Overview

This is open to 15 students from all hatha yoga lineages (Iyengar, Ashtanga, Vinyasa, Jivamukti, etc.) The course is a training for serious students, aspiring teachers, or teachers who want to advance their knowledge.  This is a non-residential teachers intensive.

If you want personal instruction from David on your practice in the Mysore class, check out his Mysore intensive in January.

Description

Refining Your Ashtanga Teaching: Tradition, Technology, Healing, and Purpose

Join David for a transformative teacher training experience in a small, semi-private format, limited to just 15 students. This course offers you a rare opportunity to receive generous individual guidance and support from David Garrigues, one of the most knowledgeable, passionate, and loving Ashtanga teachers.

The training is designed to deepen your understanding and practice of Ashtanga Yoga through four core themes:

1. Technology: Master the Ashtanga Yoga technology through David’s unique seven asana principles. This includes refining your skills in physical adjustments, verbal cues, prop usage, modifications, and crafting customized short forms and sequences. These tools will enhance both your personal practice and your teaching effectiveness.
2. Tradition and Innovation: Honor the rich tradition of Ashtanga Yoga while also embracing innovation. Understand the roots of the practice and explore how to evolve it with practical wisdom and creativity to suit contemporary needs and future generations.
3. Purpose (Dharma): Devote time to vision questing and exploring your life’s purpose. This segment focuses on discovering, deepening, or solidifying your sense of purpose regarding your teaching and/or other aspects of your life.  Create more clarity and resolution around living your purpose with dedication.
4. Healing: Learn to cultivate a healing practice that goes beyond physical strength and flexibility. Address physical, emotional, and spiritual wounds within your practice, turning affliction or suffering into a forum for personal  growth, transformation, and healing. Develop skills to bring this healing approach into your teaching, offering a sanctuary for students to work through their own challenges.

In this intimate setting, you will also build empowering bonds with other dedicated, like-minded students, becoming part of a supportive community committed to learning and personal growth. 

Who is the training for? 

Serious yoga students and teachers who want to gain confidence and knowledge in sharing the healing technology of hatha yoga with others. It's also for students who want to benefit from the expertise of David Garrigues receiving support and mentorship for their personal practice, including assistance in classes, teaching, studying movement and posture. 

List of topics to be covered in the training:

• Effective ways to adapt the daily asana practice for different bodies, ages, genetic endowments, injuries, and other limiting conditions.
• Sequencing intelligent, Ashtnaga classes that respect and draw upon the traditional set of series and yet offer different possibilities based on time limits, variety, experience levels, learning, growth, safety, aptitudes and other factors that are important to consider when offering classes.  
• How to modify effectively and use props so as to make even difficult poses more accessible to students. 
• Giving safe physical adjustments that lead the student towards independence and the ability to self-adjust.
• Learning 7 fundamental asana principles that give you a clear method to approach your practice and teaching. 
• How to integrate prāṇāyāma and meditation practices into practice and teaching. 
• Deepening knowledge of yoga philosophy and mythology and better understand how the sacred texts directly apply to and are revealed through practice and teaching

Interview

Does This Sound Like You?

Maybe you have already taken a teacher training program and yet you still don’t know how to:

• Adapt the practice for different bodies, ages, injuries, or other limits.
• Identify logical steps in the development of postures that prepare the body for more complex versions of the transitions or positions. 
• Confidently lead a class and have the ability to emphasize flow or slowing things down to analzye a pose or transition or study its particular details/steps  
• Understand how to address a full spectrum of limitations within both movements and postures.
• Adjust each individual person in unique, suitable ways and do it with confidence and proficiency
• Foster empowerment in your students by adopting appropriate strategies to navigate challenges in practice.
• Break down complex postures and techniques with a step-by-step progressive approach
• Integrate yoga philosophy in a practical way that enhances your practice and teaching and helps you be more skillful and conscious in your everyday life 
• Integrate prāṇāyāma and meditation techniques into your practice and teachings.

Imagine if...

• You could look at any posture and understand the correct alignment or know a suitable step to teach appropriate to each unique student’s body
• You understood the anatomical aspects of each asana so you can better support your student in avoiding injury or repetitive strain
• You had a multi-dimensional understanding of both basic and complex transitions and asanas.
• You were confident helping students build a progressive step by step approach towards more complex postures.
• You could confidently explain the foundations of Ashtanga yoga and know how to teach the technology effectively incorporating knowledge of asanas, vinyasas, pranayama, bandhas, and dhyana.
• Knew how to make the practice accessible even to those with severe limitations or who are recovering from injury or even recent surgery.
• You have a personal, ever-deepening relationship with the time-proven teachings of the yoga tradition
• The sacred yogic texts (Yoga Sutras, Bhagavad Gita, Hatha Yoga Pradipika and others) were your friends, ready and available to give you practical support and guidance in your practice, life, and work.
• You were able to assess both the microcosm of your practice and the macrocosm of your greater life through a yogic lens that supports nuanced understanding, penetrating insight and skillful action in response to even the most difficult of challenges.
• You were enthused, inspired and empowered to perceive your life as a healing path that is leading you gently and persistently towards greater self-realization.

Seven Core Asana Principles:

1. Samasthiti: Use the root position as the reference point for every pose.
2. Crouch and Spring: Create a clear setup and find pure action in transitions.
3. Foundation First: Lengthen and strengthen the legs/arms to support the spine in each pose.
4. Awaken the Spine: Enhance spinal alignment and mobility—learn to 'gesture' with the spine.
5. Tap Breathing: Access Prana (life force) through breath control.
6. Seal in Energy: Use mudras and energy locks to channel vital energy.
7. Play with Pairs of Opposites: Balance opposing forces for bringing power and harmony to each form.

Daily Schedule

SUNDAY - FRIDAY  (6:30am - 3pm)

Mysore class (non contact hours)
Sunday - Friday  6:30am - 8:30am 

Teacher Training class (contact hours)
Sunday - Friday  10am - 3pm with a 1 hour lunch break. 

Location 

Canggu is a village on the south coast of the Indonesian island of Bali. It's surrounded by terraced rice paddies and known for beaches like Canggu and Echo, with strong surf. The village boasts a relaxed, bohemian atmosphere, an ideal haven for those seeking respite from the hustle and bustle of Bali’s more tourist-centric areas. North of Canggu, Tanah Lot is a Hindu temple that sits just offshore on a rocky outcrop.  Canggu’s strategic location makes it an ideal base for taking day trips to nearby areas. One of Bali’s most stunning natural attractions, the rice field terraces, can be found in the countryside. 

Accommodation options are wide-ranging, with everything from simple beach hostels to exquisite luxury resorts, fit for a whole host of tastes and budgets. 

A mini guide to Canggu

Traveling to Canggu

Flying to Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport (also known as Denpasar Airport) is the most convenient way to reach Canggu. The airport is located approximately 40 minutes to an hour’s drive away from Canggu, depending on traffic conditions. Taxis and private drivers are readily available for hire at the airport.

For travellers from Europe, consider airlines such as Emirates, Qatar Airways, or KLM for flights to Bali. These airlines offer connecting flights with layovers in Dubai, Doha, Singapore, or Amsterdam, respectively.

For those flying from the USA, Cathay Pacific, Korean Air, or Singapore Airlines are recommended. These carriers provide connecting flights with stopovers in Hong Kong, Seoul, or Singapore.

Direct flights to Bali from major Australian cities like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane are available with airlines such as Jetstar, Qantas, and Virgin Australia. These flights offer a convenient option for travellers from Australia.

TOURIST VISA

All students need to apply for a short individual tourist/visit visa.  The purpose of your trip is tourism. Apply here

From Airport to Canggu

As there’s no public transfer option, the only way to get from Denpasar Airport (also known as Ngurah Rai International Airport) to Canggu is to take an airport taxi.  It's possible to pre-book the taxi but it's not necessary. The journey time will be around 40 minutes, depending on traffic, and the cost will be approximately €20 (IDR 310,000).

Yoga Location

Yoga will take place at Ubuntu Yoga.  David has rented their yoga space out for his Mysore intensive. All registration is done through David's site. Check out the shala and find the location here.

Lodging and other info

There are many lodging options with different price ranges in Canguu. Prices range from homestays at $12 USD to high end luxury resorts at $250 USD/night.  Visit Tripadvisor

Students can also stay at Ubuntu Yoga where the shala is located. Visit the Ubuntu Yoga website for their accommodation rates and availability. 

Tuition

* Please note there are no refunds or cancellations. 

Tuition - $2000 (includes deposit)

Nonrefundable deposit $350

Application

This intensive is open to students from all hatha yoga lineages who are familiar with David's teachings and want to intensely study hatha yoga technology at a high standard.

All students must apply. Please do not pay your tuition until you've received confirmation from David. 

Email a note to asanakitchen@gmail.com. You will be notified about the status of your application within a week. 

Please provide three elements in your note:
1 - A little background on you and your practice
2 - Your experience with me and my teaching approach. 
3 - An affirmation that you strongly desire to learn from me, are committed to giving your best effort and are ready to dedicate yourself to the specific work that makes up the course.