by Lucinda Staniland
Meet Amy Ippoliti—yoga teacher, author, earth activist and founder of 90 Monkeys, an online professional development school for yoga teachers.
One of the first things I noticed when I watched this video interview with Amy was her irrepressible enthusiasm for the practice of yoga.
Yes, there’s no doubt in my mind that this woman loves yoga, and loves sharing it with the world.
And yet, while Amy is incredibly open hearted and enthusiastic, she also cultivates a sharp and critical mind. She pays attention, she asks tough questions and she calls on us to examine our unexplored assumptions about how we teach and practice yoga.
For example, although 60-minute yoga classes are popular and convenient are they really serving us? Or are they watering down the fullness of the potential of yoga?
These qualities of an open heart and a tough mind combine in Amy’s passion for quality ongoing education for yoga teachers, and—lucky us!—she’s bringing some of her Advanced Yoga Teacher Trainings to New Zealand in 2017.
Yoga for Humans: How to Teach and Adjust Students with Tight Bodies and Injuries will be taught in Auckland at the end of September, and Hands-On Assists is coming to Wellington in early October.
Advanced Yoga Teacher Training with Amy Ippoliti
Yoga for Humans: How to Teach and Adjust Students with Tight Bodies and Injuries, 28th September – 1st October at Om Yoga Studio, Auckland.
This dynamic and intimate 4-day training is dedicated to learning how to serve students with challenges and special needs in the company of other high-level yoga teachers under Amy’s caring eye. This training gives you the tools to stand out as a teacher who can speak to many populations, effectively address student’s physical limitations, provide compassionate solutions for students with injuries, and teach full group classes as well as private sessions with more empathy, expert skill, and confidence. Find out more here.
Join Amy Ippoliti for an intimate, advanced teacher training that focuses on Hands-on Assists. In this training, you’ll learn how to give masterful hands-on assists that are both educational and empowering for your students and discover the art of service and attention through refining and practising your therapeutic touch under Amy’s watchful eye. Find out more here.
Amy on why teaching yoga is not a hobby, it’s a profession:
“There’s so much confusion around what it means to be a yoga teacher, in terms of the fact that you’re an educator, you’re not a spiritual leader.”
“The first thing we do in the book is to dispel the internalized lack of self-worthiness that yoga teachers have in terms of charging for their services.”
Amy on the rise of the 60-minute yoga class:
“The challenge with a 60-minute duration [class] is that you don’t have a lot of time to share with your students what yoga can bring to you, how it’s a lifestyle, and how it can connect you to something so much bigger than yourself… All the things that yoga teacher used to share in that extra half hour…It has really dumbed down the fullness of the potential of yoga.”
“When I look at communities that are accustomed to 60-minute classes, and then I compare that to communities that have 75 minutes or more, their curiosity and their general understanding of yoga is ten-fold compared to the 60 minuters.”
Amy on teaching and adjusting students with tight bodies and injuries:
“There’s a perception that everybody is bendy. That everybody has no problem, everybody can touch their toes to their head and bend back and kiss their feet… But the reality is that the normal human who is coming to yoga has got aches and pains, they’re dealing with ageing, they may have come from intense sports injuries… That is the norm.”
“There are so many yoga teachers that have no clue what to do when someone says ‘I have lower back issues,” “I have a torn ACL” “I have chronic neck issues,” “I have a sprain in my wrist,”… What we hear most yoga teachers say is “Oh, just sit this one out… But that is their [the student’s] one big opportunity to work through that injury and find a way to be in the yoga pose where there is no pain, even start to move toward healing that injury through proper alignment, good form and optimal flow of prana and energy through the body.”
Amy on underwater yoga, free diving & marine conservation
“Nothing prepared me for how challenging it was. None of the training I did was enough for the actual open ocean, but once we got out there the images [we took] were indeed astonishingly beautiful…They got shared so virally because people share what they find awe-inspiring, they share what they love”