200-Hour Teacher Training

Teach what

changed you.

Two hundred hours with Arden Dalzell and Geoff Knox, in the loft on West 10th. Five-hour sessions, 24 October to 31 January.

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Westside Yoga · at The Studio Cleveland

Trained in the room, not a classroom.

Most teacher trainings happen in a rented conference room on a stranger’s schedule. This one happens where you already practice. It is run by Westside Yoga and it lives here, in the loft on West 10th, taught by two teachers whose classes you already take. Geoff has been teaching for eighteen years and practicing for more than twenty. Arden teaches anatomy, the subtle bodies and hands-on assists, and through seventeen years of practice — fifteen of them formally — and five of teaching she has found a way to make all three simple enough to use. Both of them trained in the classical lineage of Dharma Mittra. Between them you get the ancient material and the modern evidence for it — from two people who have taught it often enough to make it land the first time you hear it.

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Inside The Studio Cleveland, a yoga studio in Cleveland, Ohio

What you leave with

Six things you can do on the last Sunday that you cannot do on the first.

Not a line on a résumé. This is the part that is still yours on the Monday after it ends.

iA class of your ownA full sequence you built yourself, on principle rather than memory — and the nerve to change it in the room when the room needs something else.Sequencing

iiA body you can readAnatomy from modern research, and the neuroscience beside it: what a joint can do, what it cannot, and what brain imaging now shows a practice doing to the nervous system that runs it.Anatomy

iiiThe texts, in plain EnglishThe limbs, the yamas and niyamas, the philosophy underneath the postures — read, argued about, and simplified on the first pass instead of the fifth.Philosophy

ivBreath and stillness as skillsPranayama, meditation and yoga nidra, practiced until they are things you can do and teach rather than things you have heard of. Nidra sits closer to guided hypnosis than to rest, and it runs right through the meditation series.Breath & nidra

vHands you can trustHands-on assists: where to touch, how much, when not to, and how to ask first.Assists

viA voice that holds a roomCueing, timing and speaking to a group — the part most trainings leave out, taught by someone who has worked on a stage his whole adult life.Your voice

Arden Dalzell

Yoga is not the outfit.

“You don’t have to be wearing your crystals, following your chakra system and saying your Om mantra to be a yogi,” Arden says. “I love the aesthetic — I’m here for it, it’s a great fashion statement. But that has nothing to do with enlightenment.” What she teaches instead is the part with evidence under it: anatomy and the subtle body read through modern medicine and neuroscience — ten thousand studies on what the practice actually does to a body and a nervous system, “not just the woo stuff that’s on Instagram”. She specializes in anatomy, chakras and the subtle bodies, hands-on assists and stress relief, and she teaches prenatal, kids’ and elder yoga. And she is unusually clear about where a practice really lives, which is not on the mat. “It’s lived in your daily life. Lead with kindness, lead with compassion, lead with gratitude. That is far more important than any pose you’re ever going to do.”

Geoff Knox

Twenty years of practice. Eighteen of teaching.

Geoff was taught by Dharma Mittra — a classical lineage, learned the long way — and he reads all of it through a modern scientific lens. “It kind of helps to demystify a lot of the esoteric practices of yoga.” He will go deep into the posture practice, which is what he teaches here every week, and into the rooms a regular class never reaches: the breathing practices, meditation, the philosophy. He is just as interested in the craft itself — “what makes a good yoga class, what makes a good teacher, what to do, what not to do” — and in the thing nearly every training skips. He has studied theatre his whole adult life and still works in it. “Being able to communicate to a group is something that is often overlooked in a teacher training.” Not in this one.

How we sequence

Five things every practice has to do.

We teach in the Dharma tradition, which means a class is not a playlist of poses — it is five jobs, done every time, for reasons you can point at. Hit those five and you have practiced. Understand why, and you can build a class for any room you are ever asked to stand in front of.

iFoldStanding or seated, it doesn’t matter. You have to fold.Release

iiTwistLeft and right, every time. The practice’s oldest argument for digestion.Digestion

iiiOpen the hipsFlush the hips out — standing, seated or on your back, but they get opened.Mobility

ivBend the backPosture and spinal strength. The older we get, the more it matters that a spine stays limber and strong instead of settling into a hunch.Posture

vInvertLegs up the wall, on your shoulders or on your head — circulation, lymphatic drainage, and less inflammation than you walked in with.Circulation

Curriculum

What two hundred hours covers.

Techniques, Training & Practice

~100 hrsasana, alignment, sequencing

The postures themselves, in the Dharma sequence, with hands-on adjustment and the logic that makes a class hold together instead of just filling an hour.

Anatomy & Physiology

~30 hrsand the subtle body

How a body actually moves, taught from modern research — and the chakra system read the same way, as something studied rather than asserted.

Philosophy & Ethics

~30 hrsthe limbs, the yamas, the texts

Where the practice came from, what the texts actually say, and a teacher’s code of conduct — simplified on the first pass rather than the fifth.

Teaching Methodology

~25 hrsvoice, cueing, class design

How to run a room: what to say, when to stop talking, how to hold twenty people’s attention, and how to find your own voice at the front of it.

Practicum

~15 hrssupervised practice teaching

You teach. Real students, real feedback, before anybody calls you a teacher.

Hours are approximate. The final syllabus and your reading list come with your acceptance. Bring your questions to the call — that is what it is for.

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Students resting in child's pose beside a singing bowl

The shape of it

24 October to 31 January.

One cohort, five-hour sessions, in the loft on West 10th. $3,500 for the seat, enrolled and paid through Westside Yoga. Places are offered by application rather than checkout — tell us about your practice and Arden or Geoff will set up a conversation before anybody asks you for money.

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Tell us about your practice.

Leave your details and Arden or Geoff will call you. There is no checkout for this and no deposit today — a conversation first, with the two people who will be teaching you. If you would rather start by talking, the studio is on (216) 621-7085.

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