Integral Yoga Institute New York

Creative Yoga Therapy Level I Training

Rediscovering the Art of Living, Learning, and Helping Through Therapeutic Play

Creative Yoga Therapy (CYT) in partnership with Integral Yoga Institute (IYI) is offering a special training program for all kinds of teachers, health professionals, and anyone with one year of Yoga experience who is interested in deepening his or her knowledge of how Yoga can be creatively and playfully adapted to meet the needs of especially sick and suffering populations.

What distinguishes CYT from traditional Chair, Gentle, and Restorative Yoga, anatomical and physiological Yoga therapies, and other mind–body therapy programs is its creative, versatile, and playful approach to wellness and service. CYT maintains the same high standards as today’s accredited Yoga teaching and therapy, yet it is the innovative way that CYT integrates traditional Yoga, diversity, creative arts, and play into teaching and therapeutic contexts that makes it remarkably effective with needy populations and their caregivers.

Research by the National Institute for Play shows that “play is a credentialed, scientific aspect of human development and well-being at every stage of the life cycle...and that relationships, schools, health systems, and businesses can use play to reform and upgrade their services.”

Nina Priya Ma has been researching playful approaches to teaching Yoga and Yoga Therapy in day, residential, home care, special education, and spiritual-relief contexts since 1993. Her research shows that CYT’s playful approach benefits everyone, especially multicultural, co-morbid populations of all ages, many of whom prove more responsive to alternative methods of learning.

Among the many populations that CYT serves are those with Alzheimer’s and dementia, requiring amputee support, at risk, blind or vision impaired, suffering chronic pain, disabled or impaired, frail, fragile, assisted, geriatric, H.I.V. positive or with AIDS, homeless, undergoing job or family stress, receiving palliative or hospice care, post-stroke, at prenatal and postnatal stages as adolescents, in recovery, having survived domestic violence, needing special education, on staff or in caregiver training, and others.

One need not be an accomplished artist or performer to participate in this training. The main requirements are an open mind, a reasonable degree of organizational skill and adaptability, and the willingness to explore how better to love, serve, and play.

This training is suitable for:

• Yoga teachers and other kinds of teachers
• Health care professionals
• Anyone with one year of Yoga experience who is interested in deepening his or her knowledge of how Yoga can be creatively and playfully adapted to meet the needs of especially needy populations

The training consists of interactive teaching talks and hands-on practice. Participants will learn:

• Sensitivity training for expanding and refining teaching skills
• On-the-job sadhana (personal practices) for preventing burnout
• Therapeutic games and playful strategies for engaging especially needy or challenging students
• How to maintain class flow and effectiveness in spite of noisy, potentially upsetting, overwhelming, energy-draining situations
• How to adapt traditional Yoga’s physical, breathing, relaxation, and meditation practices creatively for multicultural, co-morbid groups
• How to cultivate devotion and nonverbal communication as therapeutic tools
• How to adapt physical, occupational, and psychology therapeutic practices creatively so that they fit in with a Creative Yoga Therapy class experience
• How to integrate such related holistic practices as compassionate touch, reflexology, aromatherapy, and the visual, performing, and written arts into a Creative Yoga Therapy program
• One-on-one strategies for long-term, palliative, and hospice care
• How to approach treatment plans and curriculums

A manual, handouts, and resources are included.

Yoga Alliance Hours

This workshop meets the requirements for Yoga Alliance continuing-education hours/credits. Please log on to the Yoga Alliance website and follow the instructions.

CREATIVE YOGA THERAPY: TEACHING THE UNTEACHABLE
the YOGACITY newsletter
The benefits of yoga for each of these groups is indisputable, but Priya Ma won't deny the difficulties and challenges that come when working with these groups. Teachers often experience high stress levels and quickly burn out moving on to more lucrative, less challenging positions. Priya Ma hopes to use her workshops and trainings to pass on her extensive knowledge and experiences to not only benefit those living with various ailments, but also the caregivers, teachers and employees that work with them. ... read more

Teachers

Nina Priya Ma David

Teacher Bios