200 Hour Teacher Training

Program Details

Mindful yoga, rooted in community, is the foundation of the Circle Yoga Teacher Training.

We’ll spend the first weekend of the training establishing our own training community and what mindful yoga means to us. As we continue into the first few months, you will lay the groundwork of your teaching skills by:

• Learning how to establish or deepen your own mindfulness practice
• Participating in user-friendly asana and anatomy workshops where we build the principles of asana alignment (standing poses, forward folds, backbends, twists) based on the way real bodies work
• Beginning to study yoga philosophy and breath / pranayama

In October, you’ll have the first of three long weekends, which we strongly encourage you to attend in person, if possible. These long weekends include additional hours for working in small groups with trainers and (later on in the program) for practice teaching.

After a few months, you’ll begin to apply the principles you’ve learned by:

• Practice teaching individual asanas in pairs, with a focus on clear language and building poses from the foundation
• Learning sequencing basics (how to put poses in order to structure a class)
• Discussing mindful classroom management and how to create a welcoming environment for all community members

As the program progresses toward summer, you will develop your understanding even further by:

• Studying more complicated asanas and sequencing (inversions and Suryas)
• Gaining exposure to special topics like yoga for seniors, yoga for larger bodies, yoga and gender, and prenatal yoga
• Tackling more nuanced topics like energy-based practices, flow yoga, and thematic sequencing
• Learning how to teach more subtle topics like mindfulness and breath awareness / pranayama
• Discussing how to thrive as a yoga teacher, including the business of yoga
• Refining your own asana teaching and preparing for an intensive practice teaching weekend in June
• The summer months of the program will be less structured for you to work independently on your capstone projects: writing up a class that you create and offering a live class to an underserved community

We come back together in September 2023 for our final week of the program, in which you will:

• Practice teaching online
• Reflect on your summer experiences, ask any last questions of the lead trainers, and consider what it means to be a yoga teacher and your own next steps
• Graduate!

Homework

You will reinforce what you learn in class with carefully designed homework assignments, which you will work on individually or in small study groups depending on the assignments. Examples of these assignments include: writing teaching scripts (what you say when you teach a pose), putting together sample sequences (the list of poses, in order, that you would teach in a class), doing reading on mindfulness and yoga philosophy, preparing an anatomy presentation, and observing different types of yoga classes. We expect that homework to take about 10 hours a month, on average.

Private session

To provide you with truly individualized guidance, over the summer each trainee will have the opportunity to schedule a 45-minute private session. This is unusual for teacher training programs, and it's a wonderful opportunity to have a senior teacher focus completely on your unique experiences and goals.

Final thoughts

You will emerge from this training with a deeper understanding of yoga, of mindfulness, and of yourself. And this is just the beginning of the journey: the true joy of a training is that it allows you to embark on the path of sharing yoga with others. Teaching yoga can be infinitely challenging in the best of ways, and also infinitely rewarding. This training will give you a strong foundation to learn and grow gracefully through all of the challenges—and to be ready to fully enjoy the rewards.

Lead Trainers

Alex Phelan, E-RYT 500

As a Yoga Alliance certified E-RYT 500, Alex has been teaching yoga since 2009 and completed over 1,000 teaching hours. In 2017, Alex helped to launch the 200HR Circle Yoga Teacher Training. In her role as teacher trainer, she is passionate about providing trainees with the skills they need to offer yoga beyond the confines of a traditional studio or gym setting. This includes understanding the anatomical basis for asana in a holistic, mindful and balanced way. Alex is also a certified Yoga Therapist with a Masters of Science in YogaTherapy from the Maryland University of Integrative Health. As a yoga therapist she works to ensure that each student or client is offered a balanced practice that is appropriately challenging and matched to their needs and goals.

Bonnie Foote, PhD, E-RYT 500

Bonnie’s teaching is lighthearted but focused: she wants her students to understand the principles of healthy alignment and be able to treat their bodies well, not just in class, but in their daily lives. Bonnie uses her rigorous training at the original YogaWorks in Santa Monica and her current interest in biomechanics to make sure that each session combines classic asana with innovative approaches to movement, alignment, and breath. She also uses her academic background (Humanities at Yale, English at UCLA) to give her classes a clear intellectual structure. But most of all, she uses her own experiences with chronic pain and gradual recovery to anchor her compassionate, individualized approach to teaching. She loves it when her students take charge of their own practices! She always encourages them to ask questions, make up modifications, and steal anything they like and take it home.

Eduardo Guedez, MS, E-RYT 500

Eduardo has been practicing Hatha yoga since 1994, teaching since 2007, and co-leading the YTT programs at Circle Yoga since 2017. He has been initiated into the Sri Vidya lineage of the Himalayan Sages. Eduardo’s teaching approach is grounded in the biomechanics of alignment, functional movement, pranayama, and yoga philosophy.

In addition to being a Certified Vishoka Meditation Teacher by the Himalayan Institute, Eduardo is an E-RYT 500, YACEP and a certified Steel Mace instructor. He is also a dedicated student of Karlakattai (wooden Indian clubs), a functional practice of body-mind-breath conditioning developed by ancient Tamil warriors of southern India. Eduardo holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and recently retired from Corporate IT after a 30 year career. He is co-owner and executive director of StoneSong Awareness & Nature Center where he leads programs that integrate yoga, meditation, and forest stewardship in the Allegany mountains of Western Maryland.

Special Topics Trainers

Annie Mahon, MA, MS, E-RYT 200, C-RYT
Annie Mahon is an author, ordained Buddhist mindfulness teacher and founder of the Circle Yoga Cooperative in Washington, DC. Annie has been writing about mindfulness, parenting, stress and yoga since 2004. Her blog, rawmindfulness.com, led to a book of Annie’s collected essays, Words to be With. Her most recent book,Things I Did When I was Hangry (Parallax Press, September 2015), documents Annie’s search for sanity in her eating disordered family life and reveals how mindfulness helped her go beyond the search for perfection and learn to love the moment as it is. Annie holds certifications in yoga, focusing and massage therapy and dabbles in Nonviolent Communication (NVC). When not visiting her children, teaching, traveling the world with her husband, drinking jasmine tea with honey, writing or walking her dogs, she practices yoga and mindfulness with her community in DC.

Cinema Wood

Denise Alston, PhD, E-RYT 500

Liz Butler, E-RYT 200

Liz has been practicing and teaching yoga for over a decade. She came to yoga to address chronic back pain and stayed because of all the other possibilities revealed. Liz teaches playful, irreverent, physically-challenging, alignment-focused classes. Each class is intended to foster connection, self-awareness, equanimity and a love of learning. Her three children and their unique relationships with the universe are a constant loving inspiration. She brings the experience and perspective of having taught in many venues: schools, studios, homeless shelters, gyms, corporations and the great outdoors. She also brings the experience of serving in many roles: studio director, owner, teacher, trainer and student. Liz is passionate about using yoga knowledge to help others to be more compassionate to themselves and others.

Mercedes Santos, E-RYT 200

Mercedes Santos began practicing yoga 30 years ago and has been teaching for 15. Mercedes teaches Hatha yoga that is primarily a blend of Iyengar and Classical Ashtanga styles, spiced up with some Vinyasa (flow). She teaches in a way that helps to keep an ever present awareness of the breath in the practice. Mercedes is committed to teaching yoga that is accessible to every body. She especially enjoys teaching older students, and has developed programs for a variety of age-related needs. Mercedes uses her knowledge of anatomy and therapeutics to help students practice with discernment and interoception. Mercedes also enjoys teaching the physical practice (asanas) as a pathway to concentration and meditation. She encourages students to explore how their body, breath and mind work together to cultivate a focused awareness that leads to the release of muscle tension and psychological resistance.

Michelle Brooks, RYT 500
Michelle Brooks (she, her, hers) has lived in a larger body for the 10 years that she has been practicing yoga, and she has been teaching folks that live in larger bodies for 4 years. She is passionate about inclusivity in the yoga space and in bringing joyful movement to those folks who may not have connected to their bodies for multiple reasons. Her classes are welcoming to all and she cultivates a brave space for her students by providing modifications and props to help students find ease and strength in the poses. Her training as an RYT500 yoga teacher has been through Circle Yoga and she’s a Curvy Yoga (TM) certified instructor who has worked with Anna Guest-Jelley. In her spare time, she enjoys riding her bike, kayaking, watching her partner play music, and cuddling with her basset hounds, Boo Radley and Scout.

Michelle Cohen, CBD, RYT 200
Michelle received her vinyasa yoga teaching certification from Tranquil Space in 2007 and taught flow, restorative and mixed level classes.  During her first pregnancy in 2008 she began to teach prenatal yoga. Completely transformed by her experience of pregnancy, labor and birth, Michelle found her greatest passion in teaching prenatal and postnatal yoga. She completed Conscious Birthing Prenatal Teacher Training with Janice Clarfield in 2010 (4 months after giving birth to her second son!) to deepen her knowledge. She then felt called to serve and support her students, and other clients, in a full-circle process of birth and motherhood and trained to become a birth doula through ToLabor in 2012 and a postpartum doula through Birth Arts International in 2015. Michelle is deeply passionate about helping women have their best birth and strongest start to motherhood and feels the best way to do this is through yoga, mindfulness, contemplative practices, education, and hands-on support. To learn more about Michelle, visit www.savoritstudios.com.

Yael Flusberg, E-RYT 500, C-IAYT, MS
Yael is a sought-after yoga therapist, writer and coach who helps people find relief, resiliency, and creativity in the midst of transition and the aftermath of loss. For her, post traumatic growth is akin to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, which mends broken pottery by filling in the cracks with gold, and treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. In her individual sessions, classes and training, Yael helps students assess their physical, psychological and spiritual health; learn evidence-based techniques that help them with their particular issues and conditions; and ultimately engage in sustainable yoga and other healing practices that helps them experience every season and stage of life as meaningful. Prior to becoming a full-time yoga educator, Yael spent 20+ years working with hundreds of grassroots, philanthropic, and creative communities through capacity building, community development and strategic planning consultation. The daughter of Holocaust-surviving immigrants and the first in her family to earn a college degree, Yael began her nonprofit career engaging in community organizing and social justice advocacy with refugees.

Flexible Make Up Policy

For missed hours

We recognize that not everyone will be able to attend all sessions. You have two different options for making up missed hours:

1. During the subsequent training year: You can make up as many as three regular weeks (33 hours) at no charge during the next training year. If you miss more than 33 hours, making up additional hours in the next training will cost $20 per hour.* You will need to make up the exact sections of the syllabus that you missed. Since the schedule may vary year by year, this may mean mixing and matching in different weeks. (For example, you would make up “Classroom Management,” “Standing Poses,” and “Teaching Pranayama,” not “Week 5”).

2. Private sessions during 2022-23: We also offer private make-up sessions with our trainers for $75 an hour. These sessions may be shared, with the cost split by trainees who miss the same sessions. We will make every reasonable effort to schedule trainees together. If you need to cancel a make-up session with less than 24 hours’ notice or arrive late to a session, you will still be charged for the trainer’s time. With fewer trainees, make-ups often move more quickly than the initial session, so at the trainer’s discretion, the make-up session may be shorter (never longer) than the original session. Additionally, some practices may be recorded for students and trainers to access in a private video library. Students may use the recorded practices for up to 3 make ups for missed practices only. Practices made up this way involve watching and practicing along with the video and then turning in a written reflection. There's a $35 admin fee per practice made up this way. Missed discussions and group work must be made up with a trainer.

* It is Circle Yoga’s intention to offer CYTT each year. In the event of low enrollment or other unanticipated circumstances, it is possible that the program will not be offered in 2023-4. In that case, trainees who need to make up missed sessions will only have the option of $75/hour private sessions in order to complete the hours for Yoga Alliance certification.

Fees & Payment

The fee for the Circle Yoga Teacher Training is $3,350, with an additional $50 application fee. Payments will be made as follows:

Due with application - $50 application fee (non-refundable)
Due upon acceptance to the program - $350 deposit (non-refundable)

Trainees may choose one of two options to pay remaining registration fees:

Option 1: Pay remaining fees in full by Friday, September 2, 2022: $3,000

Option 2: Pay remaining fees in 12 monthly installments: $257.50 per month with the first installment due September 2, 2022 and the final installment due in August 2023. This option includes a $90 processing fee for the year, which is already calculated into the monthly payment of $257.50. Also, trainees choosing this option will be required to keep an updated credit card on file with Circle Yoga, so that payments are automated.

Limited partial scholarships are available. Apply for a scholarship.

Stay tuned for details and for the pricing for the optional Anatomy add-on.

REFUND POLICY

The $50 application fee and initial $350 deposit for the program are non-refundable. If for any reason you need to withdraw from the program, refunds can be provided according to the following schedule:

• Between September 2nd and September 22nd, if you have paid the remaining program fee ($3,000), you will receive a refund of $2,742.50 if you notify us in writing of your decision.
• Between September 2nd and September 22nd, if you have paid the first of 12 payments ($257.50), you will not receive a refund, but you will not be responsible for any further installments if you notify us in writing of your decision.
• After September 22nd, there will be no refunds.

How to Apply

We are now accepting applications for the 200HR Circle Yoga Teacher Training that begins in September 2022. To apply for the training, follow the link below to submit the application along with the $50 application fee.

Apply now

After we receive your completed application and application fee, you should receive an email confirming receipt. We will be back in touch within 7 business days. Upon acceptance to the program, a $350 non-refundable deposit is due within 14 days to secure your space in the program.

If you have any questions about the Circle Yoga Teacher Training, email cytt@circleyoga.com.