movement in stillness: RESTORATIVE YOGA TEACHER TRAINING
WRITTEN BY MARGO ROSINGANA
Restorative Yoga is a gentle yet powerful practice that uses props to support the body in releasing tension across physical, emotional, and energetic layers. Unlike more physically demanding styles of yoga, this practice invites stillness, patience, and support—literally and figuratively.
Recently, I’ve been having lots of conversations about the accessibility of Restorative yoga. There’s a misconception about the practice being easy or gentle. While I often joke that the hardest part physically is folding blankets, many people find that their capacity to stay present to their inner life during this practice is excruciating. This practice is often deemed as a starting point for new students, and yet it requires some skill at harnessing one’s awareness to engage in a more meditative state.
A yoga colleague of mine described it best when she said Restorative yoga is like an impressionist painting. Impressionism centers fleeting moments captured through sensory perception and the shifting qualities of light. Furthermore, she went on to describe needing some skill and experience with technique in order to create such subtlety. This practice requires developing an attuned eye towards sensory tracking, and holding small moments of recognition that can leave an impression in our physiology - a felt sense that we can return to again and again.
So the question becomes: how can we, as teachers, help facilitate this felt sense of relaxation and ease during a time when the world moves so fast? I designed this training around the koshas—the five layers of the energetic body—offering a meaningful framework for both teaching and self-exploration. By guiding students from simple physical awareness into more subtle experiences, the practice unfolds gradually and intuitively, honoring each individual’s unique process. As practitioners settle into this layered awareness, they begin to experience deep rejuvenation, even at a cellular level, while emotional holding patterns soften—helping to ease anxiety, depression, and chronic stress.
In addition, emphasis is placed on creating an inquiry-based learning environment, where curiosity and personal experience are valued over rigid instruction. While the poses and use of props do require some precision in their set-up, once that support is established, the student then has access to a sense of their own presence. For some people, a latent resource might be more accessible - slowing things down and lowering the intensity of their experience to welcome a deeper sense of engagement, availability, and connection to themselves and the world around them.
More than a methodology, this training invites both teachers and students to reconnect with their innate capacity for healing—cultivating balance, resilience, and a lasting sense of ease.
Interested in learning more about this training? Ready to sign up?
