Adjusts & Assists Teacher Training
with Gingi LeeA skilful adjust can transmit knowledge, energy and healing all at once. Offered sensitively, it can change your relationship with your students and your student’s relationship with the practice. This hands-on training with Gingi Lee draws on more than twenty-five years of working with adjustments and assists to show you how to work with sensitivity, safety and purpose, grounded in the biomechanics and energetics of body and breath.
Overview
The art of touch in teaching
Most practitioners come to the mat for the therapeutic benefits yoga is known to offer and in the hands of a skilled adjuster, those benefits are often deepened considerably. A good adjustment can help a student safely access a fuller expression of a posture, set good alignment, and explore intention and energetic movement. It can release physical restriction and, in a safe environment, soften emotional holding too. It can also cultivate connection between student and teacher.
Learning the art of giving adjustments is an important dimension as a teacher, and one that should never be underestimated. The simple act of sharing human touch has tremendous power to heal, both physically and emotionally. We are social creatures, and touch is a fundamental part of development from our very first moment of life – from the skin-on-skin contact between a parent and a newborn child.
Gingi has witnessed remarkable benefits during more than twenty-five years of working in this way and believes he it is an integral part of being a yoga teacher.
Students can sometimes be tentative, or resistant to being physically assisted – but invariably, with space, time, and a building of trust, they open to the gifts this dimension of yoga can offer. Yoga is about evolution, after all.
At the same time, in our modern world, teachers may feel unsure about how best to adjust, if at all. This three-day course is designed to give you confidence in how to work hands-on with bodies: offering the gift of fine-tuning, refining a student's personal experience of a posture, and helping them deepen the expression. Throughout, the emphasis is on biomechanics and energetics, on consent and sensitivity, and on building trust.
Take this as a stand-alone YACEP-registered CPD or count it toward your 300-hour Yoga Teacher Training
"A skilled assist can be a transmission of knowledge, energy and healing that can be extremely profound."
Who is this course for?
What's included?
After this training, you will be...
A teacher confident in offering hands-on assists – knowing when, why, and how to step in, and equally when to leave a student undisturbed.
A practitioner of touch grounded in the biomechanics of body and breath – able to read a posture and respond to what the body in front of you actually needs.
A safer, more sensitive teacher, fluent in the language of consent, ethical touch, and timing, and prepared for the difficult scenarios a real classroom presents.
A YACEP-certified teacher of assists, with a 12-month video library of demonstrations to return to as your teaching evolves.
What Our Students Say
What our students say
The adjustments teacher training was the best teacher training investment I have made since becoming a yoga teacher. Gingi is an incredibly grounded and gifted course leader. He taught me so much and ultimately I gained the confidence I was lacking in my teaching and adjusting work.
Adjusts & Assists Student"Gingi is a rare, gifted teacher who teaches from the heart with compassion, love and humour. He gently encourages us to make the yoga practice our own, journeying towards an opening of the mind, body and heart."
Adjusts & Assists Student"Gingi's knowledge, enthusiasm and experience is unrivalled and his passion infectious. I came to this course relatively confident with giving many adjustments having taught regularly for several years. But I left with fresh inspiration and a deeper more profound understanding of the biomechanics and energetics of the body. No one offers adjustments quite like Gingi."
Adjusts & Assists Student"I didn't expect to go so deep with this practice on the TTC. Very intense and emotional experience. Gingi held such a safe and supportive space – it was really special."
Adjusts & Assists Student"The approach was incredibly thorough and thoughtful – I couldn't have asked for more. This was an outstanding course: thorough and detailed, designed to ensure students had time to practise and reflect on all we learned. Time was taken to build up trust and compassion within the group, which was invaluable when working on assists and adjusts together."
Adjusts & Assists Student"Wow, what an experience and transformation! I had never felt comfortable with adjusting my students or even touching them for that matter – but now I feel confident and have found the magic and connection that being hands-on with my students brings."
JR, Adjusts & Assists StudentYour Teacher
Your teacher Gingi Lee
Founder of The Shala and The Shala School of Yoga. Teaches from the heart with compassion, love and humour.
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Course details
- Hands-on adjustments and assists across all major posture families: sun salutations, standing postures, seated postures, backbends, and inversions
- Why and when to offer an adjustment, and when to leave a student to their own experience
- Foundations of safe touch and how to use the breath as a tool of assistance
- Timing and pacing – working the room efficiently in a group class
- Adjusting in a self-practice / Mysore-style environment
- Handling difficult scenarios as they arise in a real classroom
- The biomechanics of the body in adjustment
- Working with different body types and reading what's in front of you and responding to it
- Working with injuries – what to do, what to avoid
- Self-preservation as a teacher – protecting your own body in hands-on work
- The energetics of adjustment – intention, transmission, and the subtle dimensions of touch
- How energetic movement is expressed through, and shaped by, hands-on work
- Ethical touch in a modern teaching context
- Building relationships and earning consent
- Sensitivity of touch and working with students who are tentative or resistant
- Scope of practice as a teacher offering hands-on work
- The role of assists in self-practice and group class settings
- Reading the energy of a class and responding in real time
- Holding space for the trust an adjustment requires
- Integrating hands-on work into your existing teaching voice
- The art of touch as transmission – knowledge, energy, and healing
- The role of assists in deepening a student's expression of a posture
- Refining alignment and supporting safe access to depth
- Releasing physical restriction and softening emotional holding in a safe environment
- Hands-on practice with peers throughout all three training days
- Teaching practice is built into the course. There is no separate post-course practicum is required
- No formal written assessment
- Led in studio by Gingi Lee across three full teaching days
- Video manual includes 40+ short videos of Gingi demonstrating how to adjust a range of postures, available for 12 months providing a reference library to return to as your teaching evolves
- Attendance across all three training days, in studio
- No pre-course or post course preparation or assignments
- A YACEP-registered Continuing Professional Development course
- Counts toward 300-hour certification, or can be taken as stand-alone CPD
- Certificates issued once the training is complete and your feedback form has been returned.
Course Dates
Course dates & schedule
This course will run again
Can't make the dates? This training runs annually. Here's what's next on the calendar
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