Teaching Yoga for Anxiety & Trauma
ONLINE COURSE
40 hours | Lifetime access | £557 or £55.70 over 10 months
Teaching Yoga for Anxiety & Trauma
Learn to use yoga to alleviate anxiety with an understanding of yoga methods, supported by neurology and biology.
- Use the body and breath to move from an anxious state to one of more ease
- Use yoga practice to ‘up regulate’ or stimulate the nervous system and to calm or ‘down regulate’ it and use this to create more resilience
- Benefit from neurological and psychological changes, supported by affirmation, yoga philosophy, to make anxiety more manageable
This online course covers the content through a mix of talks, workshops, classes and course notes with practical advice and strategies, to study in your own time.
If you have any questions about our online courses or how they work, please check out our FAQ page.
How can yoga support good mental health?
In these times where so many are struggling with poor mental health, being able to help people with anxiety is more vital than ever. Yoga is ideally placed to help with this, as it uses the body and breath to move us from an anxious state to one of ease.
This course will help you as a yoga teacher understand how and why anxiety arises and how the science of yoga can have such a powerful role to play in alleviating it.
You may want to offer classes specifically to help people with anxiety or to incorporate these skills into all your teaching to offer everyone a chance to find more ease.
We share proven methods from across the yoga and mindfulness spectrum that shift anxiety and support people dealing with trauma.
What the course covers:
Understanding anxiety
We make the physiology and neurology of anxiety accessible, by explaining how the mind works, how yoga works, and what resilience is so you can teach from sound knowledge of the science. We also cover vagus nerve theory and practice and how resetting or stimulating this affects anxiety.
Supporting anxious students
We give you confidence to sensitively work with students experiencing anxiety including those who might be in a state of distress. The course philosophy instills how to embed compassion, friendliness, joy and equanimity in your classes so all students feel safe and welcome.
Sequences to upregulate
We give you a series of sequences to upregulate the nervous system and uplifting practices to offer energy when this is required and show you how to use movement.
Effective breathwork
We cover a range of breathwork practices to support mental health and enable students to connect body and mind for grounding and balancing.
Positive meditations
A series of mindfulness practices, meditations and affirmations you can use with students to improve mental health and offer techniques they can continue outside of class to support themselves in every day life.
Healthy sleep and rest
We offer focus on healthy sleep including shavasana and yoga nidra practices so you can help students improve this important area that affects the rest of their physical and mental health.
Complete course syllabus:
Module 1 - Describing the mind & some neuroscience
Module 2 - Class considerations, Example Practices & Classes
Module 3 - Breathwork & Mind Connection
Module 4 - Meditation, Mindfulness & Affirmation
Module 5 - Healthy Sleep Focus
Module 6 - The Vagus Nerve
Module 7 - Shavasana & Yoga Nidra
Module 8 - Philosophy
Module 9 - Nutrition, Further info. & resources
Why take this course:
- Create yoga practice that is healing and nurturing for all
- Be able to use breathwork practices to support mental health
- Understand the nervous system so we know how our practice affects the it's state
- Create a more adaptable, resilient nervous system through a practice of moving between up and down regulated states
- Know how to use movement practice, create asana and sequences to alleviate anxiety
- Understand what it means to create a resilient nervous system and teach this practice
- Be able to offer a 6-week Yoga for Anxiety or Yoga for Physical & Mental Health course
About your teacher
I'm Laura
My work & personal life have centred around those with “disabilities”, mental health issues or those who have a felt sense of being “different”. Whilst I do not (yet) have a formal diagnosis, to those who know me well it is evident I have my own neuro-divergent ways. My family is all on the neuro-interesting side of things & I have spent the last 16 years advocating for my autistic-ADHD son. The difficulties with “disability” are often more from the environment- the education system or work place, the transport system etc. rather than necessarily from the person themselves.
My work prior to yoga was running a market garden in a Camphill community, and being an advocate there for those we work alongside, including folks with different abilities, such as Downs Syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, and deafness. I had the blessed experience of working with men and women who enlightened me, as to the power of love and everything we have in common beyond appearances. They were beautiful times I am so happy to have had. Isobel a woman with Downs Syndrome, in her 40s and 50s when I was there was the heart of the community, and someone who changed everyone she met with her love.
From here I took an MA in sustainable environmental management and I studied access to food, which made it so clear to me that poverty and weight gain so often go together, because of the lack of political will to ensure equitable access to healthy food or nutrition education. Sugars & carbs are cheap; proteins & vegetables are comparatively expensive. Health suffers as a direct consequence of the way business and politics are organised.
Living in London I then worked with an organisation who support those who fled from wards & have been tortured. My work again was in the community garden in group psychotherapy and horticultural therapy projects.
I left this workplace to follow my love of yoga and had the privilege to travel in India and study intensively. I had started yoga some 10 years earlier while at uni. On my return to the UK I started teaching yoga, & continued to study. I offered yoga to those with different needs through day centres and loved the chance to share the yoga in this way.
Over time my own teaching practice evolved to be more trauma sensitive. I taught in Holloway women’s prison in London and saw how the effects of trauma had shaped the lives of women.
My awareness of anxiety grew through study and personal experience through lockdown & into my peri menopause.
I feel it now time to put together this lifetime of research, practice and knowledge - learning from when things went wrong as well as right!
The main thing that I see is that its so often we judge people from our differences rather than all we have in common. When we lean into yoga philosophy and add the fact as are all fundamentally the same, we can offer a genuinely compassionate and really joyful yoga. I am so happy to share this with you.
What our students say:
""Laura teaches with humour and humility with a deep knowledge of yoga. Her courses are packed with theory as well as practical application of the topics. There is plenty of time for group discussions where we can share ideas and knowledge."
Rebecca, on Live Yoga Intensives
"[I will bring into my teaching] everything I learned in terms of making poses more inclusive and being more aware and understanding how mental health and trauma affects us. I absolutely loved this course, thank you"
Immie, on Teaching Inclusive Yoga Online Anytime Course
Over 30 years
of teaching transformative yoga and yoga teacher training courses
Over 15 years
of training teachers at the longest running yoga studio in Bristol
Over 1000 teachers trained
through my 200 hour and 300 hour advanced teacher training courses and intensives
14-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE
If you aren’t completely satisfied with the course, let us know within the first 14-days for a full refund. No questions asked.