Tag: safe yoga

Understanding Trauma for Safer Spaces

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20hr Berlin Trauma-informed Facilitator training from Legacy Motion

for all body workers, including yoga teachers and Alexander Technique teachers

hosted at English Yoga Berlin

When: September 8th to 10th, 2023

This training is more than an education, it is a practical learning experience to
transform your offering and the spaces you occupy.
This experience will offer you immediate tools, methods, and
interventions to instantly cultivate a more trauma-informed approach in
your current studio, classes, business, organization, and/or offerings.
It is an integrative and holistic approach to discovering the connections
between empowerment and resilience through personal exploration,
invitational language, safe space creation, supportive solutions, and
facilitating choice-making.

What is Trauma-Informed?

Trauma is an experience shared by all; whether you have experienced it
firsthand or know people who have experienced it, it is something we come
into contact with any time we work with humans. It is our responsibility to
know and understand the impacts trauma has on individuals and
communities as well as how behaviours manifest and how we can work
alongside them and support people in every field and industry. This training
gives you foundational tools and insights into what it means to be human and
interact with others in a way that promotes safety, dignity, and belonging.
Trauma-informed means taking into account past trauma and the
resulting coping mechanisms when attempting to understand the
behaviours of those we are working alongside. It means bringing empathy
and compassion to every interaction and creating a safe and accessible
space for all.

During this training participants will discover:

● How trauma anatomically affects the nervous system
● How to identify trauma symptoms and trigger responses
● Tools to promote biological resiliency, self-regulation and resolution
● Protocol and best practices in the field
● Invitational language
● Community building and outreach methods
● Ahimsa and the importance of self-care
● How to create a safe space
● Teaching methods for classrooms, yoga studios, healthcare
practitioners, etc

In order to earn your Certificate of Completion, you must be present
for all training days and complete all written assignments by the
scheduled due date. These guidelines for completion are to ensure
that we are building a safe and robust community during this
transformational learning experience.

Who is this Berlin Trauma-informed training for?

~ Suitable for – Yoga Teachers, Body Workers, Coaches

This 20HR training is foundational training, offering you the methods and
interventions to instantly cultivate a more trauma-informed approach in your
current studio and offerings. For yoga teachers and those in the health & wellness
industry, this training will allow you to understand the physiology behind trauma
and how to facilitate safe spaces for all.

~ Suitable for – Mental Health Practitioners, Community Social Workers,
Psychologists

Professional training for those in the mental health or health care industry to
incorporate the body and movement-based practices into your offerings and
work. This training will allow those working with members of the public to
understand the physiology behind trauma and how to work with individuals in a
safe manner for all. This training will allow you to understand trauma from a
bottom-up approach, allowing us to understand the body and how it is affected
during certain circumstances and events (mentally, physically and emotionally).

~ Suitable for – Human Resource Professionals, Managers, Business Owners.

“Trauma is an emotional injury that affects performance and well-being.”
Integrating trauma-informed principles into an organization means operating
from a place of understanding trauma, and recognizing the negative effects
of the trauma within the organization and in the communities it works within.
As a business professional, understanding trauma’s impacts on the workforce,
and how to approach organizational processes from a trauma-informed lens,
means mitigating the harm that is so often perpetuated through a
misunderstanding of human behaviour. It means creating a safe and
supportive work environment for all to thrive.

How to register?

Follow this link to look at prices and registration process:

Registration

Find out more:

Click here to find out more details about our facilitator, the modules studied, the time table, sliding scale prices etc.

Info pack

So you want to be a yoga teacher?

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Making yoga in Berlin more accessible

Small yoga classes in Berlin

At English Yoga Berlin, we get several email requests a day from brand newly-trained yoga teachers to join our team. Unfortunately, we can’t accommodate all of their requests. We pride ourselves on remaining small and community-based, because we believe small classes are especially beneficial to people who are new to yoga or those who want to advance their practice in a safer environment. At larger studios, there may be more opportunities for new teachers, but also more competition.

So you’ve got a 200 hour teacher certificate. What do you do next? How do you start?

Put yourself out there. Get to know the studios in your city. Attend classes to find out if it’s a right fit for you. Try out different studios, maybe the atmosphere is different? Once you find one you like, become part of their community. Do a work exchange, like cleaning or working the front desk. Get to know the other teachers, perhaps they need assistants some time. What does not work is writing unsolicited emails. No matter how amazing your youtube videos or your previous work experience is, nothing beats face-to-face contact. Your email will just get a standard response, if any at all, and be forgotten. This process can take some time, so be prepared to have another job to pull you through until your yoga career takes off.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

While you’re trying out different studios, keep up your training and practice teaching. Some newly certified teachers have already had years of teaching practice before they started their teacher training, and some are just brand new to yoga. And of course, many are in-between. Not only does this help you gain more confidence as a teacher, but it also helps you to build up your clientele. A yoga studio looking to hire new teachers will ask how many students they can bring to the studio. Start by teaching friends in your living room, and they will tell their friends, and that’s how your student-base grows. By-donation outdoor classes in the warmer months help to gather interest by passers-by. Once you’ve built a small following, you can begin to rent space for weekly classes or workshops.

Self-promotion.

Most people don’t equate becoming a yoga teacher with requiring marketing skills. But these days, almost any job field does. Being a yoga teacher most often means being self-employed. The work is precarious. It ebbs and flows with the popularity of yoga in your area, how many yoga studios there are, and how well you can promote your classes. Some months will leave you dry, others will be overflowing with abundance. If marketing feels overwhelming, you can start small. Make your own flyers or business cards to pass around. Start a website. If you can’t afford it, there are many free options available, even a simple blog or Facebook page does that extra bit.

Will I earn enough to make a living?

That depends. If your lifestyle has a lot of expenses, you may not be able to do it. If you are happy living a modest lifestyle and saving when you need to, it’s more possible. If you move to a small town that has no yoga studio, and people have been waiting for you, you could be very lucky. Mostly though, and especially in bigger cities with tonnes of yoga studios and budding teachers, the chances are slim. Most teachers have other jobs on the side or a partner’s support. One way that a lot of studios and established teachers earn money is through offering yoga teacher trainings. And eventually, established teachers do guest appearances and special workshops, and can get more renowned in the yoga world. Being a yoga teacher is more than simply teaching yoga.

English Yoga Berlin offers different types of Yoga in Kreuzberg. We have small yoga classes that encourage an intimate environment and increased awareness. Check out our schedule to attend a class of Vinyasa Yoga, Tantra Yoga and Hatha Yoga in Berlin.

Tips on Preventing Yoga Injuries (part 2)

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On the second part of our series about preventing yoga injuries, we give some tips for teachers, and on how to deal with common injury points.

7. For yoga teachers – pay attention to your own needs when demonstrating poses.
Believe it or not, most yoga injuries occur to teachers rather than students. As teachers, we often demonstrate a pose with our necks craned to the side to see what the students are doing, or we move out too quickly to assist a student. It’s a job that takes multi-tasking skills. While also being aware of what the students are doing, the teacher also has to be aware of their own movements and postures.
Some tips: Ground yourself before beginning the class. Warm up.  Prepare the class ahead of time, with ample time built into the plan to demonstrate exercises while also going around to assist the students. Don’t teach options for a pose that you yourself have not practiced many times, and use caution when demonstrating new or challenging poses.

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Practical Tips for common injury points:
In any pose where the body is being supported against gravity (i.e. standing), activating as many muscles in the body as possible makes the pose easier, and causes less stress on the body parts that are doing the main supporting. So, for example, even when standing, if you activate the thigh muscles (by pulling up the kneecaps), and activate the abdominal muscles (pull the navel up and back), then standing becomes easier and less stress occurs on the ankles and feet.

Wrists:
When the body’s weight is on the hands, such as in downward dog or plank, the shoulder blades should be flat to the back (this hooks the weight onto the upper back which is stronger than the wrists), the fingers spread wide, and the palms flat (this distributes the weight). Lifting a little at the wrist, and pulling the triceps up into the armpits also helps to alleviate pressure on the wrists. If you have an existing wrist injury, you can also roll up a towel, blanket or mat, and place it under the wrists, rolling the weight forward onto the fingers and taking a little more pressure off. Pressing the heels back and down sends more weight to the back of the body, and activating the abdominal muscles helps to keep the body supported in the centre.

Knees:
Whenever the knees are bent, such as in warrior 1 or 2, or chair pose, keep them directly above the ankles as much as possible, and bending in the direction of the feet. When the knees are bent too severely, or wing out to the side, stress is put on the knee. An already-aggravated knee will get worse in this situation. And if holding the pose is too difficult, then shorten your stance – bring the back foot closer and take less of a bend in the knee. Whenever the legs are straight, pull the kneecaps up and enact the thigh muscles, this takes weight off the underside of the knees and helps build muscle around them. It also avoids hyperextension if you are double-jointed. When sitting on the heels, take a blanket between the feet or a block on top of the heels to sit up a little higher. When kneeling, take a blanket or pillow under the knees. When moving into lotus or other sitting poses that require twisting the legs up, then move only into a position you can hold comfortably. If you it’s too difficult to get close, ask for a modification.

Lower back:
If you have an already existing injury in the lower back, it’s advisable that you make sure with a doctor that doing yoga is appropriate for you. Some injuries could get worse by practicing posture-based yoga.  If you are clear to go, then pay particular attention to what the rest of your body is doing as well as taking care of your back. Abdominal muscles are key to strengthening the lower back against further injury. If your back rounds as you lower down into a forward bend, then bends the knees until your back is straight (heart forward, shoulders back, bending from the hip sockets), and pull the belly in as you bend. If your back hurts too much to do back bends (bow, bridge, camel), then don’t do them. If you can, then move into the pose slowly, keep the legs active, pressing the pelvis and hips forward and tailbone towards the knees. Turning the toes and knees out a little bit can help alleviate some pressure in the lower back as well. Also follow back bends with gentle twists and/or a wide-kneed child’s pose, and avoid deep forward bends until the lower back has had some time to lengthen again.

Neck:
If you see the neck as an extension of the spine and it moves with it, then that helps to avoid most neck injuries. The problem is our necks get a major workout as we look this way and that, drop the head if it feels too heavy, etc. But dropping the head is exactly what can cause those injuries to begin with! Keeping the neck long helps make poses like push-up easier. In cobra or upward facing dog, lengthen rather than compress the back of the neck. You should feel no folds in the back of the neck, and the chin tucks slightly in towards the throat. In poses like camel, where the shoulder blades come together, you can let your head fall back only if it has somewhere to rest. And if the head is back, don’t yank the head up again when you come back out of the pose, keep it back until you are upright and can lift your head without straining the neck. In inverted poses (headstand, handstand, shoulderstand), keeping strong shoulders pulled up and away from the ears actually help to protect the neck, rather than the instinct to pull the shoulders close.  When your neck is already injured, avoid headstands and shoulderstands.

Throat:
Particular attention should be paid in bridge and shoulder stand to avoid harming the throat. As almost the whole body weight is being supported by this one area. The throat gets compressed and if the rest of the body is not compensating, damage to the vocal chords can occur. Squeezing the shoulder blades together and pressing them flat to the ground causes the spine to lift and gives the back of the neck more space to lay on the ground, allowing the front to be more open. And move slowly into a fully vertical shoulder stand, being aware of your neck and throat as you move.

We offer yoga in Berlin, Kreuzberg. Our teachers are injury conscious and will be happy to assist you before and throughout the class with tailored variations for your yoga poses. We believe that the increased awareness that we cultivate in our yoga classes together with the suggested variations for your unique body, make a difference both to practicing yoga in daily life and to the yoga benefits you take with you after class.