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.
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
Gather monthly for an intimate, focussed conversation with our small collective (maximum of only ten 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.
Sarah's Complete Library of Online Courses and Training
As part of your commitment to the 12-month program, you will gain access to the full library of Sarah's online offerings to support you in your home practice, including the 4-week intro to Trauma Sensitive Yoga, and the 8-class series of Yoga for Anxiety and Depression. You will also have a 12-month access to the 50-hour online training curriculum, which offers you a space to revisit any theoretical content you may wish to explore.
Private Online Group Space with (optional) Quarterly Yoga Activism Book Club
You'll have access to a private online group space for ongoing sharing and discussion between - and beyond - the monthly mentoring conversations. You'll also have the option to join a seasonal Yoga and Activism online book club with Sarah.
Downloadable Q+A Audios to Answer ALL Your Questions.
Sarah will record and upload intermittent audio Q+As between monthly group mentoring sessions to ensure you can ask any question that arises throughout the year and receive direct input, guidance, and resources to support you at all times.
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.
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 ten 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 a therapeutic group to work through personal traumas.
Program Plan & Schedule
The Plan
In addition to individual 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 2024 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 ten participants.
Timing:
Group zoom calls will run from 7:00-9:00pm Sydney Australia time. If you're unable to join the call, all calls will be recorded.
Group Call Dates:
1st of February
7th of March
4th of April
2nd of May
6th of June
4th of July
1st of August
5th of September
3rd of October
7th of November
Monthly Focus/Intention
Each month's group mentoring call will have a theme to inspire reflection, growth, and discussion. Monthly journal reflection prompts and practice invitations will accompany the theme. These will be finalised closer to the time in accordance with the specific needs of the group. Some examples of focal intentions include: Connection (conversation/community/collaboration); Visioning Boldly; Translating personal pain into professional projects; Authenticity; Purpose; Money; Activism/Seva/Service; Fruition; Replenishment; and Sustainability in this work.
**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.
It is also worth flagging that the 12-month investment is similar to what you can expect to earn from a single 8-week term of running a course like 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.
