Want to learn practical skills to manage difficult emotions such as stress, grief, anger, depression and anxiety?
This eight-class introductory series is designed for you.
Classes are suitable for beginners and experienced practitioners alike.
SELF-PACED. START ANYTIME.
The program has been developed over more than a decade by your facilitator Sarah Ball. Until now it has been offered exclusively in-person in Australia, with passionate reviews from participants. Now online, the series offers you the opportunity to explore the many ways that yoga can support your mental and emotional equilibrium from your own home.
This program is referred-to extensively by community health services including GPs, psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, and other therapists and health practitioners...as well as loads of self-referrals by people in the community who simply want to learn more about this fascinating topic.
Through a Diverse Range of Specialised Yoga Practices You Will Learn
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Powerful strategies that allow you to feel more ease and enjoyment in your life, whilst gently increasing physical strength, flexibility, and overall sense of wellbeing.
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Specific methods based on the principles of yoga and evidence-based scientific research, that offer real relief for difficult feelings.
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Week-by-week practices, with recommendations for addressing particular emotions in your own life.
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Breathing and relaxation techniques that bring about more calm and positive states of mind and body.
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Therapeutic yoga postures to help you release stress and activate the innate rest-relax response in the nervous system.
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Methods for developing a home yoga practice to support you in achieving and maintaining emotional equilibrium over time.
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A tool-kit of techniques that can be used in daily life to support you at any time.
Weekly Yoga Practices
Each week over the eight classes, you will receive a specialised yoga practice. Classes include a variety of movement and breathing methods to support your nervous system regulation and enhance feelings of empowerment and equilibrium.
Trauma-Sensitive Meditation
Practicing meditation in a way that is not trauma-informed can lead to distressing experiences for many people. In this program you'll explore a simple, safe and accessible grounding practice, which allows you to build upon the secure foundation with other meditation practices in future, as well as supporting you in daily life.
Library of Supportive Talks
Each yoga class is accompanied by an informative talk, where the theories and ideas behind the yoga practice are explained in more depth. Practicing the classes alongside listening to the talks provides space for both a bottom-up AND top-down integration of knowing.
Finding the right tools to genuinely support your mental and emotional health can feel vast & confusing.
This introductory yoga series distils extensive research on yoga for anxiety and depression into eight accessible classes and talks. Each of the classes offers a different lens on the ways yoga can support mood, psyche, and overall wellbeing. Ranging from hatha yoga, to vinyasa flow, yin yoga, trauma-sensitive and restorative practices, you'll find a suite of yoga methods to draw upon and explore.
How long will I have access? We all know that everyday life can interrupt our best intentions for practice and healing. For this reason, enrolment gives you access to the eight-class series for six months. This enables students to take their time to revisit and integrate the practices into daily life.
Start Anytime. Explore at your own pace.
No yoga experience or flexibility required.
Example Curriculum
"Sarah is AMAZING in terms of her knowledge! No two classes are the same. She creates a beautiful, nurturing space for self-exploration. After Sarah's classes I feel so much kinder to myself and more confident to look after my mental health through yoga and breath practices."
Renee
WHAT OTHERS SAY...
"Wow. Just wow. I loved that the course wasn’t overly structured or inflexible about how to practice. It was just really inclusive, offering lots of options with different movements and adapting to you as an individual. Sarah has a beautiful, calming voice and manner. The class is a non-judgmental, non-competitive, in a warm and welcoming environment. I am new to yoga classes because I never thought I could do it, but I just loved it. Thank you."
Therese
"Just a quick note of thanks for helping me back on my feet...with the help of some amazing people, such as my beautiful wife, my doctor, psychologist and now you, I am in a place I thought was impossible eight weeks ago."
Tony
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.
Learn more: www.sarahball.com.au
PROFESSIONALS PLEASE NOTE
For those planning on attending the course as professional development, whether as a yoga teacher or mental health professional, a reminder that this course is intended to be introductory only. This course is not designed to equip you with the skills required to facilitate specialised yoga for anxiety & depression programs. This course doesn't cover what NOT to teach, nor does it explain the research, yogic context, and ethos behind all the methods of practice included.
However, the course may inspire a richer appreciation for this important body of wisdom, and inspire you to seek further training and practice in the area of yoga to support mental health.
Yoga teachers and mental health professionals are recommended to go on to complete the 50-hour advanced yoga training in Teaching Yoga for Yoga for Trauma, Anxiety, Depression and Body Image if you have intentions to incorporate an awareness of mental health into your teaching.