ARM SUPPORT ASANAS
20-hour Online Intensive with
Live Sessions
WITH MARK STEPHENS
TBD 2026 + 6 Months Access
20 Hours of Learning
Live Interaction
20 CEUs
6 Months of Access
Katja Blaustein, RYT 500, Niagara Falls, New York
Mark Stephens’ Arm Support and Core Intensive offers a rare combination of depth, clarity, and practical insight. The video lessons are thorough and thoughtfully structured, while the live Zoom sessions bring the material to life through direct engagement and personalized guidance. Mark’s attention to subtle alignment and energetic nuance has helped me move beyond surface-level instruction and teach with greater confidence and precision. Having six months of access means I can return to the material again and again, each time discovering something new. This course has genuinely reshaped how I approach teaching about the hands, wrists, arms, shoulders and abdominal core, both in my practice and in my teaching. – Katja
TEACHING PEOPLE, NOT POSES
Teaching yoga invites us to guide our students in their postural practices in the most informed ways, with insights and techniques that help ensure that their practices are safe, sustainable, and transformational. We want to relate to our students in ways that honor and respect their unique and changing conditions and intentions. This intensive focuses not just on the fundamentals of arm support, arm balance, and core abdominal practioces, but the various ways to guide them based on real students, in all of their beautiful diversity.
REFINE AND DEEPEN YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICAL SKILLS FOR TEACHING HAND SUPPORT AND ARM BALANC ES TO A DIVERSE ARRAY OF STUDENTS, REGARDLESS OF THEIR SPECIAL AND UNIQUE CONDITIONS AND INTENTIONS.
This course provides a comprehensive exploration of teaching hand support and arm balancing asanas to all levels of students and all styles of yoga with standing postures.
Starting with the hands and wrists on all fours, we will look closely at each asana and how best to approach it with different types of classes and unique students. We will cover optimal verbal cues, forms of visual demonstration, and various approaches to hands-on guidance. The detailed videos combined with study materials and live interactive Zoom sessions bring the course fully alive, complemented by a Community Forum for easily connecting with others in the course with you from all over the world.
While most other courses on yoga asanas give us the idealized forms of people that models perform or illustrators create, in this course we step up to understand real human beings in the realities of their practices. We look specifically at the array of conditions (such as different shapes, angles, ailments, injuries, and more ) that create both opportunities and limitations in practicing standing asanas – and that informs how as teachers we approach everything from sequencing and hands-on adjustments to the best ways to work with individual students in group classes.
THE BENEFITS OF THIS COURSE
Provide Your Students With Well-informed & Inspirational Guidance In Their Practice
Through A Deeper Understanding Of Hand Support, Arm Balances, and the role of Abdominal Core cultivation in creating steadiness and ease in them.
APPLICATION
Knowing the basics of standing asanas from personal practice and teacher training is a good start. Here we greatly expand on that learning to consider the finer details of the realities of asana practices – plus how as teachers we can best use this knowledge in guiding our students.
INTEGRATION
Just as yoga is a holistic practice, teaching asanas must always be considered as part of the whole fabric of yoga practice. In this intensive we integrate standing asana with core concepts and principles of yoga practice in ways that make it a natural part of practicing and teaching.
CONFIDENCE
Bringing it all together, your expanded and refined knowledge will increase your confidence and ability to teach safe, sustainable and deeply transformational classes to a diverse array of students. With deeper knowledge and better skills, you will more be at your creative best in all of your classes.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
IN THIS COURSE
In looking closely at each of 15 arm support and 10 core practices, we start with the fundamentals of each asana, introduce and review its basic anatomy and bio-mechanics, and even tie it into yoga history (where did it come from?) and philosophy (why do it?!).
With each asana, we explore its benefits, risks and contraindications, alignment principles, energetic actions, modifications, variations, use of props, hands-on adjustments, and options for sequencing for different students, classes, and styles.
Moving from theory to the practice of teaching, we cover various verbal cues that emphasize different qualities of each asana, alternative forms for offering visual demonstrations, and detailed exploration of tactile cues (hands-on teaching).
This expanded knowledge of standing asanas will directly enhance your skills in designing class sequences, offering modifications and props, giving hands-on adjustments, and more deeply appreciating each one of your students.
It is, from start to finish, a practical course on teaching hand support and arm balances that you can apply in your classes from the beginning of the course.
COURSE TOPICS
- Overview of the Hands, Wrists, Arms, Shoulders, and Core
- All-Fours and Alternative Alignment of the Hands and Wrists
- Addressing Elbow Hyperextension and Hypoextension
- Developing Range of Motion in the Shoulders
- Stabilizing the Shoulder Girdle
- The Pelvis and Hips in Basic to Advanced Hands Support and Arm Balance Asanas
- Applying Specific Abdominal Core Muscles in Different Arm Balances
- Postural Observation and the Application of Theory to Practice and Teaching
- Effective Blending of Verbal, Visual, and Tactile Cues
- Working with Injuries and Special Conditions
MATERIALS & REQUIREMENTS
This online course requires a strong internet connection so that the video content easily streams to your computer or other device.
COURSE MATERIALS
- Provided: High-Quality Videos covering 15 Arm Support and 10 Core Abdonomal asanas. Printable Workbook with images & ample space for notes (PDF), Course Syllabus (PDF)
- Highly Recommended: Yoga Adjustments (book and/or card deck with booklet), by Mark Stephens
COURSE REQUIREMENTS FOR CERTIFICATION
- Watch all of the course video content
- Attend the live sessions OR watch the recorded replays of the live sessions
- Pass the Final Quiz
FORMAT & SCHEDULE
This Live Format course features 20 hours of learning that blends self-paced pre-recorded videos with live interaction via Zoom and directed independent study.
The 5-week interactive portion of this course offers four live sessions via Zoom (10 hours total) in which you will directly engage with Mark and other course participants.
To make the most of attending the live sessions, we encourage watching all of the pre-recorded videos during the 3-week interactive portion of the course. This makes our live sessions via Zoom far more useful and productivein expanding your knowledge of practical yoga anatomy.
That said, we know your schedule can change at any given moment and that you may need more time to complete the course. That's why all the live sessions are recorded and available for you to watch at your convenience, and it's why we give you 6 months to complete the course.
Thus, you can either attend the live sessions in real-time or you can watch the recorded replays if you cannot attend live – or both!
This flexibility allows you to complete the course in as little as three weeks or as long as 6 months. It's your choice!
EXPERIENCE YOU CAN TRUST
I’m deeply passionate about yoga and teaching it in the best possible ways. Practicing yoga since 1991, teaching since 1996 and training teachers since 1998, I’m here to help you develop your knowledge and skills in teaching and practicing standing asanas in the best possible ways.
Importantly, my early teaching benefitted from two 6-month apprenticeships, one in vinyasa flow and one in yoga therapy. I spent several years teaching in both yoga studios and in prisons, mental health facilities, drug rehabs, inner city and rural schools, and other settings where I learn far, far more by encounting the fullest range of human conditions.
Most of my books address the fundamentals and nuances of teaching yoga. From my first book on Teaching Yoga (2nd edition 2024), Yoga Sequencing (2012), and Yoga Adjustments (2014) to my 720-page text on Yoga Therapy (2017), the theme is the same: provide yoga teachers with a rich set of thoroughly researched resources that meet the practical tests of teaching and guiding a diverse array students in their yoga practices over a long period of time.
Drawing from multiple sources, I offer you a non-dogmatic, accessible, and integrated perspective , always striving to make yoga a more refined practice for healthy living, including through guidance that is deeply informed by a plain and accurate understanding of yoga.
I also take the risk to point out the common distortions and widespread misunderstandings found in much of yoga instruction, whether in best-selling books or online offerings, in abiding pursuit of jnana (knowledge), satya (truth) and ahimsa (non-hurting).
WHO THIS COURSE IS FOR
NEW & EXPERIENCED TEACHERS WELCOME!
Designed for new and experienced yoga teachers (& yoga teacher trainers), this course builds upon your current knowledge and helps you develop the refined skills for guiding students far more safely and effectively in their practices.
This course is for teachers who want to guide the practice from a deeper well of knowledge and understanding of how unique students experience arm-intensive asanas – and then make it your own in your unique and creative ways of teaching yoga.
- If you've ever been uncertain or confused about why different students have different experiences in asanas that are intense on the hands, arms, or shoulders...
- If you are unclear about optimal alignment and energetic actions for unique students with different body type...
- If you want to improve your knowledge of alignment, cueing, and sequencing...
- If you want to learn more about helping students with injuries and special conditions...
- If you want to teach from a deeper well of your own knowledge...
THIS COURSE IS FOR YOU!
BENEFITS OF ONLINE LEARNING
Both in-person and online workshops and trainings come with their own strengths and weaknesses, and neither one is superior. My online workshops and trainings offer the same quality as my in-person offerings do, and even include some added benefits. When deciding what's a good fit for your development as a yoga teacher, consider your options and what will best suit your unique needs.
FLEXIBLE SCHEDULE
+ BALANCE
Not everyone can take time off work (or from other responsibilities) to advance their learning and deepen their studies. If you are juggling multiple commitments and responsibilities, the flexibility of online learning offers you an opportunity to study when it works best for your unique schedule. In lieu of taking time off work or missing family dinners, you can log-in and learn when it’s convenient for you, making it easier to balance all that you do and love in life.
PLAYBACK CONTROL
+ SELF-PACED LEARNING
Unlike in-person workshops or trainings, online learning allows you to pause, rewind, re-watch and even slow the speed of video lectures and classes. This playback control helps to ensure you don’t miss any critical information being presented when you need to pause to take notes, do additional research or contemplate an idea. Those who don’t speak English as their native language especially find value in slowing down the video speed to help with translation. Plus, you can re-watch the videos repeatedly to make sure you fully understand the material before moving onto the next topic. This added control allows you to work through the material at your own pace and get the most out of your learning experience.
STUDY FROM ANYWHERE
+ GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Traveling for in-person workshops and trainings can present many challenges, including an added cost and time commitment, that prevent teachers from being able to study with Mark. Online learning means you can train with Mark from anywhere in the world, without the need to travel and from the convenience of your own home. Plus, online learning attracts a wide range from participants from all over the world which lends itself to a deeper, global perspective that enhances the learning experience during live group sessions on Zoom.
MORE ACCESS
+ TIME FOR INTEGRATION
For most people, learning requires repetition, but in-person workshops and trainings are live which means you can’t “rewatch” the material or access it again. With online learning, you can watch the video lectures and classes as many times as you like during your time of access (generally 6 months or more). Not only does this improve your ability to understand the material, it also provides ample time for integration of the information; you have time to go out and apply the teachings, methods and theories in your classes and then revisit the material or ideas that didn’t make sense during application or that you didn’t fully grasp.
Heidi Neilsen, RYT 200, Berlin, Germany
Mark's ability to communicate in clear and practical terms about yoga asanas, their detailed anatomy, and their context in history and philosophy (combined with his many years of experience teaching yoga and training teachers) is remarkable – and a huge asset for anyone who is serious about the path of teaching yoga." – Heidi
FAQs
What if I can't attend a live group session?
How many hours is this course?
Will there be "homework" or additional hours of study?
How long do I have to complete the course?
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Will I receive a certificate?
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Will I be able to ask Mark questions?
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Terri Matson, RYT 200, U.K.
