Sensory Awareness Training for Yoga Attunement (SATYA 1), Online Immersion

Course Description

In a totally unique way, the SATYA practice opens doorways into the interior, providing new pathways of perception and feeling. It guides students away from “doing” movement and toward sensing, receiving and “being” movement. As an adjunct to yoga practice, somatic awareness leads to embodied wisdom.

SATYA is Prajna Yoga’s “yin” style practice. All the movements are done on the floor in a flowing fashion, without force. The SATYA movements cultivate inner listening and heighten proprioceptive awareness. This awareness is the body’s innate intelligence. By increasing our capacity for sensory awareness, we become more sentient, wakeful beings in the world. The exercises are non-weight bearing and involve sliding, gliding and circular movements to reduce myo-fascial holding in the body.

The SATYA training, along with yoga postures, involves neural-muscular re-education. Like in vinyasa training, breath is combined with movement in order to deepen the respiratory rhythm. All movements support profound physical rest of the body and prepare for savasana and yoga nidra (the yogic sleep).

Course Syllabus

During SATYA 1, students will learn the key principles and embody the foundational movements of the SATYA practice.

Topics Covered:

• How to cultivate essential sensory-motor awareness by experiencing small movements out of gravity.
• The way SATYA movements benefit the lower back.
• The effects of SATYA on the iliopsoas and spine.
• The anatomy of the five myo-fascial sheaths and how to use the SATYA movements combined with asana practice to develop an awareness of each sheath.
• How to be in “The Pause” and experience the importance of not doing.
• Reduce body fatigue.
• Address low back pain.
• The importance of spirals and counter spirals.
• “It’s all about the joints”: working with the tendons, ligaments and joint spaces.
• Being in the “Pause”: the importance of not-doing.
• How gravity can be your friend.
• How to “ride the edge” through small movements.

Tias offers an introduction to SATYA:

Certification

45 hours of total combined live training, pre-recorded material, classes, homework, and mentorship (available for CE credits through Yoga Alliance US).

To become a SATYA teacher, all SATYA courses are required – please see the SATYA page for further information on the certification process. We are offering SATYA 2 in January 2025.

Yogacampus Diversity and Accessibility Bursary

We are offering one bursary (50% off the full course price) to a dedicated yoga student with a demonstrated financial need and active involvement in a community that could benefit from yoga. This bursary is provided by Yogacampus – The Life Centre Education, a not-for-profit educational body committed to sharing knowledge and making yoga accessible to all.

Bursary places will be awarded to a teacher or trainee who has the ability and commitment to take the course teachings into a disadvantaged community and play their part in the drive to increase accessibility to these profoundly healing practices. Priority will be given to those who themselves are from marginalised or vulnerable groups or are from a minority ethnic background.

To apply, please complete our online form before the closing date of 1 September 2024. Notification of bursary acceptance will be sent out the following week.

Meet the Teacher

Tias Little synthesises more than 30 years of study in classical yoga, Sanskrit, Buddhism, anatomy, bodywork, and trauma healing in his dynamic, original style of teaching. Tias began studying the work of B. K. S. Iyengar in 1984 and in 1989 resided in Mysore, India, where he studied Ashtanga vinyasa yoga under the tutelage of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. A licensed massage therapist, Tias has in-depth training in craniosacral therapy. His practice and teaching is influenced by the work of Ida Rolf, Moshé Feldenkrais, and Thomas Hanna. Tias earned a master’s degree in Eastern philosophy from St. John’s College in Santa Fe in 1998.

He is the founder of the Prajna Yoga school. in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife, Surya. In 2010, Tias created SATYA, Sensory Awareness Training for Yoga Attunement, a therapeutic movement system. He also offers a wide array of online classes through Glo, YogaU, Yoga Journal, Embodied Philosophy, and Shambhala and teaches internationally. The author of three books: The Thread of Breath, Meditations on a Dewdrop and Yoga of the Subtle Body, his fourth book, The Path is the Practice: Lessons and Reflections on the Transformative Power of Yoga, was released in June 2020.