Yin and Yang Yoga Teacher Training and Study Intensive at Samahita Retreat in Thailand

Engage the masculine,

as you embody the feminine.

Provide a space inside yourself

for creation to occur,

and you will be eternally reborn.

Encourage the sun,

as you engender the moon.

Become an accurate reflection

for the whole world

of beautiful potential

within human nature.

Inspire stillness

as you employ activity.

Practice peace

as you extend energy.

Share yourself endlessly

as you keep close to your Source.

Verse 28 of the Book of the Tao from an intuitively inspired version by my friend Dorien Israel

Yin and Yang Yoga
TEACHER TRAINING AND STUDY INTENSIVE

	200-hour Yoga Alliance certification Koh Samui, Thailand 16 February – 16 March 2013

Samahita Retreat welcomes The Yoga Academy’s Yin and Yang Yoga Teacher Training and Study Intensive, with Yoga Alliance 200-hour certification, now running for the third consecutive year. Founded and led by Simon Low, one of Europe’s most renowned yoga teachers, The Yoga Academy is considered by many to be the most highly respected yoga teacher training school in the UK providing in-depth education in the full spectrum of yogic studies.

What is yin and yang yoga?
Not a separate style or school of yoga, but a theoretical and practical approach to a holistic, mindful yoga practice, Yin and Yang Yoga infuses traditional Chinese and other eastern energetic and medical principles into the rich traditions of yoga. Promoting ‘movement within stillness’ and ‘stillness within movement’, Yin and Yang Yoga is one of the most wholesome and non-dogmatic approaches to yoga today and is gaining increasing appreciation among practitioners all over the world.

Honouring the implication of ‘hatha’ – solar and lunar, masculine and feminine, action and allowing – the yang style of practice is a combination of continually flowing breath-led sequences involving explorative circular and spiral movement patterns. They are balanced with precise postural alignment, joint care and careful attention to anatomical detail to ensure safety and ease of movement with individual modifications, where necessary.

In the yin aspect of practice, calming, deeply restorative and meditative postures, appropriately supported with props and conscious breathing, are balanced by healing Taoist-inspired work into the primary joints of the torso, myofascial trains and energy meridians. Designed to relieve fatigue and stress, restorative yin yoga releases the body’s own innate healing wisdom and brings our mental, psychological and emotional bodies into balance. Involving no movement and muscular effort, the yin approach is conscious relaxation with awareness: a gateway to mindfulness – mind full of awareness.

The ‘dance’ of these complementary opposites produces a holistic, mindful yoga practice that balances strength and integration with flexibility and freedom, ultimately aiming for sustainable ways of moving and using our body, balancing the brain and calming the mind for meditation. This approach to yoga practice and teaching helps develop the unity, compassion and consciousness within being human.