ISFYT Yoga Teacher Training Pathways

Your 100hr, 200hr, 300hr & 500hr Journey to Integration

Choose your Professional Training Pathway

What’s Unique about the ISFYT Teacher Training System?

  1. ISFYT is the very first functional yoga school registered with Yoga Alliance Professionals which brings a therapeutic, integration-focused, and embodiment lens.

  2. Functional Yoga as Therapy is the first complete(ly) functional multi-style 200hr yoga teacher training.

  3. Functional Yoga as Therapy is the first 200hr yoga teacher training to emphasise the importance of stillness: It’s a 50% Yin and 50% Yang division at ISFYT, and we always start with Yin.

  4. Functional Yoga as Therapy is composed of 2 x 100hr modules which you can take separately, or as an immersion; this “innovative presentation” is designed to fit your life. We know not everyone is able to take 3 and half weeks away from home, family, and work commitments. At ISFYT, we fit the yoga teacher training to the individual, just like we adapt each pose to the individual. This is the epitome of person-centred teaching.

  5. We cater for brand new teachers with 100, 200, 300 and 500 hour pathways.

  6. We equally cater for teachers who already have a 200hr YTT: 200hr graduates from another training can complete The Art of Yin, The Art of Yang, and The Art of Teaching. To gain the Integrated Embodiment in Teaching Functional Yoga as Therapy, 300hr Integrated Yoga as Therapy training with us, and gain the 500hr RYT certification.

Absolutely transformational journey. The learning and unlearning has been so liberating not just as a teacher and student but as a human being. Grace is a fountain of knowledge and experience.

— Joanne O’Meara, Art of Yin Graduate, 2022

ISFYT guidelines to all yoga students considering Yoga Teacher Training

  1. What kind of role does personal practice play within this Teacher Training?

  2. Do you know anyone who has trained with this teacher? Could you organise to have a chat with them?

  3. Have you done your research on the teacher(s) running the training. What is their story? When did they start practising? With whom? Do they still maintain a relationship with their teachers? Who mentors them? What kind of training have they done? How long ago?

  4. Have you practised at least once, but preferably many times with the main teacher running the training. Do you resonate with their style, their voice, their language, their philosophy? Do what they say and do align? Integrity and Congruence. Do you feel connected to their approach?

  5. Is much space, or indeed any space, devoted to teaching practice where you practise teaching, and receive feedback on that teaching?

There is much more to add on this, but these questions are a good start!

“You can't lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself”

— Gene Mauch

“Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.”

— Parker J. Palmer

Integration and Embodiment are practised.

Integration and Embodiment take a bit more time than you think.

Integration and Embodiment are a process and a journey.

Become an Integrated & Embodied Yoga Teacher with The International School of Functional Yoga Teachers

200hr

The Complete First Step

At ISFYT, your 200hr FYT Functional Yoga as Therapy training represents your first complete steps on this journey. 

The Art of Yin & The Art of Yang combine to allow yoga- taught functionally- to be felt, experienced, embodied, and shared with others as therapy. Upon completion of both 100hr trainings, students will be awarded a 200hr Functional Yoga as Therapy certificate with Yoga Alliance Professionals, where ISFYT is registered as the very first functional school to bring a therapeutic lens.

FYT will more than equip you to practise and teach yoga functionally and therapeutically so you develop steady foundations - the what - upon which to master your craft.

300hr

The Embodied Next Steps

And The Art of Teaching is exactly that - mastery of the craft of teaching. Its intention are twofold: Within Pedagogy, you will learn all that the how of teaching entails. All of the external skills involved in facilitating a learning experience: curriculum design, educational psychology & philosophy, language use. The how of teaching - Pedagogy - is often concerned with the best way to set up and manage the space.

Within Presence, you will master the art of holding space - the radically simple (at ISFYT, we know that simple rarely means easy), but transformative art of teaching from the depth of your presence. Presence will allow you to deeply know the who of teaching - your inner teacher. As you develop your relationship with yourself in this space, the why behind your teaching is revealed. When the how marries with the who and the why, your teaching will not only be infinitely more effective, it can reach unforeseen levels of authenticity and soulfulness.

The Art of Teaching will be open to all 200hr graduates in late 2024.

While there is no strict time limit, it is recommended that your 300hrs would be completed over 3 years

500hr

The Integrated Final Steps

Beyond the 300hr journey culminating in The Art of Teaching, the 500hr pathway is available through the completion of four 50hr modules that most appeal to your individual interest.

It is an invitation to enter the realm of Integration & Mastery. The offering of shorter, specialised modules means that individually-tailored and person-centred teaching is not just what we facilitate for our students, it’s also how we tailor our teacher trainings.

While there is no strict time limit, it is recommended that your 500hrs over 4-5 years.

 FAQs

  • It’s an excellent start. It will offer you a firm foundation in practising and teaching both stillness and movement through a feeling-based lens. It is a sound foundation upon which you will continue to build.

  • Yes. The school and its trainings are accredited with Yoga Alliance Professionals. You can register with them as a 200hour RYT upon completion of the training, and then once insured you can start teaching.

  • No. This teacher training is its own entity. However, should you already have completed the 100hour Art of Yin training with me, you are welcome to complete the 100hour Art of Yang module in order to gain the 200hour Functional Yoga as Therapy YTT certification.

  • The yin module is ‘assessed’ through teaching practice and a final 2 page report on an aspect of the training that resonated deeply with you personally. The yang module is more applied skills focused, but it will still have a small assessment piece TBC - mostly the assessment is conducted through practical components which naturally flow through the training; ie, your teaching practice.

  • The anatomy you are taught is functional and target area focused. Essentially, it is variable. You will learn that we are not all carbon copies skeletally. The approach to the teaching of anatomy can be summed up by Paul Grilley:

    “When you learn to see the body as 14 skeletal segments. being moved by 10 myofascial groups, you will be able to skillfully adapt the 7 archetypal poses to suit the skeletability and flexibility of each individual student”

    This is to say that the anatomy you learn immediately serves a purpose. There is no learning for learning's sake. Every single joint, bone, muscle, or myofascial group we look at is applied to poses, be they within the yin or yang practices.

  • This 200hr is functional first and foremost. “If you’re feeling it, you’re doing it” - everything taught can be distilled to this. Functional Teaching means teaching to the individual, teaching to feeling over form. This can be a departure from most rigid, universal alignment teachings, but nearly all students resonate hugely with this approach within their own experience, and speak to feeling much more confident in their teaching post-training.

  • We can say that functional yoga and yoga therapy have the same roots - Krishnamacharya’s “teach what is appropriate to the individual” is what inspired the branch of study known as yoga therapy today. However, as a field, yoga therapy has I think become very focused on the physiological.

    ISFYT has at its vision aspires to bring the emotional and psychological more to the fore. We speak a lot in yoga about transformation, but we cannot change anything we do not first accept. Self-inquiry and inner work are cornerstones of this training. You are supported to engage in your own personal journey as you embark on and proceed through the training.

    Please note that this training is in no way a replacement for personal therapy, but I can say with certainty that it is a hugely complementary somatic addition.

  • To be a functional teacher is to teach to feeling, with the experience of each individual at the centre of the teaching, and to teach through a therapeutic and trauma-aware lens. To be a functional teacher is to embrace your personal practice as your own greatest teacher, and to confidently yet humbly guide your students to connect on a much deeper level with themselves and those around them.

  • A lot comes down to your skillset, and language is by far the most important of these teaching skills. We can never know for sure what our students are experiencing, but we can help them become empowered practitioners with our cues to feeling and excellent questions. This is why language is a central focus in both The Art of Yin and The Art of Yang.