Yoga in Healthcare, a certification course with Joseph Le Page

A 36-hour live virtual training

September 24 – December 10, 2024

Meets weekly on Tuesdays from 8:30-11:30 AM Mountain Time

To integrate Yoga into mainstream healthcare, we need carefully designed programs that have been extensively tested and fully encompass the various aspects of Yoga. These programs provide participants with a comprehensive experience of Yoga and its healing benefits. Additionally, Yoga teachers and therapists who wish to work in this space need specialized training on effective communication in healthcare settings. This course is specifically designed to meet these needs and more.

Joseph Le Page has been bringing Yoga into mainstream healthcare for over 30 years. Through the Heathy Heart Program, he has created a Yoga-based wellness program that is practical, cost-efficient, time-tested. This program is applicable to a wide range of health conditions with a stress component, including hypertension, heart disease, Type 2 Diabetes, anxiety and depression, body pain, especially low back pain, headache and digestive problems, among others.

In this course, participants will study the Healthy Heart Program as a foundation for understanding how to bring Yoga into mainstream healthcare settings. Upon completion, participants are certified to teach the Healthy Heart Program and also receive a complete package of materials including scripts for each week of the 12-week program.

Participants also learn to integrate each of the facets of Yoga, including Asana, Pranayama, Mudra, Yoga Nidra, Affirmation and Meditation to support the healing process. They also learn how to develop multiweek Yoga-based wellness programs on themes that they would like to bring to healthcare mainstream settings such as Yoga for depression and anxiety.

Participants will experience and learn to teach each of the weeks of the Healthy Heart Program, each of which is based on a specific theme. These themes include:

  • A new vision of the health: Introduces participants to stress-related dis-eases and importance of self-care.
  • Developing a body positive attitude: Introduces the importance of body awareness, self-care, and a positive attitude toward the body.
  • Cultivating healthy posture: Introduces concepts of optimal posture, posture awareness and postural care to avoid injury.
  • Cultivating healthy lifestyle: Understanding the importance of diet, daily routine, and sleep in relation to health and healing.
  • Optimizing Your Breath: The importance of breath in relation to health and in developing psycho-emotional equanimity.
  • Learning to relax: The importance of relaxation and presentation of varies relaxation techniques, recognizing that different people relax differently.
  • Cultivating vital energy: Introduces the chakra system as a way of enhancing vitality to different areas and systems of the body.
  • Becoming comfortable with Feelings: Introduces the concept of the witness and the ability to observe sensations, thoughts and feelings rather than react to them unconsciously.
  • Opening the Heart: Cultivating the qualities of the heart, including forgiveness, compassion, acceptance and gratitude.
  • Understanding the causes of stress: Introduces the concept of recognizing the underline beliefs that cause stress and dis-ease.
  • Meditation: the art of living in peace: An introduction to meditation with varies techniques allowing us to see that meditation is an individual process.
  • Identifying life’s purpose and meaning: Introduces the importance of identifying that which has true value and meaning in one’s life.

Participants learn to combine Yoga tools and techniques, including Asana, Pranayama, Mudra, affirmation, relaxation and meditation with each theme, so that every week in an integrated experience of healing. Participants also receive a manual with complete information scripts and teaching instructions for each of the twelve weeks of the Healthy Heart Program.

Required reading: Mudras for Healing and Transformation, by Joseph Le Page and Lilian Aboim and Why Zebras don’t get Ulcers, by Robert Sapolsky

Fees, Eligibility and Continuing Education:

  • All sessions will be recorded in the event you are unable to attend live
  • This course is open to all Inner Peace Yoga Therapy students as well as yoga teachers/yoga therapists from other schools
  • For those already certified as Yoga Therapists (C-IAYT), this course offers 36 hours of continuing education via Approved Professional Development
  • This course qualifies for 36 hours of Continuing Education from the Yoga Alliance
  • Tuition fee $500 payable through the link innerpeaceyogatherapy.com

Questions?

  • Contact Michele Lawrence, Inner Peace Yoga Therapy Program Director | info@innerpeaceyogatherapy.com

Learn more About Joseph Le Page

 

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The Universe of Mudras – Part I

Mudras are gestures of the hands, face and body that promote physical health, psychological balance and spiritual awakening. The Sanskrit word mudra, which is pronounced “mudraa” with the emphasis on the final “a,” can be translated as “gesture, seal, attitude or signature.” Mudras are gestures that evoke psychological and spiritual attitudes, each with its own specific quality or unique signature. The word mudra is derived from two Sanskrit root words: mud, which means “delight, pleasure or enchantment,” and rati, which means “to bring forth.” Mudras therefore bring forth our own inherent delight and enchantment, which are always present and waiting to be awakened.

The use of mudras is most strongly identified with Indian spiritual traditions in which they have been used for more than two thousand years. However, mudras are also found in various religious traditions around the world, including Christianity, where Christ is often depicted using hand gestures. Some mudras are almost universal, and one of the most easily recognized is the prayer position in which the hands are placed together in front of the heart as a symbol of reverence and devotion. Within the Indian spiritual tradition, this gesture is called Anjali mudra.

Origin and Evolution of Mudras

Gestures of the hands, face and body are part of our everyday body language. When the arms are crossed in front of the chest, it sends a message of defensiveness. When the head hangs forward, it may send a message of sadness. Clenched fists are often a sign of anger. Touching the tips of the fingers together suggests a pensive mood and raised eyebrows can show surprise or disbelief. These gestures are a non-verbal language that, often unconsciously, communicates moods, intentions and attitudes.

When gestures of the hands, face or body are consciously used to evoke psychological or spiritual attitudes, they are called mudras. Subtle qualities, such as unity and limitlessness which cannot easily be expressed within the confines of language, find full expression through the use of mudras. In Shamanism (one of the earliest forms of spirituality) sound, movement, and gestures of the hands, face and body are used to invoke the deeper sacred energies of the universe. The shaman transmits these energies through rituals that include the use of gestures to support health, healing and spiritual connection. Various forms of Shamanism are found around the globe, but in India, the impulse to unite with the sacred source of creation evolved into an in-depth science, with the practice of mudras as one of its main expressions.

The rishis, the great sages of ancient India, explored states of deep spiritual union through meditation. Mudras arose naturally as an expression of these meditative states. They were then employed to call forth these meditative experiences, thereby allowing the experiences to be shared with their initiated disciples. The ultimate wisdom revealed during the meditative experiences of the ancient seers is one of unity beyond all dualities. The journey toward unity encompasses a wide range of spiritual qualities, such as discernment, limitlessness, wholeness and compassion. Mudras are vehicles to awaken these individual qualities, leading us toward a global vision of unity.

Each of the deities within Indian art and sculpture embodies a specific spiritual quality. Many of these deities are depicted holding mudras that reflect and communicate these qualities. The many statues and images showing the deities holding mudras highlights their important role within the development of spirituality on the Indian subcontinent. Among the oldest of these images are statues and paintings of the Buddha from approximately 2,000 years ago in the Ellora and Ajanta caves in India.

During the period of Tantra in India, ranging from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, the use of mudras evolved into the fully developed form we know today. In Tantra, the body is seen as a sacred sanctuary of spirit, a microcosm of the Divine. The transformation of the physical body into a temple of spirit occurs through the performance of elaborate rituals that make use of sacred sounds called mantras, sacred geometrical forms called yantras, and the extensive use of mudras.

Beginning in the eleventh century, the body-oriented approach of Tantra gave birth to the science of Hatha Yoga. This approach to Yoga uses the physical body as a primary vehicle for spiritual development, leading to liberation. The texts of the Hatha Yoga tradition outline the practices of Yoga within a framework of stages or limbs, which include mudra. The importance given to mudras within these texts is highlighted in numerous sutras, including the following from the seventeenth century Hatha Yoga text, the Gheranda Samhita (sutra 100):

“What more shall I tell thee? There is nothing in this world like mudras for giving quick success (along the spiritual path).”

The importance given to mudras in iconography, Tantric ritual, and the texts of Hatha Yoga demonstrates the key role they have played within the overall evolution of Indian spirituality.

Discover more in the Mudra Book!