Join a growing force in your community creating positive change with trauma-sensitive yoga, movement, and meditation!
Study with experts in the field, and cover topics such as social justice and yoga, trauma-informed instructional strategies, boundaries, and self care.
This training is for anybody wanting to learn trauma-informed, somatic tools. Past participants have included yoga instructors, medical professionals, social workers, mental health counselors, detention staff and people who want to deepen their own practice.
“This training is as much intellectually eye-opening as it is deeply heart-opening.
This training and this work are what the world needs more of. ” –YBB Trainee Olympia 2018
Registration will open on July 8.
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Date & Time: Wednesday, October 30 – Friday, November 1, 2019
Location: Youngstown Cultural Arts Center – 4408 Delridge Way SW, Seattle, WA 98106.
Cost: $395-$595
Schedule:
Wednesday, October 30 – 8am-4pm
Thursday, October 31 – 8am-4pm
Friday, November 1 – 8am-3pm
(There will be a one-hour lunch break each day.)
Sliding scale from $395-595, a limited number of scholarships are available for people of color, formerly incarcerated folks, and partial work/trade by request.
What you can expect:
- A brave space for self-exploration, growth, and community building
- Thorough preparation to offer trauma informed yoga and meditation in jail, prison or any other setting to foster connection, safety, and healing. Including:
- Boundary training
- Verbal adjustments and languaging
- Time with current YBB instructors
- Culture inside prisons
- Training on race and social justice and skills for working in environments of suffering/trauma in a sustainable and just way
- Inspiration and community
- The 60+ page Yoga Behind Bars manual, valued at $75
- 17 hours of CE credit with Yoga Alliance
Prerequisites:
This training is for yoga and meditation teachers as well as anybody wanting to study yoga based tools to work with trauma. We have had many people take this training and apply it to other settings–from social work, to schools, to dance education, to nursing, and even horseback riding therapy! All are welcome. A 200-hour training or equivalent experience is only required if you go on to teach with YBB. We also have a few opportunities to volunteer as a teaching assistant for those without a 200 hour training. If you have more questions, please visit our FAQ page.
We’re excited for you to join a national movement for creating social change with trauma informed yoga and meditation!
About the instructors:
Rosa Vissers sees movement as a powerful pathway to reclaiming our beauty, resilience, and connection — to ourselves and each other. As the Executive Director of Yoga Behind Bars, she has taught yoga to hundreds of incarcerated people and trained more than 300 teachers to instruct trauma-informed yoga and meditation behind bars. In 2015 Rosa spearheaded YBB’s launch of its Yoga Teacher Trainings behind bars, one of the country’s first, and she has presented a TEDx talk on yoga in prisons. She is a Contributing Editor to the upcoming Yoga Service Council book: Best Practices for Teaching Yoga in the Criminal Justice System. Rosa has an extensive background as a professional dance artist and holds an MFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah. She completed her 500-hr Yoga Teacher Training in 2007 at Centered City Yoga in Salt Lake City.
Jess Frank is YBB’s Program Director. Her passion for providing transformative opportunities to incarcerated people sparked at the start of her career and has only grown since she became a YBB instructor over three years ago. As a program coordinator for the Post Prison Education Program and University Beyond Bars, Jess became both intimately acquainted with the challenges facing people in the criminal justice system and deeply inspired by the dedication of the students. As YBB’s program director, Jess manages and mentors volunteers, oversees program expansion, and conducts site visits and evaluations. One of the highlights of her week is teaching yoga to 25 students at the men’s prison in Monroe.
Natalie Cielle is joining the dream team above to co-lead this training. She is a born and mostly-raised-in-the-PNWer with a 10 year stint in New Orleans and co-founded Yoga Behind Bars in 2008 with founder, Shaina Traisman. She had the privilege of beginning many programs that are still going strong today. She is a 500-Hr yoga teacher with a very deep and wide meditation practice, who is also grounded and humbled daily by her four year old daughter. She hopes to bring her experience into the room to support you as you start, or deepen, this transformational work.