RYT500 Training: Teaching Slow Flow Yoga

RYT500 Training: Teaching Slow Flow Yoga

As you continue towards your RYT500 with advanced yoga teacher training, you will have the opportunity to deeply investigate specific yoga styles and techniques, such as slow flow yoga. 

With slow flow yoga, yoga teachers can empower their students to find more, by doing less. Slow flow yoga is the gift of consideration and kindness. Pranayama, mindfulness, and powerful intentions merge with fewer poses, simple transitions, and time to move with purpose while quieting the mind. 

What is slow flow yoga? 

Slow flow yoga is a vinyasa practice that has been de-cluttered. Typical slow flow poses are foundational, not complicated, and not flashy.

Transitions in slow flow yoga are kept simple, and often the vinyasa sequence itself is removed. There may be half as many poses as a vinyasa class, and students are encouraged to use that time to focus inward instead of ahead to the next pose. Teaching slow flow yoga gives your students permission and space to explore.

The benefits of slow flow yoga for your students

While slow flow yoga seems more like restorative yoga, that doesn't make it any less challenging than a more rigorously paced yoga session. 

The advantage for yoga students is that the relationship between breath and movement via ujjayi breathing is easier to observe and practice at a slower pace. Focused, slow, and deep breaths can lead your pupils to a soothing moving meditation. The fight or flight state is calmed, opening the door for the healing parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) to shine. 

Slow flow yoga techniques give pupils time to settle into postures, finding the most supportive positioning for their body type without worry. Additional use of props to create more space for all body types increases the accessibility of your teachings. 

Slow flow yoga is adjustable and safe. When students linger in their bodies, they become more in tune with what their body needs. Subtle signs of distress, twinges of discomfort, and a racing mind have time to be noticed and adjusted for safety and comfort.

Slowing down a yoga session gives more attention to the simple and foundational asana that lowers the risk of long-term injury. The focus can be on the essential components of breath and movement, without worrying about keeping up with neighbors or the sequencing.

Components of a slow flow yoga session

It's essential to weave an intention into pranayama and asana while guiding slow flow. An intention defines a safe place to anchor and inspire the sequence. Intentions are presented initially and used as a reference and reminder throughout the session. 

Introducing pranayama before movement sets the stage for mindful asana, letting the breath lead the way. When the breath is first, the peaceful PNS can surface. When movement is front and center, the breath can be lost or stressed as it tries to keep up.  

As a yoga teacher sequencing a slow flow class, start warming up all limbs, the spine, and the core. It's helpful to think of sequencing from the ground up. Poses begin on the mat and gradually move towards standing. You can also think of sequencing numerically, starting with 6 points of contact on the mat, then 5 points, and so on until there is only 1 point of contact in standing poses.   

Conclude a slow flow sequence with meditation and savasana, returning to the intention.  

Pursuing your RYT500 and learning more about slow flow yoga

At the core of every advanced yoga teacher training is anatomy, physiology, and the holistic relationships between the body's systems and the mind. For example, how the respiratory system interacts with mental health and how the nervous system affects digestion and heart rate.

Learning more about how yoga can support injury recovery and the slowing and healing of some disease processes with advanced yoga teacher training gives you tools and knowledge to better serve your community. Furthermore, learning to teach for every body style with slow flow yoga removes limiting factors from your pupils and supports their health. 

We’d love to invite you to

While you’re here, we’d love to invite you to enroll in Advanced Yoga Teacher Training at Prema Yoga Institute (RYS300) – Online Accredited Training Now Available!

Reach out to us at Prema Yoga Institute (RYS300). In fact, we’d love to invite you to enroll in our online courses. Our Advanced YTT has accessibility in mind, for example, our Yoga in Healthcare includes meditation and mindfulness teaching skills, that empower yoga teachers to interface more effectively with doctors and health care professionals.

Visit Prema Yoga Institute (RYS300) to learn more about our training, which is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022! Courses count as CE Credits with Yoga Alliance OR towards your RYT500 at Prema Yoga Institute.

Prema Yoga Institute is longer limited to New York City and is now available online with interactive trainings through 2022. PYI is an RYS300, IAYT-accredited program based in New York city with a certified Yoga Alliance RYS300, teaching students around the globe through online classes. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you advance your yoga practice and teaching!

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