Soul School At Home: Online Interdisciplinary Yoga Teacher Training Program w/ Seán & Mitchel Bleier

Next session begins Fall 2021. Applications available here. 

Soul School is a one-of-a-kind interdisciplinary teacher training program facilitated by Seán Johnson, founder of Wild Lotus Yoga and Mitchel Bleier, founder of The Yoga Teacher’s Lab that offers depth, fun, community, and an opportunity to transform your life through committed practice in yoga and teaching. The program is designed for dedicated yoga students who wish to enhance their connection to yoga and spirituality, aspiring yoga teachers, as well as current teachers who are seeking to bring more depth to their practice and teaching through continued study.

Soul School creates an opportunity for trainees to deepen their spiritual path through self-exploration and build a strong foundation for teaching yoga in a soulful, imaginative, and integrative way. We will explore the connections between yoga, art, mythology, poetry, music, and philosophy with a strong emphasis on Bhakti, Tantra, and Vinyasa yoga. The first half of the training is called Ignite Your Soul and includes spiritual practice, self-exploration, meditation; pranayama; mantra and chanting; exploration of yoga & social justice; harmonium; play; dance; mythology; poetry; yoga’s history including Veda, Buddhism, Bhakti, and Tantra; anatomy and kinesiology; and study in the alignment and forms of over 60 asanas. The second half of the training is called Share Your Passion and includes practice and study in: Teaching Skills, Art of Teaching, Language, Constructing and Sequencing Classes, Adjustments, Sanskrit for Yoga Teachers, and more.

We will also have content dedicated to giving you tips and advice on teaching yoga online in the Covid era (and beyond), and the experience of this online training will be a great training ground for you in teaching online classes.

Graduates who fulfill all requirements of the program will receive a certificate and be eligible to register at the 200 hour level as a yoga teacher with The Yoga Alliance, the national education and support organization for yoga in the United States.

The Soul School At Home Structure

Soul School At Home will begin with a home retreat designed to support you in beginning the Soul School journey with depth and clarity. We’ll have twice monthly live Zoom sessions in manageable and engaging doses which will include meditation, chanting, storytelling, dharma talks, small break-out groups to connect more deeply to your peers, and guest adjunct faculty to offer fresh perspectives. To connect more deeply to the community of your peers, we’ll also have monthly satsangs and small group meetings. You’ll have access to over 80 pre-recorded lessons and workshops you can practice with independently on your own time and can utilize as a resource library for as long as you wish after the program is complete.

During our twice monthly curriculum sessions, we’ll be joined by some special friends– inspiring visiting adjunct teachers including renowned Sanskrit teacher Dr. Anuradha Choudry, who will be joining us from her home of Bangolore, India; Michelle Cassandra Johnson– yoga teacher, anti-racism trainer, licensed clinical social worker and author of “Skill In Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice To Create A Just World,” joining us from her home in Raleigh-Durham, NC; longtime meditation teacher and researcher Dr. Lorin Roche, author of The Radiance Sutras and Meditation Made Easy joining us from Los Angeles; and functional movement and anatomy specialist Jessica Carlin, joining us from Chicago, IL.

During the second half of the program, we’ll be putting more emphasis on the art and skill of teaching an inspiring and accessible yoga class in your own unique voice. You’ll work in small groups to co-create classes and receive supportive feedback and coaching from Sean and Mitchel. We’ll also host a special panel with some Soul School alumni who have gone on to become yoga teachers who can answer questions and offer guidance.

Homework between our meetings will be designed to help nurture, inspire, and empower your spiritual practice and development as a teacher. Assignments will include engaging with specific videos; reading in manageable amounts; journaling assignments, meditation practice; participating in yoga classes, and more. The second half of the program’s homework will focus more on practicing and cultivating yoga teaching skills.

The finale of Soul School is a final project to integrate and crystalize the experience, where you design and teach your own full length class, drawing inspiration from the training. We’ll conclude the Soul School journey with a closing ritual and celebration.

To get a deeper feel for the approach to yoga that Soul School inspires, we highly recommend that you take online classes with Seán and Mitchel. Other Soul School graduates who teach at Wild Lotus are: AC, Andra, Annelise, Ashley, Celeste, Christine, Coleen, Colin, Dena, Emily, Farah, Kadie, Karen, Katie, Kerrie, Kina, Laura, Lauren Best-Shapiro, Lauren Sloan, Leah, Leo, Libby, Lila, Lindsey, Lori, Madeleine, Marion, Martin, Mary, Mikayla, Nicole, Nichol, Rebecca, Sydney, Veena, Vera, Veronique and Zach.

The BENEFITS of doing a Yoga Teacher Training ONLINE

Safety & Ease Of Mind. In this Covid-era, online yoga from home is the absolute safest way to practice and support your health and the well-being of your loved ones and community. Yoga is meant to be a holistic practice that is richly integrated into our home and lifestyle. One of the silver linings of today’s challenging circumstances is the opportunity to dig deeper into our practice from home, to support our spiritual, mental, emotional and physical well being so that we can be of even greater service to others.

No Travel. No commute. No Parking. No Jet Lag. Less Time Away from Family: That’s a huge cost saving in hassle, commute, flights, hotels, childcare, or time. The technology now exists for an in-depth, highly interactive online.

Pause, Rewind, Review, Retain: Most of us need to hear something multiple times before we truly understand it and feel comfortable teaching it. With our online training, you can literally pause, rewind, and review. The content gets to sink in at your pace and at your preference to contemplate. Students love being able to re-watch videos, especially denser ones like all the poses, anatomy, mythic stories, or Sanskrit.

Time & Schedule Flexibility: In addition to our online meetings which will be recorded and become a part of the growing library of content, you will have access to over 120 videos covering a wide range of topics and practices to work with independently on your own personal schedule.

Smaller World: In its online form, Soul School is now available for participants around the globe to experience! We are also thrilled to include four adjunct teachers who are many miles away, who we have been deeply inspired by. This would not have been logistically possible or feasible in an in-person format. They are renowned Sanskrit teacher Dr. Anuradha Choudry, who will be joining us from her home of Bangolore, India; Michelle Cassandra Johnson– yoga teacher, anti-racism trainer, licensed clinical social worker and author of “Skill In Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice To Create A Just World,” joining us from her home in Raleigh-Durham, NC; longtime meditation teacher and researcher Dr. Lorin Roche, author of The Radiance Sutras and Meditation Made Easy joining us from Los Angeles; and from Chicago, IL functional movement and anatomy specialist Jessica Carlin, who provides continued education courses to yoga teachers that replaces conventional anatomy and memorization with modern movement education and foundational joint mechanics.

More Personal Feedback: Because our training is online, we’re able to give you personalized feedback of postures that you send to us as photos and videos. Pictures and videos give us the opportunity to pause, go back, and make sure you understand and can apply to your own practice and teaching. Through this process, you’ll learn to see patterns and teach more directly to a variety of different bodies.

Resource for Life: We’d do anything to re-take or re-listen to all the incredible lectures from our teachers so many years ago. Instead, we reconstruct from memory and notes as best as we can, but with this online training, you have these resources for your reference always. Re-watching and learning new things every time you return to the dozens (and dozens) of audios and videos. Once you graduate, you keep access to all this material. It’s here for you, indefinitely.

You can view all the details about Soul School Online including schedule, application, and Info Session here.