YOGA INSTRUCTOR TRAINING

Shantarasa School of Yoga is one of Australia’s premier yoga instructor training facilities.  Established in 2005 in the beautiful and quaint Adelaide Hills town of Mount Barker, South Australia, Shantarasa School of Yoga is only a short 25 minute drive from the central business district of Adelaide.  As such, many of its students commute from Adelaide and surrounding suburbs to participate in the full range of yoga classes and activities, including internationally accredited yoga instructor training programs that are conducted from Shantarasa.  Other students from around Australia also participate in the yoga instructor training courses of both level 1 (basic certification YTAA and Yoga Alliance) and level 2 (diploma).

The primary focus of most yoga instructor training currently on offer is to facilitate development of the requisite knowledge and skill sets necessary to safely and effectively instruct ‘yoga asana’ or postural regimes.  Implicit in this approach is the view that ‘yoga’ is predominantly a system of exercise and strategic breathing used to tonify and strengthen bodily functions while also increasing flexibility and mental acuity.  While all of these outcomes are of enormous benefit they do no really constitute the central objectives of yoga practice and in fact do not even reflect the essence of what yoga seeks to achieve.

In the context of its basis as a classical system of human development and excellence, yoga’s primary focus and applied strategies are all directed towards the “cessation of suffering and the attainment of the highest bliss.”  In other words, the outcome of practicing yoga is to create a radical and permanent shift in our internal experience to a way of being that is not dependent on anything or anyone else for feeling happiness and a profound connection with life.  As one teacher put it, yoga makes you “happy for no good reason.”

 For the person who skilfully applies yoga’s training methods physical wellbeing, mental and emotional balance, and spiritual fulfilment are the natural results.  Just as the physical body will always endeavour to move innately towards a state of equilibrium, or homeostasis, so too will the more subtle adjuncts of our entire makeup when supported and directed with the appropriate skills and orietations.
 
The strategies that a yoga instruction training course must incorporate include technologies that range beyond instruction of yoga postures, applied anatomy and physiology and teaching methodogies.  Wholistic yoga instruction will explore the philosophical and existential sources of the yoga tradition. Without a sound understanding of why and how yoga developed, instruction remains superficial and unsatisfying, a bit like doing an exercise class to tone the body and help you feel good about yourself.  That’s ok but yoga offers so much more that is deeply rewarding and uplifting.  It will help you find your own answers to some of life’s Big Questions and help to derive a sense of meaning and purpose out of the seemingly overwhelming maze of demands, expectations and complexities that we are served up incessantly.  Thriving, over and above simply coping or surviving, constitutes successful application of self-reflection inspired by yoga philosophy.
 
Yoga instruction should provide real pathways to successfully deal with the mental turmoil that plague most of us.  Pervasive anxiety, depression, and just poorly managed stress are at pandemic levels everywhere.  Yoga has profoundly effective methods for shifting out of the “grey wastelands” of the disturbed psyche.  It has become increasing evident in contemporary societies that what you have or have become does not necessarily determine how you are in yourself; in spite of the stubborn and pernicious efforts of the advertising and media industries to convince us otherwise.