio, I don't think that having notes with me is such a terrible thing while I'm trying on this new way of teaching.

Leave me a message about how you theme classes? I'm curious!
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You Want Baptiste Yoga? You've Got Baptiste Yoga!


These are the days of choice. Choosing to get on your mat, choosing to show up for yourself, for your community.

There are many studios or teachers who are offering free or donation based live Zoom yoga classes online any given day of the week. This list is by no means complete and will certainly change from week to week, but this is a pin in the bulletin board of now.

These studios and teachers teach from the Baptiste methodology and the practice may resemble the Journey Into Power sequence (or maybe not!).

All Y'All Yoga
Sat 12-1:30 EST Donation/Beginners

Leandra Antonutti - Free
Fri 9-9:30a EST
Sun 11-12p EST
Mon 11:30-12p EST
Thur 5-5:30 EST 

Bethany Lyons - Donation Based/Free LYONS DEN NYC
M-F 5-6p EST
Sun 12-1:30p EST 

Baptiste Power Yoga with Austin Kapetanakis - Donation Based/Free
Tues. 8:00 PM EST - 30 Min Meditation Session
Wed 12:00 PM EST - 45 Min Power Flow
Thur 7:15 PM EST - 75 Min Power Flow
Fri 9:00 AM EST - 60 Min Power Flow

Brandon Sommers - Free
Daily 10:30a EST (zoom link) 30 min

Alisa Van Cleef - Free
Tues & Thur 2pm EST (zoom link) 30 min

Warrior One -  Orlando - Free Zoom classes
So many daily free options! Check the schedule

Power Yoga Canada - Free
Sun 11-12p EST - Kinndli McCollum

Baptiste Power Yoga Indianapolis - Donation Based
Sun 9:30-10:45a EST - Donation Power + Meditation 75

Baptiste Power Yoga Capitol District
Sat 4-5p EST - Free

Baptiste Power Yoga St. Louis - Free
Thur 11:30a EST (starts June 25th)

NYC Yoga Project - Donation Based
Several classes a day, 7 days a week

5 Boro Power Yoga - Free
Mon 7-8:30pm EST Beginners
Tues 5:30-6:30p EST
Thur 5:30-6:30p EST
Sat 7:15-8:15p EST Yoga for Recovery
Sun 9-10a EST

Anjali Power Yoga Philly - Free
Sun 12-1pm EST

I'm putting the classes I'm taking on my Jen Tech Yoga calendar & you can see them in the calendar widget at the top of every page. Look for [TAKING] in big letters. See you on the mat! <3 p="">
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