Body Positivity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Teaching and Practice

Are you a yoga practitioner who wants to learn about body positivity in yoga, dive deep on inclusion and accessibility, and practice broadening and diversifying your own practice, all while examining and transforming your relationship to your own body?

Join us for the Yoga for All Bodies Immersion! We’ll start, in a weekend intensive, by examining how damaging body standards are created and perpetuated in yoga, how we may have internalized societal standards, and how that may show up in our practice and teaching. Then we’ll focus on how we can unpeel those layers to be kinder, more expansive, and more inclusive with our own bodies and with those we work with and teach, through concepts like body positivity, body liberation, disability as difference rather than pathology, Disability Justice, and Health at Every Size. Then in a series of five 90-minute weekly sessions, we’ll dive into and practice-specific tools, such as inclusive language and accessibility in asana, to explore what it might look like to truly create and foster yoga spaces of inclusion, justice, and radical belonging.

If you’re interested in not only learning and discussing concepts of body positivity, body liberation, radical belonging, inclusion, and accessibility, but also getting into the nitty-gritty of what applying those looks like in our practice and our teaching, this is the course for you. Our explorations will be supported by between-session assignments designed to help you apply these concepts and conversations into your everyday practice and teaching, so by the end of the course, we will all be equipped with more tools for nurturing and supporting body positivity, inclusion, access, and justice in our yoga spaces, practice, and teaching.

Schedule:

✓ Saturday, November 6  & Sunday, November 7, 11am-4pm PT

✓ Mondays, November 15-December 13, 5:30-7:00pm PT (see full schedule below)

Cost:

These courses are offered at three rate options to support meaningful access at different economic levels.

$375 – Sustaining is the market value rate that includes consideration for the instructor’s compensation and hosting expenses.

$425 – Supporting – If you are able to support our efforts to make this series and other events more accessible.

$325 – Supported  –If you need financial support to access this offering.

Saturday, November 6th
11:00am-1:00pm Intro to Body Positivity in Yoga
Break
2:00-4:00pm Examining and Dismantling the Hierarchy of Bodies in Yoga and Beyond

Sunday, November 7th
11:00am-1:00pm Non-Harming and Self-Reflection: Applying Body Positivity to Ourselves
Break
2:00-4:00pm Frameworks for Change: Body Liberation, Disability Justice, and Health at Every Size

Mondays, 5:30-7:00pm PT
November 15 Body Positivity in Practice
November 22 Accessible Asana
November 29 Inclusive Languaging
December 6 Creating Spaces of Radical Welcome
December 13 (Only 5:30-6:30pm PT) Practicing Transformation: Making a Commitment For Future Practice

Integration work between weekly sessions will include weekly reflections and integration worksheets on session topics: body positivity in practice, inclusive languaging, accessible asana, and creating spaces of radical welcome, as well as assigned projects of planning sequences and homework reflections around how to build and foster yoga, movement, or practice spaces that are welcoming and accessible for a broader diversity and range of bodies, people, and communities.

Cancellation Policy: Refunds of 90% up to five days prior to start of series. No refunds allowable after that time.

300/500 Teacher Training

This series can be taken as part of 8 Limbs 300/500-hour Teacher Training Program. Click here for more information on joining us!

About the instructor: RW Alves

RW Alves (she/they) is a yoga teacher trainer, certified yoga therapist, social justice educator, and Somatic Experiencing practitioner who works at the intersections of social justice and trauma-informed yoga. Her teaching focuses on justice in yoga, inclusive languaging and teaching, trauma-informed yoga, nervous system resilience, accessible asana, body positivity, social justice, equity, privilege, and spiritual practice.
She is Faculty with Off the Mat, Into the World and the Yoga Service Conference, teaches Trauma-Informed Yoga with a social justice lens through Collective Resilience (collectiveresilienceyoga.com) and is a founding member of and trainer for Bending Towards Justice (bendingtowardsjustice.org), which provides anti-oppression, inclusion, equity, and social justice trainings for yoga teachers and practitioners around the country. She is a contributor to the forthcoming book Best Practices in Yoga for Addiction and Recovery.
RW is passionate about exploring and unearthing the connections and interweavings between social injustice and trauma, and social justice and resilience, and believes deeply in the power of practice to ground, sustain, and inspire us in our important and world-changing work. She is honored to hold space for people to explore deeply how to show up for justice and equity in their practice and teaching. Learn more at rwalves.com.