Josh & Terry Summers

Creative and functional approach to the spiritual path, weaving insights and practices from Yin Yoga, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and ancient wisdom traditions

Teaching Assignment

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At this point in the curriculum, it’s time to assess your teaching. The best way to do this is to observe you working with live students.
Over the coming weeks, please record yourself teaching each of the 4 postures listed below. Each video should be at least 5 minutes long.
Josh and/or Terry will be reviewing these videos, along with 4 other Practicum students in the program. The benefit of this is to give you a wide range of constructive feedback on the finer points of teaching Yin Yoga. In turn, you will also be reviewing the videos of other students as well.

Postures to Cover

Please include one video for each of these 4 postures:

  • Saddle
  • Dragon (2-3 variations of your choice)
  • Shoelace or Square
  • Caterpillar or any asymmetric forward fold of your choice

Requirements for Each Video Submission

In your teaching cues, we will be looking for the following to assess your techniques:

  • Mention the intended target area(s) of each pose.
  • Dialogue with the student to assess whether or not they are achieving the intention of the pose. This should include asking them about the areas where they feel the pose, as well as the quality of sensations that they are experiencing.
  • Give 2-3 recommendations for modifications that the student might try to best achieve the intention of the pose(s).
  • Give 2 recommendations for a student who has a physical limitation in each particular pose. You can use a hypothetical limitation if the student in your video does not have a limitation in their own body.
  • Give clear language on how to exit the pose.
  • Each posture video must be between 4-5 minutes. Anything outside of this time will be returned for re-submission.
  • It is OK to glance at your notes while you teach, but reading from your notes will not be accepted. Consider your notes as an outline to remind you of what you want to cover; but your notes are not a script to read from.

Important: The Practicum is graded on a pass/fail basis. It is your responsibility to ensure that your submission meets the criteria of this assignment. Please review the above requirements carefully before you begin.
If your submission does NOT meet the requirements, you will need to resubmit the assignment along with a Resubmission Fee of $150.

Worksheet

Here is a printable worksheet to use as a guide while you are shooting your videos.
Download Worksheet

Submitting Your Videos

  • Once you’re done, please upload your videos to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/upload
  • Under “privacy,” please set your videos to “Unlisted” (so it won’t be available to the general public)
  • Copy the links to each video and email all four links to Josh and Terry at info@yinyogaschool.com

Here is a brief tutorial for how to 1) upload your videos and 2) get the shareable link:

Next Steps:

  • Once all the videos are collected from the group, we can begin the peer review process.
  • Josh and Terry will send you an email with links to the videos for you to review.