Teen Yoga Teacher Training (Online)

This is the gold standard and original TeenYoga course, which has graduated 2000 students worldwide, many currently working as yoga therapists within CAMHS. This course trains you to understand, distil and share exact tools from yoga to young people in a way that they will enjoy, digest, and use throughout their life. You will learn how to break down any barriers to entry, including religious belief, age, gender, and disability. You will come away with confidence and inspiration to run fun and cool TeenYoga classes or to start as a yoga therapist for young people, depending on your background.

This is a training for establishing the foundations of working therapeutically with yoga and teens. In the training, we specifically tackle common issues faced by young people across the world including anxiety, eating disorders, depression, sleep issues, relationship difficulties, physical pain, functional neurological disorder and many others.

The programme places the student front and centre, giving agency and authority to youth and empowering them to practise yoga, the ultimate self-care modality.

The framework we espouse, draws from several pedagogical ideas, including Rudolf Steiner, Montessori and the Scandinavian model.

We dive deep into the depth and breadth of yoga, to share yoga as fully as possible, including philosophy, pranayama, asana and psychology of yoga adapted and translated to the life of the young person.

Over the years, Charlotta has been asked to create several interventions that have been carefully researched and evaluated across Europe. The results from these programmes form the evidence base on which the course is based. (with funding from the European Union, BBC, Sport England, Tampon Tax Fund, Westminster University, London Youth, lululemon). However, the most important influence on the course has been the voice of the young people themselves, who are constantly feeding back on their experiences both on and off the mat. Our Yoga Ambassadors also feedback their lived experience to us, informing the continued development of the course.

The course is ambitious in its depth and intense in its pace and many graduates describe it as life-changing, subsequently dedicating their life to the cause of bringing yoga to young people.

It unveils the machinations and science of yoga, in order that the practitioner may use the tools more skilfully and precisely.

The course has been running since 2003 and has graduated 2000 students worldwide. It is accredited with Yoga Alliance UK, Canada, USA, New Zealand, Australia and International. It is also accredited with the Duke of Edinburgh award and Sport England as a level 3 coach qualification. It is on the recommended courses list of the Association of Paediatric

Chartered Physiotherapists. The course is directed towards parents, educational, healthcare and social care professionals.

Teen Yoga teacher training

Teen Yoga online, is a rich and thorough 10-week online course with plenty of live interaction and continuous contact with your tutor. The course certifies you to teach yoga and mindfulness to teenagers and is accredited by Yoga Alliance US. Devised with the help of specialist adolescent Neuroscientists, Anatomists, Psychologists, Educators and Yoga Teachers, as well as experts in Online Learning, this is a unique opportunity to be at the forefront of the latest research in teen yoga.

Course Description

Teaching Approach

The Teen Yoga online course goes beyond the usual online offering, using a community approach to ensure the same high quality interactive and participatory experience that Charlotta has always provided. The course is both practical and theoretical – meaning you will be spending time on the mat investigating and experiencing sequences frequently used with young people, as well as engaging in group projects and discussion with your peers and individual reflection, with continuous tutor support in forums and one-to-one tutorials. You will also be learning through visual lectures, audio meditations and seminars with Charlotta. This unique combination of learning techniques will provide you with a deep and grounded understanding of the complexities and intricacies of teaching yoga to adolescents.

Course Content

The course is based on in-depth coverage of the research evidence relating to adolescent development and yoga and over 15 years of hands-on experience in this field. The course will cover:

  • Socio-psychology of the adolescent
  • Anatomy of the adolescent
  • Neurobiology of the adolescent
  • Teenagers and yoga principles
  • The logistics of teaching teen yoga

Within these topic areas there will be other varied topics also covered, which you can see in the detailed Prospectus.

Course Structure

There are 5 modules delivered over a 10 week period. During this period the student will need to dedicate between 7-10 hours per week to the course. In addition to a wide variety of course content and activities in which you work on different aspects of the subject area with your peers, there are regular webinars and conference calls. Each module has a webinar with Charlotta Martinus and a group online session, as well as an individual session with your tutor.

You will receive links to each module’s video lectures and supporting materials every other Wednesday, and can listen to those lectures whenever and as often as you wish. Students will have two weeks to complete the requirements for each module before being able to move on to the next module as a way to ensure that the whole group begins and ends the training at the same time. You will have access to the course for 1 year from the day it concludes.

Your Commitment

Effective participation in the course requires a minimum dedication of 7 hours a week, and for some up to 10. There are five modules on the course (plus a short introductory module). Each module lasts two weeks. You should expect to dedicate an average of about one hour a day, and you choose when you wish to do this. However, we recommend that you try to keep a regular rhythm rather than trying to do it all on one day. You will also have a group task to do in each module where you may wish to have meetings with your group, or choose to communicate via messaging.

The course is quite intense in order to give you the grounding you need to teach adolescents yoga effectively. The dedication involves, in each module:

  • A theory section which involves a range of detailed content and reflection, with a variety of videos and presentations for you to follow, as well as an example class
  • Assignments, which involve one activity to be done in collaboration with others and one individual activity.
  • Reflection activities where you consolidate and explore what you are learning, on your own and with peers in the class forum space
  • Webinar with Charlotta Martinus, (1.5 hours) the opportunity to ask questions and go further into the subject
  • Group online session (1.5 hours) where you share the work you have done in your assignments with the group and comment
  • Individual tutorials, (30 mins – time arranged with tutor to suit both) where you comment on your progress and discuss any issues that may have arisen in the module

All the above activities can be done in your own time. There are also activities that take place in specific time slots, that are appropriate for your time zone. These are:

N.B. ALL Monday Group Sessions and Tuesday Webinars are at the following times:

AM: 8am BST or GMT UK

PM: 6pm BST or GMT UK

Orientation begins from FRI 13 Sept (obligatory but at your own pace).

Orientation webinar TUES 17 Sept – obligatory.

M1 Group Presentation – obligatory. MON 30 Sept
M1 Group Webinar – obligatory. TUE 1 Oct

M2 Group Presentation – obligatory. MON 14 Oct
M2 Group Webinar – obligatory. TUE 15 Oct

M3 Group Presentation – obligatory. MON 28 Oct
M3 Group Webinar – obligatory. TUE 29 Oct

M4 Group Presentation – obligatory. MON 11 Nov
M4 Group Webinar – obligatory. TUE 12 Nov

M5 Group Presentation – obligatory. MON 25 Nov
M5 Group Webinar – obligatory. END ON TUE 26 Nov

You will receive links to each module’s video lectures and supporting materials every other Wednesday.

The course is also based on the idea that all those who follow it have their own regular yoga practice. We recommend that during the course you adapt your own practice to support your reflection on how best to teach young people yoga. For this purpose we recommend sessions and guided meditations commonly used with young people that you can incorporate into your practice, to acquire first-hand experience of them.

What Will I Learn?

After completing the course, you will be ready to teach young people yoga. On completion of the course, if all evaluation criteria are met, you will be accredited and added to the closed online Facebook group, in which Charlotta and other experts mentor and support you in your onward journey. You will also receive the exclusive newsletter which shares new research and ideas on a regular basis.

Who is the Course for?

The course is directed towards parents, healthcare professionals, yoga teachers, school teachers, and anyone working with young people. We invite students from all countries to join us. A key prerequisite is that you have a solid regular yoga practice of your own. Please take a look at the prospectus for more detailed information. For queries around course content, course teaching or to enquire about a bursary, please email info@teenyoga.com or you can contact Ruby at Teen Yoga: ruby@teenyoga.com or call 0171 470 658.

FAQs

Please click here to download a list of FAQ’s to help familiarise yourself

Prospectus

Click the file link below to download the full Teen Yoga Prospectus

Certification

You will receive a Teen Yoga certificate of completion following full participation in all aspects of the course including homework, self-study and webinar attendance.

Yogacampus Diversity and Accessibility Bursary

We are offering one part-funded bursary (50% off the full course price) to a dedicated yoga student with a demonstrated financial need and active involvement in a community that could benefit from yoga.

The bursary is provided by Yogacampus – The Life Centre Education, a not-for-profit educational body committed to sharing knowledge and making yoga accessible to all.

Bursary places will be awarded to teachers or trainees who have the ability and commitment to take the course teachings into a disadvantaged community and play their part in the drive to increase accessibility to these profoundly healing practices.

Priority will be given to those who themselves are from marginalised or vulnerable groups or are from a minority ethnic background.

To apply, please fill in this google form before the deadline of Tuesday 2 January 2024. We look forward to hearing from you.

Notification of bursary acceptance will be sent out the following week.

Meet the Teacher

Charlotta Martinus is an award-winning visionary and the world leader in the field of yoga for young people. She was awarded the Master of Yoga title, the only woman in Europe, in 2019 by the International Yoga Alliance, after her best-selling book TeenYoga for Yoga Therapists was published in 2018. With over 35 years’ experience in working with young people as a therapist and teacher, Charlotta fuses her lived experience of healthcare, social work and education with her India-based yoga therapy knowledge. With a clinical license to work with vulnerable young people, she weaves various pedagogical frameworks, such as Steiner, Montessori and the Scandinavian model together with the specific psychotherapeutic approach necessary to effect change among young people.

She has created many bespoke frameworks that have been carefully researched, which forms the evidence base of her courses. In 2015, she was invited to craft an innovation programme for Sport England who funded a roll-out of the programme to young people who would not otherwise be exposed to yoga. In 2017, the University of Westminster, invited her to create a programme for a Muslim dominant school in North London, for their PSHE curriculum, which was then evaluated as a Doctorate in Health Psychology. In 2018, she was invited and funded by the European Union Erasmus programme to create a programme for 750 disadvantaged young people across 5 countries. The outcomes of this programme were evaluated in a carefully designed research programme which were published in various Psychology Literature. In 2020 London Youth, funded by the Tampon Tax Fund, reached out about a programme design for young BAME 10-13 year old girls, to empower them to become Mental Health Ambassadors. All of these programmes showed in quantative and qualitative research that yoga was an effective tool in decreasing anxiety and increasing wellbeing in all areas of life.

Moreover, she has spoken on several occasions at the House of Commons and House of Lords on the topic and latterly was asked to produce a Rationale for Yoga in Schools, to present to government, which is available on the website. This involved a complex financial calculation, to evaluate the social and financial benefit of yoga in schools.

Charlotta continues to advocate for yoga for young people in all areas and believes whole heartedly that this is a solid and effective intervention to bring our young people in to a state of flourishing and thriving. Charlotta continues to be mentored and supported by a distinguished group of yoga therapists and medical and educational specialists in the UK, USA and India.

Charlotta Martinus bio image

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