Yoga Chair Training
The 50 Hour Chair Teacher Training Program is appropriate for any yoga teacher or movement facilitator who would like to offer more accessible yoga practices. The training is broken into 3 parts, and you can explore one or the complete training! This is a Yoga Alliance certified course.
About the training
This training is open to committed practitioners hoping to deepen in their personal practice; yoga teachers (teaching or hoping to); as well as social workers, psychologists, bodyworkers, therapeutic recreationalists, art therapists, and any other group or health workers looking to offer simple yoga tools to their communities as an add-on to their current therapeutic practices. This training was developed with each module building on the previous one, but can also be attended as individual modules. This yoga training is based in the lineage of Krishnamacharya and TKV Desikachar (viniyoga), where we consider what is appropriate practice – why, for who, and for what purpose. In this lineage we focus on the FUNCTION of practice over the FORM, which means that anyone who is breathing can do this practice.
This training is intended to offer practitioners the space and time to deepen in their personal yoga and meditation practices within a like-minded practice community (sangha) as well as offer practical ways that simple therapeutic teachings may be formally taught or facilitated in group settings (within or outside of a yoga studio), or informally lived and shared as life practices with friends, family, and community. It is open to students of any age, ability, and mobility level (students living with injury, who are wheelchair bound, with concussions, etc).
Meet Kassandra Prus
Kassandra Prus (they/them) is a Tkaronto (Toronto)-based accessible yoga teacher, yoga educator, yoga therapist, and tarot reader of Ukrainian heritage. It is important to Kassandra to conduct their coaching practice in a way that works to decolonize yoga, challenges capitalism and ableism, values intersectional feminism and anti-racism, and upholds body sovereignty.
Kassandra’s yoga lineage of study is through teachers Ante and Felicia Pavlovic (Yoga Therapy Toronto) and Dr N Chandrasekaran (Yoga Vaidya Śālā) through direct teachings of TKV Desikachar, son of T. Krishnamacharya and founder of Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram (KYM) in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Kassandra works to uphold and respect the powerful classical Vedic teachings of Krishnamacharya and his family lineage through rigorous ongoing personal practice and study. These classical teachings come directed through Kassandra’s lived experience of navigating the modern world as a queer and non-binary, chronically ill survivor on the autistic spectrum, and all of the systemic barriers that this entails. For Kassandra, working with yoga as a somatic mano śastra (science of the mind) mirrors newly proven western understandings in psychotherapy and neuroscience, somatic psychotherapies, our understanding of trauma and more. It is of great interest to Kassandra to see how these deep indigenous knowledge systems built to heal all the layers of ourselves from the inside out (body, physiology, mind, emotions, spirit) will co-mingle with modern allopathic medical research into the future.
Kassandra’s life experiences and lineage of teaching has brought them to working with students and clients of myriad abilities and conditions–those living with disabilities, chronic pain, trauma, autoimmune issues, physical and mental health concerns, and more. While facilitating the health of heart, mind, breath, and body through Yoga Therapy, Kassandra may also turn to Tarot reading in a practical way to illuminate the way forward for students when the path seems obscured. Kassandra also specializes in teaching chair yoga group classes, especially for seniors, as well as group classes for practitioners where the focus is on integrating the subtler practices of yoga (prāṇāyāma, stages of meditation, bhāvanam/visualization, and mantra) within an āsana practice to create a therapeutic effect for all the layers of the self.
As an educator, Kassandra develops and facilitates trainings to support others looking for ways to make yoga practices and medicines more accessible to their target populations. Since 2018 they have run multiple 25-40hour Therapeutic and Chair Yoga Trainings, as well as a Subtle Anatomy module in Union Yoga + Wellness’ 225hr YTT. With yoga therapist colleagues, Kassandra is currently working towards the launch of The Yoga Therapist Collective of Canada–a place for education, collaboration, advocacy and more. Kassandra’s hope is that one day people of all abilities, ages, races, genders, religions, financial statuses, and health statuses will have places to engage safely with the deeply healing practices that yoga has to offer the world, through diverse teachers and practitioners with lived understanding of the practices.
More Info
Please visit Kassandra Prus’ website for more details and to sign up for the training
Kassandra’s training was so much more than I could have ever expected from a Chair and Accessible Yoga training. Kassandra has not only a brilliant mind but a brilliant heart. Their depth of embodied knowledge allowed for a deep, fluid dive into yoga philosophy as it applies to accessibility and inclusivity. I left this training feeling not only like I had more to offer my students, but that I was more well-equipped to go deeper into my own practice, both on the mat and in the world. If I had to choose what I found most valuable personally, it probably would have been Kassandra’s particular way of sharing the philosophy, as well as their teachings on the vayu-s and pranayama practice. Something in the way that they taught allowed this stuff to land for me in ways it hadn’t before.
The Chair and Accessible YTT will invite you to rediscover the fundamentals of asana practice, drawing from the extensive tradition of yoga to then adapting the asana practice to each and every person and their body. The body, your body, my body is in all a wonder and what hold us in grace to this moment. You will be held with grace under Kassandra in both developing your capacity for understanding yoga philosophy, creating a practice that speaks to more than one way of practicing asana, and to confront your privileges in being able to even access spaces for practicing yoga asana. Whether your practice is in using a chair or any other kind of structural support you will develop both a creative and sensitive lens in creating a truly inclusive practice.
Kass is a thoughtful and knowledgeable yoga therapist and teacher and their chair yoga course is a must for any yogi wanting to develop a more accessible yoga practice.