The ISFYT Community

Find Your Tribe

About the ISFYT Community

This is a home for yoga students, trainee teachers, and yoga teachers who are thirsty for more depth, ready for change, and longing for their tribe. It's a home for those who have at least once felt they might be both too much and not enough within a yoga practice experience. It’s a home for anyone who has ever felt confined within, or frustrated by the excessive aesthetic focus that dominates much of the modern yoga world. And it’s also a home for those who might know in their hearts that the experience of not belonging so easily to the world at large has gifted them a perspective they would not otherwise have.

Some would say that we are the sum total of the experiences that have shaped us. At ISFYT, this becomes the starting-point for individually-tailored and deeply person-centred teaching. Are you ready to practise in a radically simple, yet transformative way? Are you excited to uncover how the three pillars of yoga, education and therapy provide the most embodied foundation for that practice? Do you envisage a world where accessible and inclusive yoga are the norm rather than the exception? And are you ready to be instrumental in building that world?

MISFYT

  • Functional Yoga Teacher

  • Functional Yoga as Therapy

  • Find Your Tribe

We see things a little differently here, you too?

Are we a good FYT for you at ISFYT?

  1. Yoga has always been a kind of therapy for you

You might not call it that per se, but it was definitely what took you down from your head into your body.

Feeling over fleeing is as close to embodied therapy as you’ve found, and you are now yearning to go deeper into the experience, with companionship, community, guidance, mentorship and support.

Yoga lets you listen to your soul. And you want a lot more of that, thank you very much.

2. Of course we should fit the pose to the body, not the body to the pose

It’s just obvious to you that we need to teach people as the unique individuals they are.

You're been to too many yoga classes where you felt disconnected from your body while striving to achieve the shape, but for what? For whom? To what end?

You might feel a bit let down, but what if it were in fact the modern yoga world at large who needed to take a long, hard look at itself, and see where this shape adoration - and aligning ourselves in cookie-cutter versions of it - actually came from?

3. We must feel to heal

You just get it.

It stands to reason that it's in your body, at your edge, that you can get to know your triggers, and use them as the transformational insights that they are.

You might be a deep feeler, a slower processor - Here at ISFYT, we often tend to consider those the more "integrated" souls, but society at large doesn't necessarily support that view.

The words of Jiddu Krishnamurti are perhaps particularly apt here: It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

4. Know Thyself

… & you want to know yourself.

There won’t be too many insights without good questions. You’re less about finding answers, and more deepening the journey, enriching the process.

5. More truthworkers, fewer lightworkers

You might be a bit of a truth-seeker, maybe a smidgeon of an old soul there, potentially some introverted intuition going on. You might also not see yourself in any of that, but you definitely have a sense that there’s something off about so many ‘positive vibes only’. You might not feel all that drawn to (nor safe within) many of the offerings within yoga and wellbeing spaces. Something just doesn’t ring true about the notion of ‘raising your vibration’ - you know it’s in the body, in this human form, on this earth, that we must learn to find our true selves. At ISFYT, we’re more about the inner excavations: we go in and down, before we go out and up.

You’re as real as they come, you spot the bullshit a mile away, you’re here for the truth, the depth, the feeling, the healing, the fun & the mischief, the revolution ;-)

Maybe you have felt a bit like the black sheep within yoga classes at times? And you sure as hell can’t pretend otherwise. Welcome - I’ve a feeling we will get along just fine! :-)

6. Soul FYTness

If you had to sum it up in one word, you might describe Yoga as innercise as opposed to exercise. For you, yoga is a ‘merging of worlds’ practice, but rooted in embodiment. It’s part of a spiritual path; innercise = Soul FYTness.

The depth of presence you get to touch in your practice is akin to soul, maybe close to the notion of soul whispers. Irrespective of whether you have listened or acted upon hearing them yet or not, you know that a Functional Yoga as Therapy (FYT) practice creates the container for you to hear them.

7. The Art of Teaching

You too see teaching as a craft, and a beautiful one at that: you’re quite interested in exploring the identity of the teacher, and learning the skills that can best help your students find their own inner teacher.

Pedagogy & Presence.

“You teach who you are before you teach what you know.”

And because that quote by Parker Palmer above resonates deeply with you, you know that the more you know who you are, the more what you know can be shared meaningfully and impactfully.

Personal, Professional & Soul Growth

  1. You want to take your first training as a yoga teacher by completing a 200 hour person-centred functional yoga teacher training (TT) and you want to leave feeling confidently equipped to teach, having been guided and mentored by an experienced teacher,

  2. You are an existing yoga teacher and you want to bring more depth and functional awareness to your teaching, and to improve your teaching and space-holder skills,

  3. You work in a related helping profession: social work, occupational health, occupational therapy, speech therapy, physiotherapy, and you wish to further support your clients and yourself,

  4. You don't necessarily want to teach yoga at all, but you want to practise yoga as therapy as part of your own healing journey,

  5. You work in a mental health profession - ie; psychotherapists, counsellors, mental health nurses, and you are drawn to yoga as an embodiment practice to incorporate so as to enhance your work,

  6. You already work in teaching or in community work and would like to share yoga with your students,

  7. You are looking for an integrated personal development experience incorporating mind, body & soul.

Now is the Time

To practise yoga with us if:

  • You went to yoga before and just felt like you were doing it all wrong. We teach to the unique individual here at ISFYT: there is no wrong way, we simply guide you to feel and find your way.

  • You are thirsty for a yoga practice which nourishes you on multiple levels; mind, body, and soul.

  • You are looking for a guide who walks the walk and teaches from experience as well as knowledge.

  • You are looking for the opportunity to practise with me live, and at your convenience with recordings.

To complete Yoga Teacher Training if:  

  • You're maybe just at the "about to walk away from the yoga world" stage but something in you knows you're meant to share this practice with others, and that your own lived experience is exactly the reason why,

  • You are ready to embrace all aspects of who you are, and teach from an integrated place, and you know that process involves more than just a standardised, generic, 200hour curriculum,

  • You are ready to embark on the learning and growth experience that all teacher training modules will encapsulate

  • You feel a soul connection to the way we teach, and believe we can truly help you find, and speak from your own teaching voice. 

To join us on a Yoga Retreat if:

  • You might have been on yoga retreats before, but often come away feeling like only one aspect of your being was looked after, 

  • You want a truly bespoke and unique experience, in a location that you might not automatically think of, and nothing yet seems to match your criteria,

  • You would love if that experience didn't compromise on depth - that both internal and external horizons could be explored simultaneously.

  • You certainly aren’t against luxury, or quiet time. At ISFYT single room options are prioritised as much as possible for retreats - integration appreciates space and quiet.