September 12 - 14, 2025

19 Hours Training + 6 Hours Homework: Assist 4 Classes (75 Min per class) + 2-Page Reflection Paper

Hands-on assists are one of the most powerful tools in a yoga teacher’s toolkit—and often, one of the most feared. But when offered with clarity, consent, and care, an assist can awaken a student’s awareness, transform their posture, and create an experience that words alone cannot deliver.

This module is designed to help teachers move from hesitation to confidence, learning how to offer skillful, intentional touch across a wide range of postures and bodies. You’ll explore the foundations of safe and effective assists, refine your anatomical understanding, and gain hands-on experience assisting in live classes.

You’ll also be trained in how to read subtle cues, practice verbal & non-verbal communication, and offer your presence in a way that is both empowering and sensitive—especially for students who may be touch-averse, trauma-informed, or simply needing a softer approach.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn foundational and advanced assists for a variety of poses and class styles

• Practice verbal and non-verbal consent strategies

• Develop intuitive presence and safe energetic boundaries

• Explore the ethics of touch and cultural sensitivity in assistive teaching

• Practice in real-time during three assisted classes

• Cultivate confidence through repetition, mentorship, and embodied learning

• Learn when not to assist—and when an assist is a moment of transformation waiting to happen

Whether you're brand new to assisting or looking to refine your skills, this training will help you step into the role of teacher with greater confidence, sensitivity, and mastery. The difference between a good teacher and a great one often comes down to presence—and presence, when paired with intentional touch, becomes a profound act of service.

Nov 21-23rd 2025

Join us for a soul-stirring weekend of kirtan and contemplative music led by Ananda Murari das—songwriter, former monk, and devotional artist. Known for his holistic folk fusion, Ananda Murari blends ancient fables, personal reflection, and sacred mantra into a moving musical experience that honors both the vulnerability and hope of the spiritual journey.

Together, we’ll learn:
• The basics of chanting and the power of mantra
• How to play harmonium and cartals (hand cymbals)
• Foundational voice techniques to support healthy, embodied singing
• How to create melodies that express your inner emotional and spiritual landscape

Drawing from his years in monastic life and his evolution as a father and musician, Ananda Murari's offerings explore the tension between seeking and surrender, the heart’s struggles, and the beauty of faith through song. His grounded presence and intimate storytelling invite deep connection, inner stillness, and joyful expression through chanting.

Whether you're new to kirtan or a longtime practitioner, this immersive weekend is an opportunity to awaken your voice, soften your heart, and reconnect with what matters most.

All are welcome. No musical experience necessary. 

December 5 - 7, 2025

December 19-21 2025

At the heart of every yoga practice is the breath—our link between body, mind, and spirit. In this 50-hour immersion, you’ll explore the breath as a powerful tool for transformation, using ancient pranayama techniques to regulate your nervous system, move emotional energy, and awaken your inner vitality.

This training is both practical and profound. You’ll learn breathwork techniques that support digestion, clear emotional blockages, calm anxiety, and expand lung capacity. We’ll study the relationship between breath and asana, introduce kriyas, explore breath adaptations for different bodies, and harness the healing potential of mantra and sound.

Whether you're a yoga teacher, therapist, energy healer, or dedicated practitioner, this module will deepen your relationship with the subtle body and offer tools to integrate breath-based practices into classes, workshops, and daily life.

Topics include:

• The science and soul of deep belly breathing

• Ujjayi for grounding and vagal tone

• Breath thresholds and the subtle art of conscious breath retention

• Cleansing techniques like Bhastrika and Kapalabhati

• Nervous system balancing: segmentation of inhale and exhale

• Energizing flows like Breath of Joy

• Nadi Shodhana and alternate nostril practices for inner harmony

• Cooling pranayama and kriyas for inflammation and emotion

• Mantra and breath: how sacred sound empowers breathwork

• Emotional release through sound, breath, and movement

This module is a doorway into the energetics of healing and a call to awaken the breath as your most loyal and immediate teacher.

Journey Within: Mindfulness & Meditation Practices

Mindfulness is a practice that brings awareness to the sensations, emotions, and thoughts that arise within the body. It creates a sacred pause between stimulus and response.

Learning foundational mindfulness techniques becomes a powerful tool for healing and reprogramming the nervous system to respond differently to triggers and challenging situations. By understanding the wisdom behind a basic body scan and recognizing where emotional stress is mapped in the physical body, we gain insight into how our body receives and processes information—and how it develops protective mechanisms. With this understanding, we begin to rewire our responses from the inside out.

In this training, we will explore how to witness the layers of the self—using breath awareness, body scans, and meditation—as a means of inner transformation.

You will learn the mindfulness method known as R.A.I.N.S.:
R: Recognize
A: Acknowledge/Accept
I: Investigate
N: Nurture
S: Surrender

We will also explore the meditative and healing wisdom of sound healing and mantra—how sacred sound helps shift stagnant energy held in the body, and the mysticism behind vibration, frequency, and chanting.

You’ll deepen your understanding of Yoga Nidra—its healing function and subtle power—and learn how to skillfully guide others through this practice. By working through the koshas, the layers of the self, you'll gain the tools to help others access deep rest, release trauma, and connect with the innermost self through spacious awareness.

May 22 - 24, 2026

Art of Sequencing: Creating Dynamic, Fluid Mandala Flows

Mandalas are circular, fluid, dynamic sequences that help break down old neurological patterns in both the mind and body. These sequences use repetition and directionality to re-pattern movement, develop new coordination, and build communication between the right and left sides of the brain by requiring practitioners to cross the midline.

This 25-hour advanced sequencing module explores the healing potential of circular movement. When we don’t regularly cross the midline, the left and right hemispheres of the brain tend to work in isolation. Mandala flows engage both hemispheres through midline crossing, stimulating the cerebral cortex and strengthening neural pathways that coordinate movement, balance, and learning.

We live in a linear society—but circular movement shifts our perspective. It helps us experience the body and space not from a straight path, but from a 360-degree awareness.

As you train your body and mind in these new movement patterns and learn to guide others through circular sequencing, you’ll discover a powerful, transformative breakthrough—one that is just as playful as it is profound.

September 18 - 20, 2026

November 6 - 8, 2026

December 4-6, 2026

The body holds stories, patterns, and pain. In this 75-hour advanced module, we enter into the art of healing through movement, sequencing, and presence. You’ll learn how to see the body as a map—one shaped by emotion, experience, and energy—and guide students toward wholeness through intelligent, therapeutic yoga.

This training centers on Body Smart Sequencing, a method of weaving postures into progressive mini-sequences that build both function and freedom. Using subtle adaptations, breath, and repetition, we retrain movement patterns to reduce pain, restore mobility, and prevent injury. It’s both intuitive and biomechanically precise.

You’ll develop a keen eye for imbalance, and learn to sequence for common areas of stress like the neck, shoulders, thoracic spine, hips, and lower back. Whether working one-on-one or leading dynamic group classes, you’ll be empowered to teach yoga that’s not just expressive—but truly healing.

What you’ll learn:

• How to adapt sequencing for therapeutic outcomes

• Working with energy lines and pressure points through yoga

• Postural assessment and movement re-education

• One-on-one work for physical, emotional, and energetic healing

• Hands-on assists and the art of subtle touch

• Use of props for support, traction, and transformation

• Creative use of chairs, blocks, and straps in recovery-focused practice

• Designing short recovery sequences and longer healing flows

• Applying Body Smart Sequencing to both gentle therapeutic and advanced vinyasa classes

• Specific sequences for:

  • Neck & shoulder pain

  • Upper thoracic immobility

  • Low back & digestive issues

  • Knee & hip dysfunction

Yoga is a path toward union, and that includes integration of body, breath, and awareness. This module helps you see and support your students holistically—with compassion, clarity, and precision.

Exact Dates TBD

Safety, Sensitivity & Somatic Wisdom

This healing-centered weekend immersion offers a grounded introduction to trauma-informed yoga. Designed for yoga teachers, therapists, and seekers of self-understanding, this training explores how trauma lives in the body—and how yoga, breath, and mindfulness can support the process of integration and healing.

Led by Gopi and special guest Dr. Angela Cerkevich, a trauma-informed physiotherapist, this module brings together science, spirit, and practical tools to help you hold space with greater empathy and precision. You’ll explore how trauma affects the nervous system, how it may manifest in movement or behavior, and how we can meet those patterns with compassion rather than force.

Whether you’re working with students, clients, or your own healing process, this training offers frameworks and practices to teach—and live—with deeper presence.

What we’ll explore together:

• The impact of developmental and single-incident trauma on body and mind

• Intergenerational, ancestral, and race-based trauma awareness

• Recognizing trauma symptoms and how the body “keeps the score”

• Mindfulness techniques to create space between trigger and response

• How to teach a trauma-sensitive yoga class

• Language and cueing that empowers and supports agency

• Using chairs and props to create accessibility and grounding

• The art of pace: slowing down to meet the body where it is

• Teacher positioning and presence to create a safe environment

• Breathwork practices that soothe the nervous system and avoid overwhelm

This weekend is a sacred container for learning, listening, and healing. It’s a chance to deepen your capacity to hold space—for others and for yourself—with clarity, compassion, and care.

Exact Dates TBD

The ancient wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita serves as a compass for the soul’s journey—a guide through the inner battlefield we all face. We are all wounded warriors, navigating internal and external conflicts, asking:

What is my Dharma?
What values uphold my choices?
Do I have the courage—and humility—to live by them?
What is my calling and contribution to this world?
Who am I?

This training invites you into a Vision Quest of the heart: an inward journey to align your values, uncover your inner voice, and awaken your sacred purpose. Through powerful self-inquiry exercises, yoga, meditation, and breathwork led by Gopi, you’ll be guided to rediscover the deeper pulse beneath your practice—and your life.

When our inner vision is aligned with our values, we gain the clarity and courage to live in harmony amidst discomfort, complexity, and change. This training helps unlock that alignment.

The Vision Quest culminates in a healing Cacao Ceremony, a sacred ritual of opening the heart to divine guidance. Using the finest ceremonial cacao, crystal bowl sound healing, mantra, and guided breathwork, Gopi will invoke the ancient mystics of all directions to help you receive the answers that are already within. This ceremony is expansive, heart-opening, and a powerful activation of intuitive truth.

Personalize Your Path with Devotional Study & Specialized Workshops

To complete your 300-hour certification, students are required to take at least one Bhakti Philosophy course (9 hours) and fulfill the remaining 11+ hours through elective workshops offered as part of BYDC’s ongoing training programming.

These hours are designed to reflect your unique interests and allow for organic integration of the teachings. You’ll choose from a selection of specialty courses offered throughout the year that support deepening your voice as a teacher and expanding your lens as a practitioner.

Bhakti Philosophy Options (choose at least one):

• Bhakti 101 - Fall Season

• Bhagavad Gita Study Course - Winter Season

• Stories in Bhakti - Summer Season

Each of these courses is a 6-week, 9-hour series, open to all levels of students and offered regularly throughout the year.

Elective Workshop Examples (for remaining 11+ hours):
Here are examples of the kinds of course series we offer as part of BYDC’s immersive programming:

• Arm Balances & Inversions

• Chakra Exploration

• Yoga en Español

• Yoga for EVERY Body

• Seasonal Self-Care & Ayurvedic Practices

• Sound Healing & Mantra Integration

Electives may rotate seasonally and are open to the public as well as 300HR students. This flexible structure allows you to co-create a journey that supports both your personal growth and professional development, rooted in the spirit of Bhakti and the richness of community. Look for the RYS 300HR in the program description to know if it counts as an elective!

Teach from Experience, Lead from Presence

The internship component of your 300HR journey is where practice becomes embodiment. Over the course of this 15-hour module, you’ll begin to apply what you’ve learned by stepping into a leadership role within the BYDC (or your own) community.

Internship hours can be fulfilled in a variety of ways, including:

• Assisting lead teachers in class

• Offering karma yoga classes to the community

• Teaching within small groups or mentoring settings

• Designing and leading your own themed class, workshop, or study group

This portion of the training is guided by mentorship and feedback, and encourages you to grow in confidence, communication, and presence as a teacher. The internship is an opportunity to begin finding your authentic voice and serving your community from a place of devotion and clarity.

Integration, Celebration, Completion

The final weekend of your 300-hour path is a sacred container for reflection, integration, and celebration.

Students will complete a written and oral exam designed to help you synthesize what you’ve learned across the modules and articulate your growth as a practitioner and teacher. This is not just a test—it’s a reflection of your personal journey, your voice, and your deepening understanding of yoga as both science and spirit.

Our time together will also include guided self-inquiry, closing rituals, and group practices to honor your transformation and mark this milestone. Graduation is not an ending—it is a stepping forward into your next chapter, as a guide, a teacher, and a devotee of the path.