CONNECTIONS | Somatic Strength, Breath & Embodied Yoga
With Hilary Brown
Before we can teach others, we must learn to feel ourselves.
Many yoga practitioners spend years moving through poses without fully understanding how they are moving, what they are feeling, or how breath, awareness, alignment and muscular support work together.
In CONNECTIONS, we slow everything down.
Rather than adding more poses, complexity or choreography, we return to the foundations of embodied practice: sensation, stability, strength, breath and awareness. We explore how these elements connect—and how developing greater sensitivity in our own bodies can make us more perceptive, adaptable and skillful teachers.
Drawing from Hilary’s background in Iyengar Yoga, somatic movement, functional strength, therapeutic applications of yoga and decades of teaching experience, we’ll investigate how small, intelligent adjustments can profoundly change the experience of a posture.
This is not alignment as performance.
It is alignment as awareness.
Alignment From the Inside Out
What creates stability without rigidity? Where do we need support—and where are we working harder than necessary?
Through familiar poses and simple movement explorations, we’ll look at alignment from the inside out: learning to sense healthy movement patterns, understand support and discover how good alignment can create greater freedom rather than restriction.
Somatic Strength & Awareness
Strength is not simply about working harder. Through slow, intelligent movement, we’ll explore how strength, sensation and awareness develop together.
You’ll experience somatic and functional approaches to movement that build deeper support and help you recognize habitual patterns, unnecessary effort and new possibilities within familiar poses.
Breath as a Teacher
Breath gives us immediate information about what is happening in the body and nervous system.
We’ll refine Ujjayi and conscious breathing, explore the relationship between breath and movement, and develop practical ways to guide students toward a more embodied experience of breathing. We’ll also refine pranayama practices that can become part of daily life.
Props, Chairs & Yoga for Real Bodies
Bodies are different. Yoga should be adaptable.
We’ll use blocks, belts, bolsters, chairs and other supports to explore how props can clarify actions, create accessibility and offer new ways into familiar poses. You’ll learn practical approaches for supporting different bodies, abilities and limitations, including therapeutic applications for everyday students.
Learning to See
Teaching begins with observation.
What are we actually seeing when we look at a student? What matters—and what doesn’t? When might a cue, prop or adjustment create meaningful change? And when is doing less the better choice?
We’ll practise observing bodies with curiosity rather than immediately trying to correct them, developing the ability to respond to the person in front of us rather than to an idealized version of a pose.
A Laboratory for Practice & Teaching
CONNECTIONS is not about accumulating more techniques or information. It is a laboratory for exploration.
We’ll practise, observe, experiment, discuss, ask questions and experience these principles directly in our own bodies. From there, we begin to understand how to communicate them to others.
The aim is to become more sensitive in your own practice and more skillful in your teaching—to feel more, see more clearly, and understand when a small change can make a meaningful difference.
Because ultimately, the goal is not simply to know more about yoga.
It is to embody what we know.
Make It Part of Your 300-Hour Journey
Take this module on its own, or join it as part of our 300-hour Advance Your Yoga Training - a thoughtfully curated 20-month journey to deepen your practice, expand your skills, and grow into a more confident, creative and authentic yoga teacher.
YACEP: 25 hrs of Continuing Education
DETAILS:
Dates & Times: 23-24-25 April 2027 | 11.30-19.00
Location: Studio Fly | Croeselaan 209, Utrecht
1 live online follow-up session : Sunday, 23 May 2027 16.00-18.00
Prices*
Early bird specials before:
> 1 January 2027 €320
> 1 February €345
> 1 March: €370
After: 1 April: €395
*Prices are exempt from VAT (BTW) as we are CRKBO-registered.
Bundle & Save
This module is one of 9 required 25-hour modules in our Advance Your Yoga 300-hour program. Choose this one plus any 2 others from that group of 9 for one flat price: €945 — any time, no early-bird deadlines to track. That's at least €240 off paying for 3 modules individually. (Doesn't include Inner Compass or Integration — those are priced separately.) [See all 9 modules & full program pricing →]
about the teacher:
