Body Literacy for Yoga Teachers

This Is NOT Another Anatomy Training.

You've studied anatomy. You've learned alignment principles, practiced your cues and developed an understanding of how bodies move.

But what happens when the person standing in front of you doesn't respond the way you expected?

A student describes an unfamiliar sensation. A modification doesn't produce the result you anticipated. Someone's movement looks completely different from what you learned in your training.

NOW WHAT?

Your anatomical knowledge is valuable. But knowing anatomy and knowing how to APPLY that knowledge in real teaching situations are different skills.

And there's another important part of this equation.

Your students aren't simply recipients of your instructions. They can become active participants in understanding their own bodies.

That's where Body Literacy for Yoga Teachers comes in.

This interactive training is designed to help you develop your teaching abilities, apply your existing knowledge and create opportunities for your students to better understand their own movement experiences.

Because the goal isn't to have an answer for everything.

It's to develop the skills to work with the person standing in front of you.

October 24–25, 2026

Saturday + Sunday | 12:00–6:30 PM

In Person in Mount Pleasant, Michigan + Live Online via Zoom

12 Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Hours Available

Early Registration: $287 through September 30th

Regular Tuition: $347

In-person attendance is limited to 8 participants.

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Most 200-hour yoga teacher trainings have an enormous amount of information to cover.

Philosophy. Anatomy. Sequencing. Ethics. Teaching methodology. Practice teaching. History. Cueing. Alignment.

Two hundred hours fills up quickly.

And even a strong foundational training may not give you enough time to develop one of the most important skills you'll need as a teacher:

Knowing how to APPLY what you've learned to the person standing in front of you.

A student's foot turns out.

One hip sits higher than the other.

Their arms don't reach overhead the way yours do.

Their Warrior II looks nothing like the picture in your training manual.

It's tempting to immediately reach for a correction.

But before we decide what to change, there's a much more important question:

Does anything actually need fixing?

Different bodies have different proportions, histories, abilities, limitations and movement strategies. The external shape of a pose only tells us so much.

Body Literacy asks us to become curious before we become corrective.

But here's where it gets even more interesting.

What if that curiosity could help your STUDENTS become more knowledgeable about their own bodies, too?

Instead of simply telling someone how to change a movement, you can involve them in exploring what they're experiencing, discovering what changes and developing a better understanding of their own movement.

Now you're doing more than applying your anatomical knowledge. You're creating opportunities for BOTH of you to learn.

And THAT changes the way we teach.

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SEE

Learn to observe the person rather than simply compare their pose to an ideal shape.

What are you actually seeing?

Where is movement occurring?

Where isn't it?

What changes when the position, range or instruction changes?

And perhaps most importantly:

Can you separate what you observe from what you assume it means?

And remember, observation is only part of the picture. Your student has information you can't obtain simply by watching them move. Learning when and how to ask questions is an important part of developing your teaching skills.

UNDERSTAND

Build the movement literacy that helps you think more critically about what you're observing.

We'll explore concepts such as individual variation, mobility, flexibility, stability, strength, range of motion, compensation and movement variability.

Not so you can diagnose your students, but so you can use your knowledge to consider possibilities, ask thoughtful questions and make more informed teaching decisions.

And just as importantly, you'll explore how to involve your students in that process, helping them become more curious and knowledgeable about their own movement experiences.

RESPOND

Then comes the teaching.

Can you choose a more useful cue?

Change the range of motion?

Alter the position?

Introduce a prop?

Change the intention of the movement?

Ask the student a question?

Or recognize that the person in front of you simply moves differently—and leave it alone?

And when you DO change something, what happens next?

Ask your student what they notice. Explore whether their experience changes. Help them recognize what they've discovered about their own movement. Because a modification can be more than an alternative way to perform a pose.

It can become an opportunity for learning.

That's responsive teaching.

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When the goal becomes making every student's pose look the same, teaching can quickly become a process of correcting bodies until they resemble the shape we've been taught is “right.”

But bodies aren't interchangeable.

Two students can look completely different in the same pose—and both may be moving appropriately for their individual bodies.

Two students can also create nearly identical external shapes while having very different experiences inside them.

To understand how to guide another person through the experience, it matters that you've experienced the practice from the other side of the teaching relationship. You'll have opportunities throughout the weekend to settle in, practice, notice, reflect, ask questions, and connect what you're learning intellectually to what you're experiencing personally.

Body Literacy shifts the question from:

“Does this pose look right?” to: “What is happening in this person?”

That is a much more interesting question. And it's one that can completely change the way you teach.

Can't make it to Mount Pleasant?

Join us live via Zoom and participate in the weekend from home.

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This is an interactive weekend—not twelve hours of memorizing anatomical terminology.

We're going to MOVE. Observe. Experiment. Ask questions. Challenge assumptions. And put your existing knowledge to work.

You'll explore real teaching situations alongside other yoga teachers, practice making decisions and receive my feedback as you develop your skills.

Because knowing something intellectually and knowing what to DO with that information when you're teaching are two different things.

*How to observe movement without immediately interpreting or correcting it

* The difference between what you see, what you think it means, and what you actually know

* Individual anatomical and structural variation

* Mobility, flexibility, stability and strength—and why they aren't interchangeable

* Range of motion and why “more” isn't automatically better

* Movement variability and the many ways bodies can accomplish a task

* Recognizing compensation and understanding when it may—or may not—matter * Moving beyond aesthetic alignment toward more individualized teaching

* Evaluating whether a familiar alignment cue is actually accomplishing what you intend

* Developing more precise, adaptable and responsive cueing

* Using props, position, range and intention as teaching variables

* Knowing when a student may need something beyond your scope of practice

* Becoming more comfortable saying “I don't know yet” and gathering more information before deciding what comes next

And because Body Literacy can't be learned entirely from a lecture, we'll put these ideas into practice.

We'll look. We'll move. We'll cue. We'll change variables. We'll observe what happens. And we'll learn from the actual humans in the room.

When Different Doesn't Mean Wrong

A cue that creates a helpful experience in one body may create something entirely different in another.

The goal isn't to throw alignment out the window. It's to understand alignment well enough that you don't have to apply it blindly.

And here's something worth remembering.

Two students can look completely different in the same pose and BOTH be moving appropriately for their individual bodies.

They can also look almost identical while having completely different experiences. That's why we need more than our observations. We need to involve our students in the process.

When we combine what we observe with what our students tell us they're experiencing, we have more information to guide our teaching decisions.

This Training Is For You If...

* You've ever looked at a student and thought: “I can see something happening. I'm just not sure what I'm seeing.”

* You've repeated a cue because you didn't know what else to try.

* You've wondered why a pose that's effortless for one student seems impossible for another.

* You want to become more skillful at applying your anatomical knowledge in real teaching situations.

* You're interested in developing your ability to observe, ask questions, experiment and make thoughtful teaching decisions.

* You want to help your students become more knowledgeable participants in their own movement experiences.

* You value learning alongside other teachers and having opportunities to practice and receive feedback.

And perhaps most importantly:

You recognize that developing your teaching expertise is an ongoing process, regardless of how long you've been teaching.

And because Body Literacy can't be learned entirely from a lecture, we're going to put these ideas into practice.

We'll look. We'll move. We'll cue. We'll change variables. We'll ask questions. And we'll observe what happens.

You'll have opportunities to explore these concepts with other teachers, receive feedback and discover what happens when your assumptions meet actual human movement. Because I don't want you to leave with another collection of information.

I want you to develop what you're capable of DOING with what you already know.

What You'll Receive

Your registration includes:

* 12 hours of live training over two days

* Comprehensive Body Literacy for Yoga Teachers training manual

* Online training space through Thinkific

* Supporting course materials and resources

* Access to training replays to revisit or make up portions of the weekend

* 12 Yoga Alliance Continuing Education hours

Heather Otterbine, E-RYT 500 | Yoga Medicine Registered Therapeutics Specialist | YACEP

I've been teaching yoga for more than two decades, and the longer I teach, the less interested I become in simply making someone's pose look “right.”

I'm much more interested in understanding the person doing it.

Because teaching real humans has a way of challenging tidy rules.

Bodies have histories.

Bodies have different proportions.

Bodies adapt.

Bodies compensate.

Bodies change with age, injury, activity, inactivity and experience.

And sometimes the cue that worked beautifully for twenty people does absolutely nothing useful for person number twenty-one.

That's not a failure of teaching.

That's where teaching gets interesting.

Body Literacy brings together the way I've come to think about movement after thousands of hours of training, teaching and observing bodies: not as problems to correct, but as information to understand.

My goal during this weekend isn't to give you another hundred “better” cues. It's to help you develop something far more useful:

The ability to think beyond the cue.

October 24–25, 2026
Saturday & Sunday | 12:00–6:30 PM Eastern

Choose How You'd Like to Participate

IN PERSON — Mount Pleasant, Michigan
Limited to 8 participants for an interactive, small-group learning experience.

LIVE ONLINE — Via Zoom
Join us from wherever you are and participate in the weekend alongside the other teachers.

Let's Put Your Knowledge to Work. Join me for a weekend of movement, exploration, practical application and learning alongside other yoga teachers.

You've already invested in what you KNOW. Let's develop what you can DO with it.

Ready to join us? Register below!

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