The Teaching Yoga Academy
Online Mentoring
with Mark Stephens
Monthly Engagement + Resources
for Teaching Yoga with Confidence & Creativity
Teaching Yoga
with Greater Confidence & Creativity
We do our best as teachers when we truly listen to our students and engage with them in kind and informed ways, offering insightful guidance that empowers our students in their practices.
Yet many teachers lack confidence and clarity in teaching – and all of us can do better! From the detailed elements of asanas to the most effective ways of exploring breathing and meditation, there is always more to learn and refine. Whether you are new to teaching or have years of experience, we often forget important knowledge from our past training, or we don't stay current with new and more insightful ways of guiding our students, or we tend getting stuck in habits that are so habitual we don't even seem them as such.
The deeper we go in our training and experience as a yoga teacher, the more we realize that there’s an infinite universe of knowledge and wisdom to bring to the practice. This becomes more abundantly clear as we come to better appreciate and understand our unique students.
All of this is why I’m here for you as a mentor, guide, and supporter.
Inside The Teaching Yoga Academy, I provide teachers with an in-depth learning experience to help you build on your prior experience and teach yoga with creativity, clarity and confidence.
Whether you are a new or an experienced teacher, or even a teacher trainer, The Teaching Yoga Academy will help you develop the knowledge and skills you need to:
- Teach in the most inspiring and uplifting ways.
- Guide your students with the most informed and effective methods and techniques.
- Provide your unique students with individualized guidance for their conditions and intentions.
- Explain alignment and intentional actions in the asanas from a clearer foundation in practical yoga anatomy.
- Make all the postures, breathing practices, and meditation techniques more accessible, sustainable, and transformational.
- Design and teach class sequences – from the vast menu of asanas, pranayama, and meditation – that are creative, safe and sustainable.
- Give guidance that addresses individual needs in a way that makes also sense for an entire class.
- Work with special conditions and injuries.
- Seamlessly integrate breathing and meditation into classes and workshops.
- Bring uplifting themes and narrative overlays to your classes, including by spicing up what you say with kernels of wisdom from yoga vast literary resources.
Monthly
Subscription
$29 (billed monthly)
Annual
Subscription
$249 ($99 savings) (billed annually)
EXPERIENCE YOU CAN TRUST.
I've been training yoga teachers for over 25 years (since 1998) and I'm here to help you bridge the learning gaps between teacher training, weekend workshops, and the practical art of teaching yoga.
I bring decades of experience (consistently on my mat since 1991) and a varied background in education (years of teaching and educational leadership in schools, at UCLA, and L.A. City College) to my work with yoga teachers and students, far exceeding Yoga Alliance and Yoga Therapy standards. My four bestselling and comprehensive yoga textbooks – Teaching Yoga, Yoga Sequencing, Yoga Adjustments, and Yoga Therapy – are in multiple languages and used as core textbooks in teacher training programs around the world.
With a deep study of yoga history and philosophy, human anatomy and physiology, social and interpersonal dynamics, and Eastern and Western theories of being and consciousness, I do my best to bring a non-dogmatic, accessible, and integrated perspective to my teaching and mentoring to help make yoga a more refined resource for healthy living.
The Teaching Yoga Academy taps into all of this, offering you with directly practical monthly content and live online mentoring to help you to continue developing as the best teacher you can be in the moment.
HERE'S WHAT YOU GET
Here’s what’s included in the Teaching Yoga Academy.
Convenient learning: Learn more about teaching yoga at your own pace, according to your own schedule, and from the convenience of your own home. It's also affordable mentoring without the need for travel or a lengthy time commitment.
World-class training: Described over a decade ago by Yoga Journal as "the teacher’s teacher,” my highly-acclaimed teacher training program is distinguished by its track record of producing outstanding graduates for over 25 years, many of whom are among the leading yoga teachers worldwide.
Time-saving resources: Along with monthly training videos (average 1-hour length), live Q&A mentoring sessions on Zoom, and ready-to-use sequences, you’ll have access to a growing library of online resources for yoga teachers.
Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Credits: Yes, all of your hours in The Teaching Yoga Academy count for CEs!
Special Discount: beYogi Liability Insurance.
Each month you’ll have access to:
- The On-Demand Library of Videos on Teaching Yoga: Start with 108 asanas, offering details on basic teaching, working with injuries and limitations, offering modifications, use of props, hands-on adjustments, common misconceptions and much more. And that's just on postural practice. Add videos on teaching pranayama, meditation, explorations of "humanities" (history, philosophy, ethics, lifestyle), pre-natal yoga, kids yoga, chair yoga and much more!
- 3-hour Live Q&A Mentor Sessions via Zoom with me (which are recorded and available to watch whenever you wish) to address all your burning questions about everything from what I'm offering you here to whatever arises in your experience as a teacher.
- Direct Access to My On-Demand Streaming Classes. Here you will see me teaching All Levels classes to a diverse array of students, modeling best teaching practices. These classes are recorded and posted on our Kajabi course platform for you to view whenever you like, as often as you like.
- A Library of Class Sequences incorporating the asanas and techniques covered in the on-demand videos, so you can practice what you’re learning and save time constructing your classes.
- A Growing Library of Time-Saving Resources for self-study and planning classes, including: templates, worksheets and teaching scripts.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
In-depth guidance on teaching yoga
– A deeper and more refined practical understanding all the aspects of teaching yoga, starting with what most of us mostly teachL yoga postures. You will learn far more about alignment principles, energetic actions, variations, modifications, use of props, contraindications, benefits and risks, injuries and special conditions and common misconceptions.
– Functional anatomy, biomechanics and the kinesiology of movement as it applies to seeing students in the practice and guiding them in a meaningful, safe and effective way.
– Application and detailed guidance on verbal cues, hands-on adjustments and techniques for providing assistance.
– Intelligent sequencing that explores the nuanced interrelationships among asanas within and between the seven asana families.
– Tips for teaching yoga beyond the asanas, including subtle energy, mantra, pranayama, meditation and incorporating yogic philosophy.
– More insight into all the aspects of teaching that seem to fall between the cracks in YTTs and workshops – just think of all the questions that come to your mind when thinking about teaching!
WHAT'S POSSIBLE
FOR YOU AND YOUR STUDENTS
Confidence makes all the difference!
At some point, we all feel insecure about teaching- worried if students liked your class, comparing yourself to other teachers or feeling like you just don’t know enough yet.
I get it, because I’ve been there too.
From my experience, such fears get in the way of our teachings by causing stress and anxiety. Self-doubt means you aren’t showing up fully and students are not receiving the best of what you have to offer.
What I’ve discovered through decades of teaching yoga and training teachers, is that confidence makes all the difference for ourselves and for students. Confidence means less stress and worry. It means showing up fully, making a real difference and cultivating a deeper passion for teaching yoga.
The Teaching Yoga Academy helps teachers gain confidence and expand their potential by equipping them with the in-depth knowledge about every aspect of teaching yoga – knowledge that:
- Works for everyone in class
- Addresses individual needs
- Makes people feel good
- Inspires and uplifts
- Keep students coming back for more!
YOGA ALLIANCE
CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR
THE PRICE OF A DROP-IN CLASS
For $29 a month (the cost of a drop-in class) or $249 a year (roughly the cost of a weekend workshop), the training you receive inside the Teaching Yoga Academy counts towards your continuing education requirements with Yoga Alliance.
CUSTOMIZE
YOUR ACADEMY EXPERIENCE
While the Teaching Yoga Academy sets the standard for teacher mentoring through consistent delivery of premier content, it's designed in a way that allows you to customize your experience and time learning inside the Academy:
- train at your own pace
- choose how much time you spend training in the Academy
- speed up or slow down the training videos
- use optional worksheets
- watch Q&A session replays when you can't attend live
I understand you have a busy life and making time for on-going learning can be challenging, but rest assured, I built the Teaching Yoga Academy with this in mind. With the Academy hosted on a digital platform, you can train with me from anywhere in the world and from the convenience of you own home. You can move through the training content at your own pace and decide how much time you want to spend in the Academy each month. You can even speed up the videos to move more quickly or slow the speed down so you can move more slowly (or if English is not your first language).
STRUCTURE
Starting the moment you sign up, you gain access to the entire library of on-depend streaming the Teaching Yoga Academy videos. The Live Online Monthly Mentoring Session is on the third Sunday of every month, starting at 9:00 AM in the Pacific time zone. The Live Sessions are recorded, so can watch (or re-watch) them whenever you like.
TIME
At the beginning of every month, I will send you a Theme & Focus message highlighting a specific topic about teaching yoga along with suggestions for which videos and other resources in the Academy to consider watching and/or reading. It's entirely up to you to decide how deeply to dive in on that topic. You might watch just an hour or so of video each month, or go further!
Can't attend a monthly 3-hour live session? No problem, I will provide a replay of the session that you can watch at your convenience. The video replays also feature time-stamps for each question, so you can can view the questions, go directly to a specific question and skip around as you please.
How you move through the Academy and digest the educational and practical content is entirely up to you and your personal needs and interests!
WHO IS THIS MENTORING FOR?
Passionate yoga teachers who recognize the learning never ends.
This online mentoring and training is for any yoga teacher who honors the value of being a student. The deeper we get into the practice, the more we realize the infinite wisdom and knowledge that is still yet to come. New and seasoned teachers alike will find value and inspiration for teaching sustainable and transformational yoga.
If you lack confidence in your skills…
If you feel your teacher training was insufficient…
If you love learning and studying the practice of yoga…
If you want to be the best yoga teacher you can be…
The Teaching Yoga Academy is for you!
“Mark Stephens Yoga Teacher Training was a transformational and integrated experience. Mark brought YTT students a rich historical understanding of yoga, reflective examination of yoga philosophies, constructive practice guiding different bodies in asana, pranayama, and meditation practices, and a bountiful repertoire of hands-on adjustments for postures deeply informed by modern science and kinesiology. Most importantly, Mark empowered us to make informed decisions on the types of teachers we want to be as guided by our inner teachers and continued learning.”
“Mark Stephens Advanced Yoga Teacher Training is the best yoga training I have experienced. The supplemental reading was very helpful and I appreciate that he included instructional elements for different learning modalities. I would highly recommend this training!”
Start Your Mentorship Today
The best yoga teacher one will ever have is alive and well inside you. Much of the practice is about learning to hear and honor that inner teacher on one's unique path.
But, it’s helpful to have an experienced and informed outer teacher to offer guidance along the way.
Join today to receive monthly inspiration, education and resources to help you refine your skills, build confidence and step forth as the best teacher you can be.