Yoga Teachers: I have a business opportunity for you. Do you want to collaborate to reach a new (and important) group of students/clients that you're perfectly prepared to serve?

Professional support for integrating yoga techniques with other disciplines. I'll bring the curriculum and manual. You bring the in-person teaching and mentorship.

Dear friend and colleague,

A year or two ago, I was planning a business collaboration with a yoga teacher whose values and interests align with mine. We had multiple ideas for working together and eventually settled on a project that could expand over time. But as much as we tried to move the project forward, the timing wasn’t quite right and it didn’t come to fruition.

Now I find myself in a position to roll out the next phase of my work, and the ideas we discussed still interest me. I reached out to my colleague in case she happens to also be at a point that she can re-engage in our collaboration (which centered on offering an online course). Meanwhile, I turned my attention back to aspects that I can do on my own.

As I dove back into the material, it occurred to me that whether or not she’s available to launch an online course, our discussions included a subject related to my own personal objectives (unrelated to her specialties and interests). The project I have in mind won’t infringe on a potential collaboration with her and in fact, could inspire more interest in any online course that we develop in the future.

And so I’m writing to see what you think.

Contents

1. My Background

2. Vision

3. Perspective Over Time

4. Current Situation

5. My Proposal

6. Feedback Requested & Discount for First Commitments

My Background

As you likely know, I’ve served yoga teachers, yoga therapists, and yoga teacher trainers since 2012. In the past few years, I’ve expanded my focus to also work with health and wellness providers so that they, too, can be exceptionally prepared and inspired to serve the individual needs of clients.

I’ve nearly completed the expansion of my site to include both YogaTeacherCentral.com and WellnessResourceCenter.net (with a design refresh going live next week). So now I’m ready to share this idea with you.

Vision

Can you imagine the impact of having more educators and wellness providers (such as health and life coaches, therapists, functional medicine doctors, and so on) integrating yoga tools with other disciplines?

Perhaps you’re someone who already does this. Maybe you combine:

• Talk therapy or primary education with breathwork

• Life coaching or addiction recovery with mantra meditation, yoga philosophy or asana

• Athletic coaching or physical therapy with asana or yogic breathing

• Herbal medicine or energy healing with chakra meditation

• Any discipline with any yoga techniques!

Perspective Over Time

Many people who get my newsletter have studied and trained for years to be an expert in yoga teaching. If you’re one of them, perhaps you’ve noticed, as I have, that as time marches on, the most popular and widespread practices related to yoga have changed A LOT.

In the 60s and 70s, yoga in the West was often taught by teachers who went to India, spending extended time with yoga experts for their own personal development. After they returned home, even though they hadn’t planned on teaching, they found themselves doing just that — typically in their living room or the basement of the community center. The yoga they practiced came from various lineages with different emphases, but generally was what we might call a well-rounded Hatha Yoga practice.

Since then, there have been quite a number of movements and phases in the world of yoga, including times where I observed:

• A dramatic expansion of Vinyasa Yoga-related styles

• Many influential teachers branding their own style

• Interest in going deeper into yoga being steered from a previous norm of visiting India or studying one-on-one with a teacher into a massive proliferation of yoga teacher training programs

• Government mandates forcing studios to close, causing many teachers and trainers to develop online classes and trainings

• Other popular movements

Current Situation

Something I’ve noticed over the past few decades that hasn’t seemed to go out of style is more and more blending of disciplines, such as integrating breathing practices into counseling sessions, asana into sports, and meditation into primary education, for example. I’ve personally taught yoga to teens before they went into counseling and participated in a Hiking & Yoga retreat that included not just asana and meditation, but also Ayurveda and yoga philosophy.

I think this is a trend that benefits humanity and there’s no reason for it to dissipate — only to grow. What do you think?

Where do you see that we are today?

And do you think we can be leaders in the development of future movements?

My Proposal

I’d like to help more people to effectively integrate yoga tools with other disciplines. Do you want to help?

I envision a training — a professional and practical introduction to yoga that prepares attendees to confidently and safely integrate foundational yoga tools into their personal practice and into their work with clients.

I’ve drafted a curriculum and manual for an Integrated Yoga Training, designed for non-yoga teachers to learn to integrate yoga teachings and techniques with complementary disciplines such as education, therapy, and coaching.

If this resonates for you, my proposal is this: I offer the knowledge curriculum and training manual. You provide the teaching and mentorship.

I’m also willing to develop an Integrated Yoga certificate which attendees can earn.

Feedback Requested & Discount for First Commitments

Please email me at support@yogateachercentral.com with your thoughts.

• Can you envision such a training? What comes to mind for you?

• What structure and length of training do you think would be ideal?

• What do you need in order to start conducting such a training?

• Do you think a certificate would be important for attendees? If so, what qualifications should be necessary to earn it?

If you’re one of the first few people to commit to collaborating with me, I’ll offer the curriculum and manual to you at 50% off in exchange for your agreement to provide me with feedback during implementation.

Thank you for your time and interest. I’m so excited to work on this!

Sincerely,

Shelly Thorn