Hello Dear One,
In recent years it has become clear that so many graduates of the 50-hour Yoga for Trauma, Anxiety, Depression and Body Image training are primarily flying solo in this work. Many are doing - or dreaming of - great things for our communities, but ultimately isolated from genuinely inspiring and life-enriching supports.
As a graduate of the 50-hour training, if you - like so many of us - have a yearning for richer collegial/professional relationships with others who are also passionate about yoga and social change, which lasts beyond a short training or program, then this year-long deep-dive mentorship is for you.
Would you like to have an ongoing relationship with a small collective and primary mentor who help you navigate the landscape as a yoga teacher specialising in the area of yoga for mental health, emotional resilience, body image or trauma?
Are you already integrating ideas or principles from the 50-hour training in your current classes or programs, but wish to deepen the ways you do this, or feel a desire to clarify the skills you bring regarding mental-health sensitivity in your work?
Do you have seeds of ideas you’d like support to bring to life in their structure/specifics/timing etc?
Do you love this work and these ideas and wish to make a larger portion – if not all – your livelihood/income from them, but feel uncertain about how to bring that to life?
If you're feeling a clear or full-bodied 'YES' to any of all of these questions, then this small group mentoring program was designed with you in mind.
What's Included In the 12-Month Program?
Multiple One-on-One Mentoring Sessions with Sarah
You will have multiple individual one-hour mentoring sessions with Sarah throughout the year. One at the beginning, one mid-program, and a final session at the closure of the 12-month program. These sessions will each be book-ended by voice message/email exchanges with Sarah to clarify your intent and ensure every minute of your 1-1 sessions are as valuable as possible for you. NOTE - Individual mentoring sessions with Sarah are otherwise unavailable at this time. Those in this group will be the sole focus of Sarah's one-on-one mentoring in 2024.
Monthly Group Zoom Calls with Focussed Intention and Reflective Guide
Gather monthly for an intimate, focussed conversation with our small collective (maximum of only twelve places in the program) to explore themes and share personal breakthroughs and challenges. Conversations will be supported by monthly journaling tools and invitational practice-points to enhance your experience of integrating the program into your life. See schedule section below for sample intentions for monthly mentoring sessions.
Exclusive Access To Ongoing
1-1 Mentoring Sessions with Sarah Beyond 12-Months
Sarah receives regular requests for both counselling and mentoring sessions in her work. However, her sole focus at this time is to mentor those in the Small Group Mentoring Program, and to offer ongoing access to seasonal 1-1 sessions with those who have completed the 12-month program and wish to continue with 1-1 sessions with Sarah. This is the only pathway to working 1-1 with Sarah.
Private Group Conversation Space
You'll have access to a private group conversation space for ongoing sharing and discussion between - and beyond - the monthly mentoring conversations, to celebrate, ask questions, and generally stay connected with your collective as the conversation unfolds...
Exclusive Direct Access to Voice/Text Messages with Sarah
Sarah is available to each participant in this group directly via Whatsapp voice - or text -messages between monthly group mentoring calls and your personal 1-1 Sessions. This ensures you can ask any questions that arise throughout the year and receive direct input, guidance, reassurance, and resources to support you at all times. This group is the only space through which Sarah offers direct contact in her work.
Peer Supervision with Guidance from Sarah
Those who are interested will have a chance to enhance the year-long experience by connecting in pairs or triads with others in the small collective for peer-meetups throughout the year. This option will be supervised by Sarah (should you wish to opt-in), and is intended to support a deepening of the personal work whilst being woven into your community.
12-Months Access to Sarah's Complete Library of Online Programs
You will receive access to the full library of Sarah's online offerings to support you in your home practice and ongoing learning, including the 4-week intro to Trauma Sensitive Yoga; and the 8-class series of Yoga for Anxiety and Depression. You also will have 12-months access to the 50-hour online training curriculum, which offers you a space to revisit any theoretical content you may wish to explore.
Exclusive Quarterly Yoga- Activism Book Club
Boil the kettle, put on your comfiest clothes, and join Sarah and the small group collective for an (optional) seasonal evening session to dive deep into conversation around a book elected by the group that supports a deepening of connection, and an expansion of how we live personally and collectively.
Personalised Care Package Created for You With Love
As part of your commitment to the 12-month program, you will receive a personalised care package to enhance your sense of connection with Sarah and the collective. Each unique box contains an array of treats and treasures chosen by Sarah to express her care, appreciation and intention of deeply supporting the heart and life of each person in the group.
Having now trained hundreds of teachers in the 50-hour training, it has become clear that there is a genuine need to offer an ongoing small-group experience for graduates, where individual mentoring and small-group connection can emerge over an extended window of time.
As a 50-hour training graduate, you know that the 50-hour program emerged out of a deep need in our teaching community for access to resources, research, ideas and methods, and that that offering was created in that spirit.
The same is true of this intimate small-group 12-month mentoring program.
The group of maximum twelve participants will be small enough to focus on each individual in their own current process and future dreams, whilst also being robust enough in numbers to provide a collective space for wisdom-sharing with others.
To lean on. To cheer with, and to learn alongside. As we stumble, and rise. Together.
The Program Is For You
If You Have A Longing To...
- Integrate and deepen your own wisdom and learning together with genuinely supportive community.
- Shift beyond feelings of holding back from doing your work due to imposter syndrome, and/or to process imposter feelings that arise within your work.
- Deepen your personal understanding and implementation of trauma informed practice on-the-ground.
- Refine the way you teach and share these principles.
- Build your confidence and readiness in sharing specialised offerings within your community.
- Build your community and supports around these impactful conversations with humour, play, care, and curiosity.
- Run a business with integrity around these principles whilst generating right-livelihood that supports you, and – where relevant - your dependents.
- Weave genuine threads of relationship that can hold you as a practitioner and advocate of this work to prevent burnout and enhance vitality.
- Bring the principles and practices of yoga to life within the parameters of social justice and trauma experiences.
- Enrich and sustain your personal practice - Sadhana - through the power of collective support, - or Sangha.
- Experience the gift of showing up 'imperfectly' together in a world that sells us unattainable ideals, and instead choosing the radical unlearning of relating and teaching through shared humanness.
This program is NOT for you if...
- You’re looking for business strategy alone.
- You want to be led with a directive approach to coaching.
- You are already doing everything that you want to do in your work.
- You're looking for someone on whom you can rely for spontaneous phone calls (Sarah is available anytime to receive voice messages via Whatsapp, as well as emails. She responds as promptly as possible to all needs of individuals and the group but is not available on-call).
- You’re looking for a therapeutic group to work through personal traumas.
Program Plan & Schedule
The Plan
In addition to individual mentoring sessions with Sarah at the start, mid-program and end-of-program (to be scheduled individually), we will also gather together monthly.
Group mentoring gatherings will start in February 2025 on the first Thursday evening of each month, concluding on the first Thursday in November.
This 12-month program will be limited to a maximum of twelve participants.
Timing:
Group zoom calls will run from 7:00-9:00pm AEDT Sydney Australia time. If you're unable to join the call, all calls will be recorded.
Group Call Dates:
6th of February
6th of March
3rd of April
1st of May
5th of June
3rd of July
7th of August
4th of September
2nd of October
6th of November
Monthly Focus/Intention
Each month's group mentoring call has a focus to inspire reflection, growth, and discussion.
Monthly journal reflection prompts accompany the focus.
Some Examples of Monthly Explorations Include:
- Authenticity and Imposter Stories
- Speaking up. Sharing Your Voice. Understanding Where We're Called to Action Through the Story of the 'Sand in the Oyster Shell'.
- Stepping Up and Stepping Out: The Bridge Between Safety and Risk
- Sharing and Working with Your Gifts. Getting Curious about the Idea of Life Purpose.
- Boundaries and Boundlessness - The Dance Between Possibility and Capacity.
- Storytelling - Sharing our Seeds, Harvest, Resting Ground: Wisdom Garnered from our Successes and Stumblings.
- Right Livelihood - Making a Living, Living.
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Translating Personal Pain into Professional Projects
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Sustainability in this Work: Connection and Belonging in Creative Worklife. Conversation. Community. Collaboration. Activism. Seva. Service.
- Enjoying the Fruits: Naming the Good; Fruition; Replenishment and Vitality/Joy.
**Optional Peer Supervision and Quarterly Yoga Activism Book Club will be discussed and scheduled once the mentoring program commences.
Insight Into the Pricing Structure
Some insight into the pricing structure - in the spirit of transparency:
The 12-month program is priced to enable Sarah to be able to wholeheartedly share with this group across the 12-months in the ways that such a program deserves, so that it’s a genuine inspiration, support and resource for each of you, and not just a tokenistic idea of a program. This program is the only place in Sarah's professional life where she offers direct access to contact with her day-to-day outside of email. Her availability to those in the mentoring group is much more in-depth than any of her other programs.
It is also worth flagging that the 12-month investment is similar to what you could expect to earn if you were to run a single 8-week term of a course like Sarah's Yoga for Anxiety and Depression in your own region. To clarify this – Sarah charged $245 per person in the 8-week Yoga for Anxiety and Depression course that was offered via a local community centre in Bulli each term for several years. Twenty participants were enrolled per group.
Refund policy
Due to the small group, and closed nature of this program, once you’ve committed to the twelve-months and we have begun the mentor process, full payment will be required, even if you are on a payment plan and decide to withdraw from the group for any reason. In order to be able to offer payment plans that are flexible for individual budgets, I am relying on the yogic ethic of this group to honour their financial commitment even in the case of needing/choosing to withdraw whilst on a payment plan.
Your Facilitator
Sarah Ball is a registered senior yoga teacher with Yoga Australia, who has been teaching yoga since 2003, practicing since 1995, and regularly facilitates and mentors on level one and two yoga teacher trainings as well as yoga therapy trainings.
She is also a qualified social worker, counsellor, and art therapist, specialising in mental health, social justice, positive body image, eating disorders, and trauma recovery.
Sarah has developed a certified 50-hour advanced yoga training in Teaching Yoga for Trauma, Anxiety, Depression and Body Image. She also teaches regular 8-week courses on Yoga for Anxiety and Depression, and the Body Love Yoga 1-day workshop program.
Sarah has taught the Trauma Informed Practice and Mental Health subjects in the Bachelor of Social Work program at the University of Wollongong.
She also runs a counselling clinic both online and in-person in the Illawarra, NSW Australia, where she specialises in eating disorder and body image recovery and support.
