Healing the Whole Person

Yoga for Cancer CPD Workshops

Who is the Yoga for Cancer CPD Training for?

Yoga teachers: Learn to teach yoga to groups and individuals on the cancer journey

Related health professionals: enhance your knowledge base and incorporate yoga and mindfulness into your work. (Holistic practitioners, healthcare professionals, social or spiritual care provider and similar)

Students of yoga: deepen your practice and share this powerful tool for transformation with loved ones

Healing the Whole Person is a mindful, whole-person approach to yoga for people affected by cancer

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If you’re looking for a way to evolve your skill set, develop a specialism or deepen your understanding of yoga, the Healing the Whole Person CPD course will provide you with experiential, in-depth knowledge of how you can help people to live better with cancer. The course is also suitable for those looking to work with people with other long-term or life-threatening illnesses. The course is designed, written and led by Morven Hamilton, a YAP accredited Senior Yoga Teacher and breast cancer survivor.

You will learn to:

• Create unique holistic yoga programmes for the individual on the cancer journey

• Integrate people with cancer into your regular classes

• Design courses for groups and individuals on the cancer journey

• Apply Mindfulness concepts and techniques to your yoga teaching

• Compassionately hold space for those who are potentially in physical, emotional, mental and spiritual difficulty

• Explore your own personal responses to life-threatening illness and end of life

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3-day Foundation Teach Yoga for Cancer Course

21 hours CPD

Course content  :

Each day begins with a yoga practice with Morven, taken from the Healing the Whole Person six-week course. There will be time for a Q&A on each session with discussion on the rationale behind each lesson plan. 

Day 1: Exploring personal responses to cancer and its implications. Basic cancer biology and treatment. The immune system and yoga. Treatment side-effects and yoga practices to cope with them. Modifications.

Day 2: The impact of cancer on the whole person (body, mind, spirit and relationships). Restorative yoga. Exploring identity and the cancer journey. Mindfulness for Health. Design specialised sequences for those on the cancer journey. 

Day 3: Short teaching practice. Using Yoga nidra, mantra, visualisation and poetry in your class. Cultivating compassion and heartfulness. Holding a safe and compassionate space.

This yoga training course is structured to engage and nurture all learning styles, with a focus on experiential learning. You will assimilate the course content in a way that is meaningful and grounded in experience.

We’ll use props to recreate some of the physical movement restrictions that patients often suffer. Through this and other course elements, you’ll be encouraged in your own personal transformation towards an embodied understanding of the person with cancer.

• Presentation (teacher to student and peer to peer)

• Led practice

• Discussion

• Enactment

• Peer to peer teaching practice

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Investment: £275 until 15th February then £300

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This course does not qualify you to be an accredited yoga for cancer teacher or a yoga therapist. It is a course intended to equip you to integrate people with cancer into your yoga classes or to share yoga informally with others. For the Yoga Alliance Professionals accredited training, please visit the 40 hour Healing the Whole Person Yoga for Cancer Training page here​. 

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8-week  Foundation Teach Yoga for Cancer Course

25 hours CPD

Course content:

The focus of this course is on experiential learning. Each week we will explore various practices that can be beneficial for certain people on the cancer journey. We will  identify difficulties that people can face either physically, mentally or emotionally and explore the benefits of practices that can alleviate suffering and promote wellbeing, moving from surviving to thriving. 

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Each week you will be given self-study to do during the course of the week. Assignments will include creating specialised sequences, doing experiential work, personal reflection and journalling. 

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Week 1: The basic anatomy and physiology of cancer and the principal cancer treatments. Exploring personal responses to cancer

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Week 2:  The physical effects of cancer and its treatment. An in-depth look at our immune system and how yoga can affect our immunity

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Week 3: Adapting yoga asana for people affected by cancer part 1. Modifications and adaptations

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Week 4: Adapting yoga asana for people affected by cancer part 2. Creating holistic, specialised yoga sequences for people affected by cancer

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Week 5: An introduction to Mindfulness for Health. Key Mindfulness concepts and practices. How to tailor Mindfulness to those with life-threatening illness and pain

Week 6: Teaching practice - teach a short yoga for cancer practice to the group

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Week 7:  Relationship, identity and yoga. Understanding the broader impact of cancer on the individual and their community. Connection to spirit

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Week 8 : Holding space with compassion and loving awareness. Dealing with loss. 

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This yoga training course is structured to engage and nurture all learning styles, with a focus on experiential learning. You will assimilate the course content in a way that is meaningful and grounded in experience.

We’ll use props to recreate some of the physical movement restrictions that patients often suffer. Through this and other course elements, you’ll be encouraged in your own personal transformation towards an embodied understanding of the person with cancer.

• Presentation (teacher to student and peer to peer)

• Led practice

• Discussion

• Enactment

• Peer to peer teaching practice

​

Investment: £240 until 7th March then £270

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This course does not qualify you to be an accredited yoga for cancer teacher or a yoga therapist. It is a course intended to equip you to integrate people with cancer into your yoga classes or to share yoga informally with others. For the Yoga Alliance Professionals accredited training, please visit the 40 hour Healing the Whole Person Yoga for Cancer Training page here. 

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Yoga for cancer

In 2011 Morven began her work at Penny Brohn Cancer Care in Bristol, the flagship centre for the UK’s leading complementary cancer care organisation. From 2011 to 2016 she worked closely with Penny Brohn clients, running yoga courses for people with cancer and their loved ones.

Beginning by teaching the YogaThrive programme for cancer support, over the years her approach has evolved into a mindful, whole-person approach to yoga for cancer. The fruition of this is the recently developed Yoga for Cancer Teacher Training programme which is a 40 hour intensive course for teachers, related health professionals and students of yoga who wish to work with people living with cancer.

Mindfulness has played an increasingly important role in her own practice and daily life, and is integral to her teaching style. She has trained on the Breathworks Mindfulness for Health teacher training programme, directed by Vidyamala Burch.

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Morven worked as a  course facilitator at Penny Brohn Cancer Care for several years, delivering the Living Well course, a two-day intensive course for people coping with the impact of cancer.

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She works on a group and one to one basis with cancer patients and has run retreats and workshops for people with a diagnosis and their loved ones.

Suitable for existing teachers and motivated practitioners of yoga.

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