In 2022 you will have two opportunities to train to be a Kundalini Global yoga teacher with Carolyn Cowan. One begins in May and is entirely online. The other will take place live, in Dubai, in November.
Do something amazing
‘Do something amazing’ was the tagline when the first Kundalini Global teacher training was launched back in 2019…
…if the feedback and success of the first cohort of teachers in anything to go by, the training certainly lived up to its promise of amazing-ness.
But why is it so amazing? What does it offer to trainees, beyond the practicalities of being a ‘good enough’ yoga teacher and learning how to teach postures and breaths well?
This is what we are writing to begin to answer today.
Have you felt drawn to find out more about the Kundalini Global training?
Perhaps you’ve tried Kundalini Global classes and want to go deeper into a Kundalini Global practise for yourself.
Perhaps you’ve been following Carolyn for a while and are curious about her offer, about how her new form of yoga and the teacher training may be different from others… what is Kundalini Global all about?!
Perhaps you’re considering your first yoga teacher training for some time, weighing up pros and cons, but aren’t sure if this is the one for you…
Or maybe you’re already an experienced yoga teacher (which many of our trainees to date have been) you want to make a commitment to another 220 hour course…
These are some of the common themes in the questions we receive and so, today, we thought we’d share a little on what you can expect from the Kundalini Global Level One teacher training. What makes it unique.
Because it is unique. We believe that.
Rather than going into what the training ‘looks like’ day to day (you can find the syllabus and lots more of this kind of information in the PDF available here) we thought it would be fun and interesting to reveal some of the invitations that are made to trainees over the course of the training…
5 Invitations for Trainees…
1. Notice the gaze
‘For whose gaze do you stand?’ – it’s a question you may have seen Carolyn ask when talking about her Kundalini Global training.
It is not something it is always easy to answer, truthfully, right away.
Noticing whose eyes you feel on you, be it specifically when you begin to teach, or more broadly as you navigate your life… it can take time and reflection to begin to truly notice.
When we do start to notice we may find that we are really up for making some change.
Perhaps we notice that we feel the gaze of an external Divine… and perhaps that such a gaze, consciously or unconsciously is male… and can begin to explore what that means.
Perhaps we start to become more aware of the eyes on us and our relationship to them as we simply walk across a room…
Perhaps we can begin to consider our outward gaze on the world and where what has happened to us, and what we fear may be to come… affects that.
In itself this is a huge topic, a huge area of reflection and work, and something that can bring shifts in awareness to trainees on, and beyond, the training.
2. Challenge your cult thought
Cult thought, having an awareness of it, noting when it shapes our responses, behaviours, actions… is something absolutely central to the work (we may even describe it as a deconstruction) that trainees undertake.
‘Isn’t everything a cult, then?’ Is a question that pops up on every training. And yes, perhaps it is… but from veganism to spirituality, from religion to heteronormativity, from the patriarchy to parenting… you will be invited to take yourself on a deep exploration on what it is that you’re allowing to shape your experience of your reality and to consider areas of cult thought that may hold you back… both from being, truly, yourself and from the open-minded approach to teaching that Kundalini Global hopes to foster.
3. Your story is your gold
Many people come to yoga because they have what Carolyn refers to as a ‘tall dark history’. Very often, the things we perceive as ‘bad’… about ourselves, about what has happened to us…. They are, in fact, where we hold the most ‘gold’ as teachers and where we can step up in service with integrity, wisdom and compassion.
On the training, every single trainee is invited to undertake this exploration… to ‘dig for the gold’. This takes place in an extremely magical place that some of us tend to avoid… the lower triangle.
4. Don’t disregard the science
We have teachers who are really wonderful in the work that they do with astrology, crystals, sound… that play crystal bowls and do gong baths and… too much variation to bring in here.
We have teachers who absolutely adore the esoteric thought, or who are expert on yogic philosophy. And it’s extremely lovely to recognise the individuality that comes into how Kundalini Global is taught by the teachers who graduate from each training.
However, we do have much that we share as teachers. Perhaps number one on this list is that what is absolutely front and centre in the Kundalini Global training, and in every single class, is our expertise in the stress system.
The Kundalini Global trainings will guide you through an exploration of yoga relative to the nervous system, the vagus nerve, applied neuroscience, endocrinology (the hormones) and through working with the fascia. And we spent an entire weekend on anatomy, too.
All of this underpins what Kundalini Global is all about: working with the stress system to land you, and every single client, in presence…
…to work with neural plasticity, to understand the mechanisms relative to the rhythms of body and mind that profoundly impact our experience of ourselves and how we can, through understanding what is happening in the body, hand clients back to themselves.
What teachers add on to this, to make it unique, is entirely up to them… but we respect, acknowledge and continue to learn from scientific thought and theory in all aspects of what we teach.
5. Slowly, gently, kindly
As a practise, Kundalini Global approaches movement more slowly than you may be used to in other forms of Kundalini and other styles of yoga.
If you’re trained in or practise other forms of Kundalini, in a Kundalini Global class you may notice that all of the Spinal Flexes, all of the Life Nerve Stretches, Sufi Grinds, twists… they’re taken down to perhaps a quarter of the speed that you’re used to.
Kundalini Global teachers will experience this every day on the training and are trained to approach posture slowly because it has a completely different effect on the body.
The slow, considered, movement along with the invitation to be kind, creates a different energy field.
Trainess are invited to get into the habit of moving more gently and more slowly, taking time, it invites a new relationship to the self and the experience of the practise.
A week today we will be posting another 5 invitations made to all trainees. The training is very much an experience that has a big impact on the individual, as much as it creates excellent teachers.
Do check out the feedback on previous trainings too to hear it ‘from the horse’s mouth’, so-to-speak, and, again, details of upcoming opportunities to train are here:
Online Training, May 2022
Each of these invitations, and many more, will form a part of your experience on this 220 hour training.
The group work, supervision, and peer-support between modules, will allow for your exploration of each to be deep, transformative and something that can unfold in your life far beyond the time spent on the training.
It’s not necessarily an ‘easy’ training to do… but it is an etremely potent one.
Do you feel called to join us?
