Soma Yoga & Medicine School

Welcome

Aims of the Programme

• The aim of the Soma Yoga School is to develop and grow teachers, like seeds, that can share and evolve the work. The work to be done is the conscious unfolding of ourselves towards Truth. We will make real the concept of Guru as a process of enlightenment and the realisation of Truth.

• The Teacher Training programmes are an invitation to impeccability. As the light of one candle can light thousands of candles, you must first illuminate your own consciousness. We will help you shine.

• Woven throughout the science, the emergent spiritual dimensions of yoga practice will awaken you to the symbolic nature of the cosmos, the patterns reflected in nature, and the essential unity of life. As we tune into natural law on the mat we can begin to experience them off the mat in our lives. As we align ourselves through our practice we purify ourselves and become effective guides to others. All wisdom traditions speak the same truths. You will meet them.

• And it is all about love, laughter, freedom and self-realisation. Ultimately this is your journey and we look forward to walking with you. We gather to share a training that is deep and meaningful. We give gratitude for this opportunity.

Soma Mission

• We aim to share the understanding and experience of Yoga in all its depth, beauty and diversity. Yoga is universal in its essence and as such belongs to everyone. We aspire to teach you to live through integrity and authenticity and to help you serve life. All Soma trainings are grounded in Satya (Truth).

• We balance the practical, the theoretical and the experiential aspects of the journey of Yoga. We believe in leading from the heart.

• We will tune into your natural gifts and support you in fully expressing your creative potential in life and in your teaching.

Structure of the programme The Soma Yoga Teacher Training programme is delivered over three years, each year deepening your understanding and developing your skills. Together they represent over 1000 hrs of training. All the programmes are certified by the Independent Yoga Network, providing internationally recognised yoga teaching qualifications.

Level 1: Soma Yoga Teacher, 200 hrs (IYN 200hrs)

This foundation training will give you an understanding of the context and power of yoga. You will develop a strong integral practice to support your life, work and personal development.

Level 2: Soma Yoga Practitioner, 500 hrs (IYN 500hrs)

The second level training delves into the healing power of yoga and gives you a depth of understanding in yoga therapeutics. You will learn to teach Soma Yoga. You will deepen your practice and embody new ones. You will renew yourself physically, energetically and spiritually. You will be guided by the Medicine Wheel Teachings, by powerful rituals, by Soma Nidra and shamanic journeying. What does it mean to live from your centre? How do you stay grounded as a Teacher and share your essential nature?

Level 3: Soma Yoga Therapist 1000 hrs (IYN 1000hrs)

The third level is all about becoming Soma. You are that elixir and you live in an exquisite balance between life and Spirit. You become able to guide others towards an integrated practice that supports their health, well being and happiness.

Expanding, Exploring and Enriching

• Over three years, this unusual development programme offers studies and practice in yoga, healing methodologies, models of consciousness and much more. With regular weekends, residential schools and ongoing mentoring, students will follow a path towards personal en-lighten-ment. Some profound wisdoms are contained within the teaching, fundamental truths about our nature gathered from ancient and modern traditions, all tested through experience.

• If you seek integration, wholeness and peace of mind-body-spirit, then you need to work with all three. The Soma Yoga training uniquely gives you the big frameworks that connect, offer the deepest truths that underlie the content from so many sources and provides the experience that makes all this real.

• You must be committed to practice and open to possibilities and to explore subtle ways of sensing your body, new ways of listening, feeling and seeing. You will explore and reflect upon your practice and life and bring them into alignment with the fullness and depth of you.

What’s in the Soma Medicine Bag

• This Yoga Teacher Training will empower you to teach in a purposeful, safe and inspiring way that has been proven to work consistently and deeply. It will allow you to teach yoga with an empowering effectiveness. Through a progressive and systematic sensitising of your own body, the inherent unity of body, mind and spirit will be revealed to you so that you can teach others with grace and confidence. You will get sound principles of learning and teaching and apply them to yoga methodology in a precise progression that builds together all the elements of yoga.

• The training is at all times relevant, appropriate, essential and will provide a thorough grounding in the dynamics of the simplicity, truths, and integrity underlying the yoga method. You will gain a practical understanding of the nature of body, action, mind, perception, cognition, volition, self and consciousness. This understanding, and its application, will be the foundation for your teaching of yoga in any style or tradition.

• You will be encouraged to teach in the style of your own practice and to adapt your own understanding to the needs of others, without compromising the power and integrity of Yoga. The techniques are not taught merely as the content of a curriculum, but as an analysis of the organic principles underlying all life. The training is as much about how the body, mind and awareness function as it is about postures. This course gives you way more than you need to get you started in teaching yoga.

How the training works

• Based in the mind-body wisdoms of several yoga traditions the programme incorporates shamanic practices, evolutionary psychology, healing arts and skills from East and West, all woven together with music and poetry that resonates with Great Spirit.

• This path offers a complete set of practices and teachings to facilitate the knowledge, health and spiritual openings needed for the coming era. It is an integrative system that blends ancient and modern knowledge with earth-centred practices.

• Throughout the broad-based curriculum there is an emphasis on the teacher’s creativity as an essential ingredient for offering vibrant learning experiences. You will be encouraged to expand your training with anything that inspires and supports you to achieve the results that yoga promises.

• Echoing the biodiversity inherent in the natural world is an equally diverse, interdisciplinary approach to yoga that places a high value on delving into the very roots of everything yogic.

• The training is mostly experiential. You will experience practices that allow you to go deeper into your own being and you will build a massive tool bag for use as both a teacher of yoga and a healer.

• We will explore a combination of contemporary approaches to wellness, adult psychology and psycho-spiritual development. While honouring the history of yoga, the training modules take an evolutionary approach to yoga that helps you access inspiration for lifelong yoga teaching and practice.

Accreditation

• Soma trainings exceed the standards of the Independent Yoga Network (IYN). Graduates will be eligible to join the IYN and be listed in their register at the 200, 500 and 1000 hr levels. These qualifications, together with certification through Soma Yoga & Medicine School will give you everything you need to teach with confidence.

• Embodiment of the principles involved, rather than mere attendance, is required for certification. Trainee Teachers, at each level, are assessed on three criteria: a. Embodiment of techniques being taught, as witnessed in self practice b. Demonstrated ability to teach techniques safely c. Embodiment of the spirit of yoga in terms of sensitivity, honesty, openness, presence, generosity, integrity, trust, self awareness and selflessness

• Mentoring: Students are mentored throughout the training and following the completion of each stage. We aim to support you fully through and beyond the training.

• Record Keeping: Ongoing dialogue between the trainers and trainees will support learning. The usual data protection laws cover all information held by Soma and all progress records will be confidential.

Is Soma for you? Crucially important on the journey to becoming a teacher are your intention and your attitude. You must walk the path with true intent and an open mind. Along the way some deep cleansing of your body and mind will happen. Will you welcome this? Are you seeking only your own experience or are you able to serve the experience of others? This question is important. For sure, you will get an experience on this training but if you do not serve it, it will not serve you. The Soma Yoga Teacher Training is about process – you can perform the procedure of asana, mudra, pranayama, but these only becomes a transformational technology when you offer your intent to the ritual, surrender your ego and really understand the process.

Contact: info@somayogaandmedicineschool.org

Facebook: www.facebook.com/somayogaandmedicineschool

Website: www.somayogaandmedicineschool.org

Year 3 – Soma Yoga Therapist (SYTH)– 1000 hours IYN

SYTH Module 1 : Yoga & Ayurveda

Ayurveda is living life in Balance or Ayni – an act of reciprocity. Ayurveda is a holistic health system comprising diet, Yoga, massage, detoxification, herbal remedies, meditation and daily lifestyle and so much more. We will work more deeply with Ayurveda as a tool.

• Looking at lifecycles and lifestyles, yoga for our age and this age

• Working with the marmas and the nadis

• Ayurvedic Massage, Lifestyle Assessment, Living Nutrition and the Yogic Diet

• Ayurvedic Yoga – yoga for your constitution

• Thai Yoga Massage

• Astrology and numerology

• Yoga and Ayurveda for Pregnancy

• Vastu – maps of sacred space

• Diagnostics

• Kinesiology

• The Ayurvedic Pulse and Tongue Diagnostics

• Iridology

SYTH Module 1 : Ayurveda & Yoga (cont)

• Restorative Yoga

• Asana as therapy

• Yoga for common structural complaints

• Pranayama in yoga therapy

• Mind and Meditation techniques in yoga therapy

• Yoga nidra – sleep of the yogi (Soma Nidra)

• Cultivating peace

• Kundalini Yoga and the healing art of Kriyas

• 13 Bodies as a therapeutic model

SYTH Module 1 : Ayurveda & Yoga (cont)

• The concept of health in Yoga

• The concept of suffering in Yoga

• Managing stress, managing pain

• Mind health in Yoga

• Understanding specific conditions

• The therapeutic relationship

• Client management and ethics

• Taking a client’s history

• Yoga Therapeutic Clinic - The clinic aims to give students real practical hands-on experience.

• 5 or 8 or 20 case studies

• Giving and receiving feedback (we’re way past this now, feedback incorporated in ongoing mentoring)

• Practice teaching exercises in small groups

• Apprenticeship and mentoring

•Co-mentoring and self-evaluations

SYTH Module 2: Spirit Medicine

The power of Nature to heal.

• Integrative relationships

• The Sevenfold Path of Peace

• Shamanic Plant Medicine

• Gaia Herbalism – for planetary medicine

• Nutritional Herbalism

• Powerplants and Superfoods

• Plant Essences

• Perfumes

• Gems

• Forest gardening, biodynamics and permaculture

SYTH Module 3 : Soma Nidra

Sipping the elixir of dreams.

A practice that is a remembrance of the Truth of who we are. It opens portals that awaken evolutionary pathways. It rejuvenates and repairs our holding field so that we experience being held by love. We are irrigated by the power of creative energy, shakti. Nidra rejuvenates, illuminates, and integrates. We become a living sankalpa, a holy wish. It is the story …..

Along the way, nidra:

releases negative emotions and thought patterns

calms the nervous system

develops a deep capacity to meet life

SYTH Module 4: The Integral Shaman

• Becoming the Integral Shaman – the shaman’s path

• The Munay-Ki – the map of the journey of becoming

• The Munay-ki rites of passage

• Working with the medicine of the wheel

• The dragon path

• The celtic medicine wheel

• The mystical path of shamanism

• Working with Living Energy

• Clearing and cleaning on all levels

• Maps to ecstasy

• Honouring the sacred – holding sacred space

• Medicine for the Earth

• Power of lifeforce

• Buddhist fundamentals - letting go to live fully

SYTH Module 4: The Integral Shaman (cont)

The book of spells – working the magic:

• Lucid dreaming

• Dreamcatchers

• Guided and Spirit journeys

• Using the bliss postures to burn into love

• The power of the space ‘inbetween’

• Illumination healing

• Soul retrieval

• Mesa – calling to the altar

• Despachos

• Dream Yoga

• Becoming a Spiritual Guide – knowing the territory outside of the map

• The 13 & 33 Count Oracle series

The Team

Nicole – Soma Yoga

Dev – Soma Yoga

Supported by Soma assistant trainers

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Legends say that hummingbirds float free of time,

carrying our hopes for love, joy and celebration.

The hummingbird’s delicate grace reminds us that

life is rich, beauty is everywhere, every personal

connection has meaning and that laughter is

life’s sweetest creation.