Teaching Mindful, Compassionate Yoga

This book is born out of a passion to deepen people’s understanding of the power and importance of placing mindful awareness and compassionate action at the heart of our practice and teaching.

While aimed at yoga teachers, yoga therapists and teachers in training the book is of valuable to anyone keen to understand how practicing yoga mindfully and compassionately transforms it into a place of refuge - a safe haven for exploration, care, connection and transformation.

“I highly recommend this accessible book, not only for yoga teachers, but for anyone interested in understanding yoga, themselves, and what a yoga practice can be when it is reconnected to the heart of a living tradition.”

— Donna Farhi, author of Bringing Yoga to Life

In Detail

Weaving Mindfulness and Compassion into Yoga Teaching sits within Singing Dragon’s series of Yoga Teaching Guides. It explores the vital and often under-emphasised link between mindfulness, compassion, and yoga teaching. This deeply authentic exploration of mindfulness and compassion will allow yoga teachers to enrich and enhance both their practice and teaching.

  • Section 1 explores what mindfulness and compassion are and how they interlink with the teachings of yoga.

  • Section 2 considers how yoga teachers can use mindfulness and compassion within their own lives to support both their wellbeing and the sustainability of their teaching.

  • Section 3 explores ways of bringing mindfulness and compassion into the forefront of our yoga teaching in service of our students.

While many 200-hour teacher trainings offer detailed instruction on how to guide students into poses, fewer focus on how to guide students towards a state of presence. This book explores this in depth, considering choices of sequencing, pacing, demonstrating and language use. It offers suggestions for practices that can be incorporated within our teaching, both in movement and stillness.

Guided by reflection points and practical tips and informed by a person-centred, holistic approach, this book provides an opening to a more intentional yoga practice grounded in the wisdom of compassionate presence.

Available from most major booksellers including Waterstones, Amazon and Bookshop.org (which supports independent local book retailers).

Reviews

  • "This is important. What you are holding in your hands is crucial reading for all yoga teachers and all committed yoga practitioners ... you will find jewels within these pages."

    — Norman Blair, author and yoga teacher trainer

  • "As the Foreword says, this book is important. Packed full of common sense advice, as well as wide-ranging and accessible practical tools for teachers and students, it is an essential reminder that yoga is not about performance, but about giving ourselves space and time really to get to know ourselves, and to meet what we find with compassion, non-judgment, and the willingness to change. An incredibly valuable resource for yoga teachers new and old."

    — Dr. Graham Burns, Yoga teacher and teacher trainer

  • "In the 21st century, the word yoga has become synonymous with the physical practice of yoga postures, relegating this time-tested spiritual technology to a form of calisthenics with Sanskrit names. Having jettisoned the essential values of yoga, modern practitioners are being short-changed of what could be a much deeper experience with rich rewards. Anna Taylor's Weaving Mindfulness and Compassion Into Yoga Teaching, reasserts that yoga's primary purpose is to reduce suffering and to awaken an awareness of ourselves and the world that is both clear and compassionate. What I love about this book is the warmth of the author's voice which makes the reading of this book feel like a warm balm for the soul. I highly recommend this accessible book, not only for yoga teachers, but for anyone interested in understanding yoga, themselves, and what a yoga practice can be when it is reconnected to the heart of a living tradition."

    — Donna Farhi, author of Bringing Yoga to Life

  • "This wonderful book is filled with guidance and directions for not only practicing yoga mindfully but also taking this skill into daily living. It is an excellent resource for teachers for their own practice and sharing this wisdom with their students."

    — Bernie Clark, author and creator of YinYoga.com

  • "This book is a gift. Whether you've just qualified or you've decades of experience, you'll find insights on every page that will enrich and sustain your teaching practice. It's clear and inspiring and full of wisdom. I will be recommending it to every yoga teacher I know."

    — Naomi Annand, Yoga Teacher, Teacher Trainer and Author of Yoga: A Manual for Life, and Yoga for Motherhood.

  • "This book is born of experience.  Centered around the transformation of self-critique and suffering into self-care and self-compassion, Anna Taylor draws equally on yoga and mindfulness practices and philosophy to knit together the methodologies and describe a body-heart-mind integrated approach to life.  The text is alive with her authentic voice sharing her experience and offering practice guidance to us readers on how to enliven physical practice with mindfulness and both with heart-felt curiosity and compassion.  Anna illumines a path toward wholeness in language that is easy to understand and a pleasure to read.   She leads us while standing right beside us."

    — Lisa Kaley-Isley, PhD, E-RYT-500, and C-IAYT Clinical Psychologist, Yoga Therapist, and Yoga Educator