The Samarya Yoga Teacher Training is dedicated to creating a welcoming space where students of all levels can learn the basics of yoga, in order to practice, teach and work towards healing ourselves and our communities. Our mission is to foster individual transformation as a means to radical social change.

The Samarya Yoga Trainings are unlike any other yoga training you will find. We emphasize self-reflection and exploration through the practice and teachings of yoga. As students explore yoga in relationship to their own lives and belief systems, they will discover their ability to share these ancient healing techniques in their communities.

The framework provided by The Samarya Center, a nationally-recognized yoga research and education center, focuses on yoga as a primary and adjunct healing modality. The principles of Integrated Movement Therapy®, the therapy approach developed at The Samarya Center, are derived from yoga and as such are interwoven throughout the training.

An enthusiasm for service to community is strongly encouraged, reflecting The Samarya Center’s mission to provide access to the state of yoga to all people. In this spirit, we ask prospective students to reflect on a series of discernment steps to make sure that this training will be exactly what you want, and that you will be the ideal student for the training.

This teacher training will be a life-changing experience for anyone who wants to learn more about yoga. It is especially appropriate for: beginning yoga teachers, dedicated students, therapists wishing to practice IMT, yoga teachers who want more information on working with special populations, and students wishing further study with Molly and the Samarya Yoga Faculty. (Required for those applying for IMT certification.)

This retreat is one component of our 200 hour yoga teacher training program. For details on the entire 200 hour continuum and certification, please click here.

For those who wish to join the retreat but can’t make the full two weeks, we also offer one week and three day options.

Schedule: Sep. 21st – Oct. 5th, 2018

Teacher Training Syllabus:

• Yoga Philosophy + History in context – is yoga a religion? Where do the poses come from?
• Comparative contemplative and mystical practices – how is yoga alike and different from other spiritual practices
• Practical – naming, describing and deconstructing poses, looking at poses in the larger context of the practice and who says what is right?, Sanskrit pronunciation, sequencing, linking movement with breath
• Social Change – how do we use our practice as a foundation for increasing our skills in organizing and action
• What are the issues to be considered with appropriation?
• Cultural competency – how do we make our yoga classes and studios inclusive and intelligently welcoming
• Hands on touch and Adjusting (deconstructing hierarchy)
• Working with special populations
• Yoga as therapy
• What does “Yoga Service” or “Outreach” even mean?
• Practice Teaching
• Topics – kleshas, koshas, bandhas, Ayurveda, chakras, mantra, kirtan
• Personal visioning
• Introduction to Integrated Movement Therapy and its principles and philosophies

Selected Required Reading:

• Yoga and the Quest for the True Self – Stephen Cope
• Living your Yoga – Judith Lasater
• Teaching Yoga – Donna Farhi

Sign me up!

Follow the links below to sign up and to make a payment. Please note: you must pay IN FULL by July 21, 2018 in order to receive early registration rates.

About the Teacher: Molly Lannon Kenny

Molly Lannon Kenny has been on the path to fulfilling her dharma since her earliest memories.  As a child, her parents would frequently take her and her brothers and sisters to the bookstore and let them wander for hours, lost in the magic of words and pictures.  Molly often found herself sitting cross legged, flipping through BKS Iyengar’s Light on Yoga, intrigued and entranced by the photos and the mystery behind them.  As a child, she was both physical and flexible, and often heard “you should do yoga!” from the adults around her, although it had very little meaning to her, but in fact, was most likely what sent her to the Yoga section of the bookstore in the seventies, long before Yoga was so widely accepted and practiced in the United States.

Life brought her many opportunities to share her fire and to realize her dream, but it was only when she discovered Yoga as a practice, rather than an odd set of circus tricks, did her specific path become clear to her.  Molly has been teaching Yoga to all levels of practitioners for over ten years, and has worked tirelessly to create outreach programs to people who would otherwise not have the opportunity to experience joy and contentment through the timeless teachings of Yoga.

In 2001, she founded The Samarya Center for Humankind (ness), a 501 c 3 non-profit organization dedicated to individual transformation and radical social change. She created, published and trademarked a unique therapy method, Integrated Movement Therapy, built on these same principles of acceptance and inclusion.  She has written and taught extensively on the topics of Yoga as Therapy and Yoga as a means to individual and social change, and is widely known as a vibrant, funny, accessible teacher, with a heart of gold and a spirit of fire.