Yoga Teacher Training Forum

Dr. DiEdwardo - Sorry about the delay in responding, I have been traveling. The questions you pose are interesting and a bit hard to answer without further info., but I can try. From my experience I would prefer to actually have some form of asana practice with each session, but also include some form of meditation practice as well. Hence, I don't know if I'd be comfortable with one class solely devoted to asana practice and the others devoted to meditation. However, I teach at a health club where there is a strong emphasis on fitness, so I may be a bit biased here. With respect to advanced poses this depends a lot on the physical fitness level of your students. Nevertheless, for your group certainly poses such as head balance (sirsasana), shoulder balance (sarvangasana), and half-moon (ardha chandrasana) would likely be advanced and the students would need to work up to being able to carry out these poses. Likewise, some back bends such as the wheel (urdva dhanurasana) would also be quite advanced. For these advanced poses there are modifications of the poses that can be used to work up to the final postures. I think for any questions involving poses and their modifications for beginning students, Judith Lasater's text "30 Essential Poses for Beginning Students and Their Teachers" is really useful. I'm not sure about continuing education classes in the Philadelphia area. However, you can consult Yoga Journal, perhaps online, to find courses and instructors regionally.

Namaste

-Don