Skill in Action 200hr Immersion
A yoga teacher training and immersion facilitated by Michelle Johnson, MSW, LCSW, E-RYT 200 hr, RYT 500hr, Skill in Action Facilitators, and Guest Faculty
Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World
This immersion is for:
Yoga and Spiritual Practitioners
Visionaries
Activists
People Working at the Intersection of Justice and Yoga and
Change Agents
This training is currently in session, but you can join the interest list to be notified the next time applications open.
This yoga teacher training will offer a comprehensive inspired approach to transformational social change work through the lens of yoga and spiritual practice. Throughout this training, you will gain knowledge and skills to connect the transformation on the mat to the change that is possible off of the mat. Many people come to their yoga mats to escape the larger cultural context. While there is value in resetting and self-care, we cannot forget our connection to the collective. Skill in Action will inspire immersion participants to consider how their transformation on the mat can change not only their inner world but the outer world as well. Skill in Action has the capacity to change us from the inside out and to build a movement for change through the practice of yoga.
This immersion will focus on more deeply understanding how power and oppression operate, our proximity to social and institutional power, accountability, and why it is essential to have a spiritual practice at this time in our history. It will also include time to build community, small group, and monthly community building sessions, as well as a karma yoga project to be done in service of the community and the collective good.
Curriculum
The Skill in Action Yoga Teacher Training Immersion is a certification program that empowers the student-practitioner with both certification while also meeting the minimum requirements to become a Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Teacher at the 200-hour level (RYT 200).
The 200 hours are spent covering the following areas:
Techniques: Yoga Asana, Pranayama, and Meditation hours
Teaching Methodology
Anatomy and Physiology
Philosophy/Ethics/Lifestyle
Practicum/Karma Project
Unique highlights and perspectives of Skill in Action, Yoga and Social Justice:
Embodiment, the practice of intentional embodiment
The Eight-Fold Path of Yoga
Social Justice–From Oppression to Liberation, Suffering and Liberation, Oppression and Privilege
Accessing my Power: Exploration of individual and collective power to make change and transform
Dharma: What is my purpose and duty, and how can I manifest a yoga practice rooted in service.
Accepted students must…
Be 18 years of age or older
Submit a completed program application
Possess a demonstrated commitment to social justice and desire to offer yoga towards that end.
Exhibit the ability to contribute to a brave and cohesive learning environment
Show medical and mental health readiness to fully participate in all required aspects of the program
Have some yoga experience-note yoga experience isn’t limited to asana, the path of yoga is an eight-fold path.
Tuition
Once your application is approved, a $500 non-refundable deposit will be due. Full program cost is $2500; your deposit will be applied to the full cost.
Payment plans are available.
Schedule
The Immersion is an online program, and we will meet virtually over ZOOM with the possibility of our final weekend being in person in Winston Salem, North Carolina. More details will follow about this possibility.
Exact dates and guest teaching sessions:
We will meet over a series of weekends from October 2023 - June 2024.
Times:
Fridays 6:00-8:00 pm
Saturdays and Sundays 11:00am-1:00pm and 2:30-4:30pm ET
October 6-8th, 2023 with Michelle C. Johnson: Coming into Community
October 20th-22nd, 2023 with Michelle C. Johnson: What is Skill in Action?
November 3rd-5th, 2023 with Tejal Patel: Facts and Feelings: Cultural Appropriation in Wellness Spaces // So You Want to Chant Om & Namaste: Use of Spiritual Terms with Respect
December 1st-3rd, 2023 with Anjali Rao and Melissa Shah: The Sacred Song: Explorations from the Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita // Introduction to the Yoga Sutras
January 19th-21st 2024 with Shakira Bethea: Anatomy and the Yamas
February 2nd-4th 2024 with Marilyn Granger: Asana and Pranayama and the autonomic system, Vishoka Meditation
March 1st-3rd 2024 with Jacoby Ballard: Queer & Trans Yoga: Honoring Anger and Joy
April 5th-7th 2024 with Kiesha Battles: Applying Yin to Yoga, using the shapes as a container for contemplation, meditation, and resonation
May 3rd-5th 2024 with Mika Gainer: Integration of the Teachings
June 7th-9th 2024 Graduation weekend with Michelle C. Johnson and the Skill in Action Facilitators: Bringing it Home
*Please Note - While each session will be recorded, you will be required to be present for 85% of the sessions. If, for some reason, you need to miss a session, please let me know in advance.
Small Groups and Monthly Community Building Sessions
As mentioned, the immersion includes small group sessions and monthly community-building sessions. The small group sessions will be configured and scheduled after our first weekend together.
The monthly community sessions will be facilitated by Tan Hubbard and Laura Henderson on the following dates:
The third or fourth Wednesday of the month from 7:30-9:00pm ET, with no session taking place in December or June.
October 25th
November 15th
January 10th
February 21st
March 20th
April 24th
May 22nd
Wednesdays @ 7:30-9 p.m. ET (90 minutes)
Guest Faculty
Kiesha (she/her), a full-time yoga teacher and trainer, has a respected and well-deserved reputation in the national yoga community and is a co-director of the Yoga Retreat for Women of Color™. Kiesha owns her own business, and leads nationwide training programs from CorePower Yoga. Kiesha is a Yoga Alliance registered yoga teacher and continuing education provider, has conducted numerous impactful workshops, and has been featured in the book YES! Yoga Has Curves. With a graduate degree in Asian studies, Kiesha brings knowledge of Asian philosophy, religion, and language, as well as Eastern philosophy including Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. In addition to being a teacher, she is a wife and mother who enjoys reading, meditating, and breathing.
Kiesha Battles (she/her)
mika gainer is a meditation coach, liberation designer, and cosmic somatician re-imagining the scientia behind stories and interpersonal relationships. She works with the principles of design thinking and coaching to create human-centered, grounded experiences of learning and interaction.
Her background in a collection of industries gives her a process-oriented lens in which to view how messages are received. The often hierarchical nature of messages in leadership influences her quest to communicate interconnectedness, simplicity, and ease as a gateway to a more collaborative worldview of equity, dignity and transparency. She is thus no stranger to opening space for authentic and hard conversations as seeds to transformation.
mika has a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts and Marketing Communications and is a Certified Meta Digital Marketing Associate, and 500hr trained yoga and meditation teacher. Her educational history includes certification in inner leadership and mindfulness, peer support facilitation, embodied coaching, DEI, herbalism, tantric meditation, flower essences, and tarot guidance. She has found a thread of alchemy within self-discovery supported by eco-practices that activate creative problem solving, intuitive healing and conscious community building.
What drives her is the everchanging need to unfold practical applications of the knowledge, tools, and activities available to all humans to create a more just world wherever we might spend most of our time in the process of working - in an office, in a yoga studio, on a farm or garden, at home, at school, at church, on social media, or in the streets. She provides dynamic individual or group coaching, organizational solutions, and creative meditation classes for reworking uncertainty and piecing together broken experiences for a more just, sustainable future.
mika gainer (she/her)
Jacoby Ballard is a social justice educator and yoga teacher on Shoshone, Ute, Paiute and Goshute land now known as Salt Lake City, Utah. He leads workshops and trainings around the country on diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a yoga teacher with 24 years of experience, he leads workshops, retreats, segments in teacher trainings, teaches at conferences, and has been an artist-in-residence on dozens of college campuses. In 2008, Jacoby co-founded Third Root Community Health Center in Brooklyn, to work at the nexus of healing and social justice. Since 2006, Jacoby has taught Queer and Trans Yoga, a space for queer folks to unfurl and cultivate resilience and received Yoga Journal's Game Changer Award in 2014 and Good Karma Award in 2016 and now offers a Queer & Trans Centered Prenatal Yoga online. Jacoby has taught in schools, hospitals, non profit and business offices, a maximum security prison, a recovery center, a cancer center, LGBT centers, gyms, a veteran’s center, and yoga studios. His first book, A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation, was released in 2022. More at jacobyballard.net.
Yoga Teacher, Social Justice Educator, Author, Speaker
@JacobyBallard
Order A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation here
Jacoby Ballard (he/they)
Shakira B. Bethea, she/her, is the creator of Rhythmic Bloom and co-owner of Opal Collective, LLC, a wellness cooperative. She practices as a licensed massage and bodywork therapist, yoga “messenger” and wellness mentor to support activists, disruptors and folks on a healing journey. Her fascination with the human body and generational trauma set her on a journey to discover the intersection of social justice and wellness. She currently facilitates workshops exploring physical and energetic anatomy to uplift queer, Black, Indigenous, and People of Culture in receiving healthcare. Over the last decade, she’s shared her time caring for and holding space for folks that are nourished by compassionate touch, intentional breath, deep thought, and connection. Her joy in collaborations gave birth to Somatic Sound Journey, BIPOC Yoga and Ancestral Connection series, and creating a wellness cooperative. Shakira’s practice is informed by her B.A. in Psychology from UNC-Chapel Hill, Massage Therapy Diploma from Body Therapy Institute, a Spirit of Learning Certificate from The Center for Embodied Education, and various Yoga Teacher Training Certifications from Heart of Yoga School and Skill in Action. Learn more about her work at www.rhythmicbloom.com.
Shakira Bethea (she/her)
My name is Tejal (she/they). I’m a first-generation Indian American yoga teacher, writer, podcaster, and community organizer. I advocate for yoga through a social justice lens and educate and empower individuals and groups around the world to do the same. I accomplish this with the Tejal Yoga online studio, a revolutionary all South Asian teacher-led yoga community focused on social justice actions and authentic, culturally-rooted spiritual practices, the abcdyogi global community led by South Asian yoga and mindfulness teachers, and the Yoga is Dead Podcast, offering education through podcast, e-book, and webinar trainings.
Tejal Patel (she/they)
Melissa is an Indian-American yoga therapist who skillfully adapts yoga and Ayurveda to the individual. She believes that yoga doesn't need to be stripped of its culture and history in order for it to be palatable and beneficial to others. She is deeply interested in the intersection of yoga and social justice, and works to make feeling well accessible to all, but especially those who are often left out of the wellness conversation.
Melissa Shah (she/her)
Marilyn Granger, MD, C-IAYT has practiced psychiatry for over 30 years and recently retired. She received her medical degree from Jefferson Medical College and her psychiatry training from Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
Being a yoga practitioner for over 20 years Dr. Granger initially completed her 300 hour yoga teacher training at Triad Yoga Institute in Greensboro, N.C. then went onto complete her 500 hour yoga teacher training from the American Viniyoga Institute. She then completed the American Viniyoga Institute 500 hour yoga therapy training. She is a certiMied Yoga therapist through the International Association of Yoga Therapist (IAYT).
She has a level II training in Emotional Freedom Technique. She has explored transpersonal realms through Stan Grof’s Holotrpoic Breathwork. Dr. Granger’s path has also intersected with shamanic practices.
Her ventures from the transpersonal to the science of medicine provides her with a rich perspective of body, mind, and spirit relationship. She likes to explore ways to apply the ancient teachings of yoga to the modern world of medicine and health.
Marilyn Granger (she/her)
Anjali offers insight into the Yoga stories and histories that have been obscured by heteropatriarchy and colonization . She brings an intersectional lens in integrating yoga philosophy and history, with storytelling, imagery and poetry. She is an Indian American immigrant, a cancer survivor and believes that a dedicated practice of yoga in all its expansiveness can alchemize and heal the world by creating ripples of change within and around us. She is an aspiring writer, the host of The Love of Yoga podcast, President of the Board of Directors of Accessible Yoga, an international non profit organization dedicated to sharing the teachings and benefits of yoga with those who have been marginalized.
Anjali Rao (she/her)
Skill in Action Facilitators
Tan Hubbard (they/she)
Garrett Jurss (he/they)
Lauren Kay Roberts (she/her)
Raudhah Rahman (she/her/dia)
Laura Henderson (Laura)