Humanist Yoga Course with Pete Blackaby
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Please visit our website for details of upcoming Workshops & Courses
April – September 2022
Sharrow Performing Arts Space, Sheffield
£670
“Yoga is a broad church, spanning many styles and belief systems. The approach I am working with at the moment has its roots in a humanistic philosophy. To understand as clearly as one can the rationale for yoga practice, and then to encourage practice with attentive curiosity. So that practice becomes your own, and you grow to be your own teacher.” Peter Blackaby
Humanist Yoga Course : Themes
The course will be a mixture of practice and discussion of key themes.
Topics include :
- Yoga is not exercise
- Theories of movement
- Bottom up and top down processing mapping the body
- Yoga and the mereological fallacy
- What’s so special about breathing?
- Working with Chronic pain & Pain theory in yoga
- Biases & Beliefs
- Review, Q&A and putting theory into practice
There will be time set aside for practice, where it feels like a class rather than a workshop, so that we will get a feel for how to apply the principles and ideas covered during the course.
The Tutor : Peter Blackaby
Peter Blackaby is a fascinating and thought provoking teacher; over the last decade or more he has been one of the most influential teachers in the development of Yoga practice in the UK. This course will give us time to explore his ideas in depth.
Pete’s humanistic approach to yoga is firmly rooted in the here and now, underpinned by scientific research.
Rather than approaching yoga as an exercise system, he sees it as a tool for self-exploration. By paying attention to our bodily responses, we are more able to react appropriately and are less likely to meet discomfort and pain in life. As we become better at this, life slowly takes an easier turn. We learn to act usefully, and sooner rather than later. We age more gracefully, and we adapt to change with less rancour.
Who this course is for
This course is designed for anyone with an interest in deepening their understanding of the practice of Yoga.
The course will be equally beneficial to Yoga teachers / student teachers and practitioners.
Costs
The fee for this course is £670.00.
To reserve a place, please fill in the booking form overleaf and return it with either the full payment or a deposit of £150.00.
- Cheques are payable to ‘SYS Courses’
- Send to : 16 Robertson Drive, Sheffield. S6 5DY
- For bank transfer : See the booking form
Dates
- 23rd April & 24th April
- 14th May & 15th May
- 18th June & 19th June
- 10th & 11th September
Details
- Venue : Sharrow Performing Arts Space, Sitwell Rd, Sheffield, S7 1BE
- Saturdays 10.00am – 5.00pm. Sundays 10.00am – 4.00pm
Course Outline :
Yoga is not exercise
Yoga has a large physical component to its practice but it needs to be differentiated from exercise or performance. If this isn’t clear in our minds as teachers or practitioners we will tend to get caught up in thinking of it as something for the body rather than something for life.
Theories of movement
If we are teaching something that is of the body we need to understand what movements the body will tolerate and what it won’t because above all what we teach needs to be useful and help either maintain or restore normal human function.
Bottom up and top down processing & Mapping the Body
Our interactions with the world are always about our responses to sensations that arrive in our sensory nervous system. How we respond to what we notice goes a long way to determining what sort of a life we live. It makes sense then to practice the art of noticing and responding.
Yoga and the merelogical fallacy
This is a problem that arises out of an exercise mentality. We can start to look at the body in parts and start to see problems or solutions in bits of ourselves, this is the way we thing about machines but it isn’t applicable to living organisms.
What’s so special about breathing?
There is a lot of literature around the theme of breathing in yoga and it is clearly an important subject. However we come into the world knowing how to breathe so it is not a case of needing to teach people how or when to breathe, rather to notice how they might be interfering with it.
Working with people with Chronic pain
Many people start yoga because they have some sort of pain, Over the last two decades our understanding of how long term pain develops has moved on considerably, and although there are no simple solutions to ongoing pain we do have a better understanding of how to approach it.
Biases and beliefs
As we grow we tend to repeat things that go well and stop doing things that are less successful. This is as true of the way we learn to use our body as it is with the way we engage with the wider world. In this way our habits and biases are formed, most of them are very useful and serve us well others however can limit us and hold us back from reaching our potential. Yoga is an interesting way of engaging with this aspect of our nature.
Review, Q&A and putting theory into practice.
This day will review the main points of the course with discussion and Q&A with the students and a two hour practice class so the students can see how to apply the theory they have been studying.
Follow up
This is feedback from a paricipant of the Sheffield course in 2022 :
“Pete Blackaby’s Humanist Yoga course is equally valuable for Yoga teachers and non-teachers alike. Pete’s approach to Yoga follows the ‘classical’ principle that the purpose of Yoga practice is to relieve suffering, but he brings this idea well and truly into a modern, humanist setting.
The Humanist course explores a range of theories, research and ideas that have crystalised into a way of practicing Yoga that enables us to better understand ourselves, our bodies & movement, our responses and how we make our way through life. The starting point is finding a ‘quietness’, an equilibrium within ourselves and then noticing whatever causes us to lose that quietness. This is a simple but profound approach that can make a huge, positive impact on how we feel (in every sense of the word) and it can be life changing. I have seen the benefits for myself and in my classes.
The course encourages us to question what we do and what we think. This is arguably the most important aspect of the course. It offers a different perspective on Yoga and a lens through which we can review what we practice and / or what we teach. This can be challenging … but that’s Yoga! Exploring what is useful and what is not useful in the way we use and move our body lays the ground for a better understanding of what is useful and not so useful in other areas of our lives. It’s not enough to do things because it says so in a book, or because it’s always been like this. If we take this on board, as the course encourages us to do, we learn to find our own way and this is truly enriching.
There is so much material in this course, science, research, philosophy, practice etc all presented clearly and without so much of the baggage that has accumulated in the world of Yoga over the years. I’d recommend this course to anyone interested in Yoga, whether for personal practice or for teaching.”
