Question: Why is the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center just now offering this program?
Sivananda Yoga Vedanta has been teaching Classical Hatha Yoga with a full spectrum of health benefits to practitioners, but now offers this 800 hour yoga health educator training program to cater to the needs of many Yoga teachers wanting to delve deeper into the health and healing benefits of Yoga. Yoga is becoming more appreciated as a powerful practice in dealing with stress and is becoming more recognized as an alternative approach to health care and prevention.
Question: How will Teachers graduating from another Yoga lineage benefit from this course?
Yoga is universal. The Yoga teachers mostly differ from their approaches to physical postures, sequences, priorities, outlooks, what to include in a Yoga class and what to exclude. Sivananda Yoga is integrally including breath work (pranayama), relaxation (savasana), vegetarian lifestyle, and mental, emotional and philosophical work (positive thinking, dhyana and vedanta).
Teachers from other Hatha lineages would especially benefit from the Yoga philosophy section and also the Yoga psychology. The (2) ten-days intensive retreats in an ashram will benefit the Yoga teachers with the experience of immersion in the Yoga life and all its aspects.
Question: How do I find a job after graduating and becoming a Sivananda Yoga Health educator?
The course is constructed following the curriculum of IAYT and your certificate will be accredited by IAYT. With this and the credibility of Sivananda Yoga organization itself, you will be able to carve yourself a place and a role in the alternative health field, mediating between the health care providers and Yoga services, either referring to existent Yoga classes and courses or providing the classes themselves.
Question: Where will I get “clients” and who will I serve?
Many possible venues: Yoga studios, your own office, an existent department of a health care facility, references by nurses or services after medical interventions who want to give you a reboot to your immune system, as well as preventative care. Of course the health educator service can not replace the existent services of prevalent health care system – it only supports and complements the health services received.
Question: How is Yoga helping/complementary to what is already existing within health care?
Yoga is impactful especially in cases of immune system restoration, and building up resilience in situations of stress. Yoga addresses deeper issues that can be related to aspects of human life such as karmic issues, pranic flow, relationship between thought and emotions and prana-energy-vitality, relationship between consciousness, the sense of meaning and zeal to live and to heal, relationship between belief system and healing.
Question: What if clients do not believe in the astral body or the connection between mind-body-spirit ?
There are countless modern scientific researches on the therapeutic effects of Yoga in specific incidences of disease, bringing light to such relationship between body-mind-spirit. It is not question of belief, but a question of seeing the person as a whole, and practically, how to help the healing process .
Question: What about liability as a health educator?
The health educator would have to follow the protocol of any health institution he or she will be affiliated with , and in case they will work independently, they need to cover themselves with Yoga teachers insurance. They can be considered as Yoga teachers with an extended and broader knowledge who can counsel people before or after a Yoga class.
