HLL01 BioMedical Yoga Therapy for Mental Health
Registered 20 hour Higher Level Learning (HLL) Certificate
People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Suffering is grace.
Suffering is optional.
Suffering exists to wake us up.
When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight.
~Thich Nhat Hanh
If the above teachings speak to you in any way, then it might be a consideration to attend this 2-day retreat weekend training. Some people attend primarily for professional development, others for personal development. However, it is your own personal inner work, the transformation of your own suffering that allows us to hold another’s suffering with both gentility and compassion.
This 2-day retreat on Yoga for Mental Health will merge science & spirituality and assist us to ease the suffering within ourselves.
By developing insight into the teachings of oneness and impermanence, we can hold and embody these teachings for others.
We learn to engage fully in the moment, the breath, our bodies to truly observe and see the miracle unfolding in front of us.
This moment is an utter miracle unfolding in front of us.
BIYOME’s Higher Level Learning can be undertaken as Continuing Professional Development (CPD) with Yoga Australia and may obtain Continuing Education (CE) recognition with Yoga Alliance. The course contact hours non-contact hours (CPD’s and CE’s), allocated across the two registering yoga bodies, do however differ. Please contact us for more information.
Should you wish to complete a full yoga certification (150 hours – 650 hours), please see details available here.
Course Code:
Next Date Offered:
Currently, this course is available online only.
Session Details
BioMedical Yoga Therapy for Mental Health: Anxiety, Stress, Irritability
Time & Date: Saturday 24 February 2024, 9:30am – 1:00pm
Hosted By: Celia Roberts BSc Senior Yoga Teacher and Yoga Therapist
This retreat and training is an immersive experience of evidence-based science and evidence-informed practice combined with ancient applications for overcoming suffering and moving towards physical and mental liberation through the art of clinical yoga therapy. Celia’s session introduces the theory and research behind the neuroscientific link between meditation, yoga, and natural therapeutic remedies to the body’s reactive states. Clinical yoga therapy for mental health offers practical wisdom for overcoming anxiety, stress and irritability.
We will be exploring:
- How stress, anxiety, addiction, depression, and the like are in the body, not just the brain, as well as how adverse mental health affects the microbiome and vice versa
- How and why the size of the amygdala and its connectivity to the rest of the brain is linked to high levels of prolonged anxiety
- How and why inflammation is connected to mental health
- The neuroscientific foundation of how meditation positively affects in the body and the brain, including the biological and karmic fate in our genes (epigenetics)
- How and why traditional yoga has always explored neuroscience through the sutras and philosophy
- How and why some dietary changes can often show more significant improvement than psychological treatment while still acknowledging the imperative nature of utilising the two together in a successful manner
- Practical application of breathing for heart rate variability
- Eliciting nervous system control (vagal tone)
- Inviting yourself to explore a pose with mindfulness of the internal perception of pleasant or painful sensation
- Exploring consciousness beyond thought
Trauma-Informed Breathwork and Emotional Release – Enhancing Relationships
Time & Date: Saturday 24 February 2024, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Hosted By: Alisa Craig, Breathwork Therapist
“Emotion is the chief source of all becoming conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion”
Dr. Carl Jung
Emotional Intelligence is the master key to our mental and physical health. Yet our culture teaches us to suppress our emotions and to deny our feelings, which is one of the leading causes of today’s well-being crisis.
Emotional suppression increases our risk of many physical illnesses, such as cancer, heart and autoimmune diseases, while increasing our risk of premature death by up to 30%.
Emotions communicate our internal state with others. So it’s no surprise that suppressing our emotions diminishes social connectedness, limits intimacy, and reduces the depth of our friendships. Emotional suppression is a direct cause of anxiety, depression and myriad other mental health issues.
Accepting and allowing an emotion entails noticing its presence – often, its physical presence in our body – softening our resistance to it, tuning into what it’s trying to tell us, and using that information to inform our behaviour. Doing this can benefit both our immediate mental health and our long-term physical health.
Breathwork helps us FEEL and HEAL supressed emotions we unconsciously suppressed at the time, allowing us to become masters of our own emotions and, ultimately, of our own health and well-being.
Breathwork can facilitate profound life transformations, changing our bodies through deep somatic shifts in the autonomic nervous system and at a cellular level. Our minds are altered through greater awareness of our emotions and subconscious.
Breathwork is the ultimate tool for self-mastery, personal expansion and intimate connection with self.
BioMedical Yoga Therapy for Mental Health: Depression, Low Mood, Melancholia
Time & Date: Sunday 25 February 2024, 9:30am – 1:00pm
Hosted By: Celia Roberts BSc Senior Yoga Teacher and Yoga Therapist
The morning session is an immersive experience of understanding the innate energetic connection between body, mind, emotional states and breathing. We will together be exploring BioMedical Yoga Therapy for Mental Health, particularly looking at depression, low mood, melancholia.
In this session, Celia will assist your scientific exploration of breath to cultivate alertness, concentration and qualities of the ‘sattvic’ state: calmness, tranquillity, lightness, comfort and attentiveness.
You will come to understand the deep mind-body connection through the science of psychoneuroimmunology. We will explore our posture and stance along with facial posture, microexpressions and vocal tones as avenues to overcoming low mood or negative mental states.
Celia will then offer guidance in asana on cultivating certain states of mind and body through top-down and bottom-up processing, using sankalpa and bhavana in yogic terms.
Finally, we shall explore overcoming the mind with the heart. We will learn about the heart-brain and Anahata Akash (yogic term for heart space), which can also be translated to mean ‘unstruck or unbeaten’. We will use meditations relating to the yoga sutra, “vishoka va yotishmati” through practice, which can be understood as concentrating on the ‘everlasting light of the heart’.
We will be exploring:
- Understanding how the body, mind, breath complex relieves stress-related conditions and depression
- Using breathing practises to influence our psychology and physiology
- Top-down and bottom-up processing
- Depression and Psychoneuroimmunology
- Depression and Epigenetics
- Depression and the Biome
- Yoga Asana for low mood & depression
- Cultivating a whole heart-orientation toward life
- Strength training through asana for depression and low mood
- Heart-Brain training
Kundalini Yoga Medical Model for Addictions and Mental Health
Time & Date: Sunday 25 February 2024, 1:45pm – 4:45pm
Hosted By: Samantha Lindsay-German, Kundalini Yoga
This is an immersive experience of understanding the Kundalini Yoga Medical Model by David Shannahoff-Khalsa and the protocols for use for addictions and mental health issues.
This session aims to understand addiction as a way in which we view and process life – not as a specific attraction to a harmful substance.
This session aims to see addictions and mental health issues from a different perspective in accordance to Yoga sutra 2.16, creating a “future free from suffering”.
We will be exploring:
- How and why Kundalini yoga is proven to work for addictions and mental health, building a resilient brain
- How to strengthen the nervous system – parasympathetic and sympathetic
- How to challenge and reprogram the nervous system through the Kundalini Yoga Medical Model
- Understand the Medical Model of kundalini yoga techniques by David Shannahoff-Khalsa and the protocols for use
- Learn to practice and teach the 40-day Kundalini yoga program for healing addictions and incorporate everyday short meditations for healing addictions into practice
Your Investment
Face-to-Face: One Time Upfront Payment
Your investment is $488
Please email admin@biyome.com.au if you are interested in attending one day only ($268) or single sessions ($148 per session). Please note that post-event recordings, where available, will only be provided to those attending the full retreat.
Online Only Retreat Access
Please see here for more details.
Additional Information
This course is intended to provide you will a substantial knowledge base in yoga therapy – this however does not qualify you as a yoga therapist. We use the term “therapy” as a reference to varied methodologies that enable well-being.
Disclaimer & Waiver
This weekend is a registered 20 hour Yoga Australia training weekend and attracts CPD points for yoga teachers, therapists, allied health professionals. Interested members of the public who are engaged in the practices of yoga and meditation may attend for interest, education and higher-level learning.
These short courses do not qualify you to become a yoga teacher or therapist. By registering and attending this course you agree to our terms and conditions and our waiver as located here. For more information on how to become fully qualified, please check our yoga teacher training and yoga therapy training for more details.
