Teen Yoga is fastly becoming a vital part of a child’s development with over 1.7 million children and teens practicing yoga. Many schools have given it a priority as they have found yoga and meditation play an important part in a child’s development including mental health benefits.
Teaching Yoga to Teens requires specific training which The Teen Yoga Foundation have developed. The foundation has been running for over 17 years teaching teen wellbeing and yoga courses. The course is ideal for Yoga Professionals, School Teachers, Parents and anyone wanting to bring Yoga to our young.
Introduction to the Teen Yoga Course
The TeenYoga course will train you to teach mindful yoga to young people. It has been constructed with the help of specialist adolescent Neuroscientists, Anatomists, Psychologists and Yoga Teachers. It is now taught in several continents across the world. Approx. 2-3 students on each course are funded either by their council, school or NHS dept.
Charlotta Martinus launched this course for the first time in 2004 in response to the growing need to care for our young people and give them respite from stress and anxiety.
This course is unique, as the only fully fledged, Yoga Alliance Professionals and IYN accredited and insured teen yoga course in the UK working together with Leeds University Psychology Dept, to measure outcomes of the mindfulness and yoga on young people added to the actual experiential research to help support and structure the training course.
The course comes with a detailed and comprehensive manual, with plenty of practical lesson plans and ideas for you to use. In this manual you will find a detailed list of the benefits of yoga and a list of suitable postures for this particular age group, targeting specific issues. There is a special section on behaviour management.
This course qualifies you as a Level 3 Coach, within the Sports Partnership.
The course is directed towards healthcare professionals, yoga teachers, school teachers, parents and anyone working with young people.
Prerequisites to the Teen Yoga course
Several students have taken this course with no previous experience in either yoga or working with teens and have found it most useful. But to ensure full insurance and accreditation, we ask for:
- Preferably at least three years’ yoga practise under guidance of an accredited teacher and a teaching degree/experience
Or
- a yoga training of any tradition
It is important to have an interest and experience of working with Teens.
If you do not fulfil these criteria, please feel free to contact the Course Tutor and have a preliminary interview to ascertain whether this course is for you.
The TeenYoga course synopsis
This course is completely unique and one of its kind, as all material is researched specifically by experts in the field of young people, including Psychologists, Educators, Doctors, Youth Workers, Social Workers and parents. Each course is tailored to the specific group, whether in the UK or abroad.
This is a hard time for most children, a time of transition out of the accepted guidance of parents and teachers, into a more independent sphere, where new ideas and structures are welcomed and embraced as a relief from the old. With guidance it can be the most exciting time of our lives!
Yoga can offer an age-old tradition with answers to many of the concerns that the adolescent population are facing.
The physical exercise of yoga appeals to many different groups, such as:
- the athletic, as a form of repair and warm up, to enhance performance and reduce injury
- the non-sporty, as a form of easy exercise
- the injured, as a form of therapy for their injury
With idols such as Lady Gaga, Ryan Giggs, Madonna and Sting, using yoga regularly it has also become quite accepted among the men, especially in conjuncture with their regular training on the field for sports such as rugby and football.
Many teacher students find this course is an opportunity for them to grow and understand their own development as a teenager and bring that wisdom into their teaching, introducing a deeper respect and compassion for this population.
You will spend approximately a third of your time in lectures and in discussion and two thirds in applied learning, doing practical exercises. It is predominantly a secular and experiential course but with a grounded in scientific research.
Aims of the Teen Yoga Course
The aims of this course are to embolden the teacher to share more deeply their own passion and knowledge for yoga with this age group.
The course is more than a training in how to teach asanas to KS3 and 4, it is also an exploration in how to share the philosophy and psychology of yoga to ensure a more positive mental health for the students. The teachers adopt a bipartisan approach – including the participants in all exercises to ensure that we learn as much as possible from each other and are responsive to the needs in the room.
Teen Yoga Teacher Training Course Objectives and Intended Learning Outcomes
The graduate will come away with a toolbox of materials to use in the classroom; lesson plans, hard copy and virtual resources, access to funding streams, inclusion techniques,marketing techniques, understanding of anatomical, psychological and neuroscientific development of the young person and ideas of how to share philosophy and psychology with the group.
The TeenYoga graduate will be able to adapt all their yoga knowledge successfully to this age group through the new understanding, brought about by their own self-inquiry, therapeutic work and insights brought about by the course.
We also hope that the graduate may come away with a deeper understanding of their own teenage years and the impact it has had on their subsequent development.
The experience of these yoga classes will enhance concentration in the classroom, self-esteem, respect for others as well as the ability to relax completely for the young person.
