Welcome to Contemporary Yoga Teacher Training
Yoga Alliance and Yoga New Zealand Certified Programs 200-hour TrainingLearn MorePassionate about yoga? Inspired to share and teach?
Passionate about yoga?
Inspired to share and teach?
Dive into the foundations of anatomy, alignment and movement in a way that is safe, stable, easeful and empowering with a faculty of passionate, experienced and inspiring teachers.
With every breath and movement, you’ll be supported to find your own feet, resource strength from within, and give voice to the passion that calls you to share.
“An investment in the rest of my life.”
Sarah Hart, 2018
Whether it whispers to deepen your practice or exclaims to share with others, we invite you to hear your inner calling and come explore.
Contemporary Yoga Teacher Training dives into the foundations of anatomy, alignment and movement in a way that is safe, stable, easeful and empowering.
With every breath and movement, you’ll be supported to find your own feet, resource your strength from within, and give voice to the passion that calls you.
Next 200-hour courses
January Intensive
6th til 26th January 2020
includes 2 break days
9 Weekends
April - August 2020
2×9 Days 2020
22nd-30th August
3rd-11th October
Why go Contemporary?
It’s like going back to when your body first moved and first breathed.
Step by step, we’ll reintroduce you to the wisdom and resources already within and give you the tools to bring your inner teacher out.
It’s a rediscovery of how to move, breathe, feel and teach, the way you were born to.
Go Beyond Asana
Understand and experience the very foundation of natural, functional movement.
Each posture, transition and philosophy is a process that you’re lovingly and personally guided through to discover ease, stability, clarity and joy.
You’ll take profound life skills away with you, along with a personal resilience to support every part of your life.
Passionate Teachers
It’s our greatest joy to offer you the decades of experience between us.
We honour and encourage the process of curiosity, enquiry and discovery, and we’re here to support you every step of the way. Each of us brings a highly specialist background and a whole lot of soul.
And we can’t wait to meet you!
Be Moved
We’ll take you deep into essential anatomy, physiology, biomechanics and postural analysis, and uncover how our natural developmental movement patterns grow into naturally aligned and easeful asana.
Get ready to go inward.
You’ll rediscover how you were meant to move and breathe in the most balanced and enjoyable way.
Live Well
Feel into the true depth of the Yoga tradition to develop skills that support and enhance your wellness as a human, and as a teacher.
This is a sustainable and nourishing training, designed to put you deeply in touch with inner resources that help you flourish on and off the mat.
Grow Your Yoga
Our vision is for you to leave confident to begin teaching safely and skillfully out in the community with a passionate sense of your own unique offering.
We’re registered with two major yoga communities - Yoga Alliance, and Yoga New Zealand.
Plus our 300 hour program and mentorships are there to help advance you on your path.
Affordable and Flexible
This comprehensive Yoga training is designed to be within reach for students of all levels.
Choose from three formats of our 200 hour yoga teacher training throughout each year, and modules of your choice within our ongoing and specialised 300 hour training.
Early bird pricing and payment plans are on offer for all programs.
Advanced Yoga Teacher Training
and Ongoing Professional Training Modules
Pregnancy Yoga Training
with KeiShana Coursey + faculty
25-29 Oct and 31 Oct-3 Nov
Sandra Sabatini & Michal Havkin
Vanda Scaravelli Inspired Yoga Workshop
Sat and Sun, 9-10th November
Yoga Vocals Training
with Sylvia Rands
Saturday 23rd Nov, 1-5pm
Yogi Kids Teacher Training
with Michaela Sangl + faculty
29 Feb - 1 March and 20-22 March 2020
The campus is nice too
Join us in beautiful St. Heliers, Auckland. All our 200-hour yoga teacher trainings take place a short stroll from the beach.
Light, spacious, comfortable and an easy location for public transport as well as cafes and shops, the purpose-built workshop space is extensive, modern, with every mod-con.
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What Our Graduates Say
(read more here)
Meet Your Teachers
Karla Brodie
Core Faculty
Intuitive, honest, attentive, creative, joyful and full of expression — there’s something about Karla that speaks directly to your insides, and suddenly you realise you have a newfound conversation with your inner world as well as you gain a deeper understanding of balanced posture and integrated movement.
Read more >>
Neal Ghoshal
Core Faculty
When someone loves what they do with all of their heart, it emanates to everyone they work with. Neal is one of these people.
His teaching focuses on exploring and refining natural movement and alignment principles, and to embody these in a way that takes our spiritual practice into our everyday lives.
Read more >>
Haidee Stairmand
Core Faculty
Haidee brings a pragmatic approach to her teaching and offers students a clear, approachable and understandable way to develop their Yoga through self-sensing, and awareness.
She is passionate about making yoga accessible for all, enabling an individualistic approach.
She has a unique ability to connect to others in a simple but profound way and sees Yoga as a holistic therapeutic modality that encompasses traditional and contemporary approaches to the Practice.
Read more >>
Sam Loe
Guest Faculty
Sam’s Yoga practice and teaching come from a somatic place of listening deeply within. She is passionate about sharing Yoga in a way that empowers and gives agency to her students through creating safe learning environments, invitational and choice based practices and ultimately supporting people to develop their own self-practice.
Sam is a certified iRest Teacher and in addition shares functional, therapeutic and restorative practices in her community, via classes, workshops and retreats.
Read more >>
Sandra Palmer
Core Faculty
As a certified psychologist I have always been interested in the relationship between the body and the mind and my masters thesis was in the field of psychoneuroimmunology.
I have a particular interest in the way Yoga can be used to provide balance and stillness (and consequently energy) in this fast-paced world we live in.
Read more >>
Vanessa Bailey
Core Faculty
Vanessa Bailey has worked in marketing and communications for 18 years and held senior roles in New Zealand, Australia and England.
Vanessa has accrued wide experience and in-depth knowledge of customer-driven marketing communications and branding with specialist knowledge of how to bring brands and communications to life in the physical space.
From Our Blog Read All Articles >>
From Our Blog
Read All Articles >>
The Power Of Your Authentic Voice
Have you ever been told you can’t sing?
For those of us who have, there are a few paths we consciously, or unconsciously, choose: we either stop singing, or we contain our singing to the shower or car, or to when we’ve consumed the right amount of alcoholic beverages to let ourselves belt out the anthems of our youth.
Yet in my work, my voice is one of my most important tools I use in teaching Yoga. It’s not just what I say, but how I say it. Here I share my journey with reclaiming the power of my unique voice.
Music for Yoga – Ideas, Suggestions and Playlists
I LOVE music. I am constantly astonished by music. By the endless creativity of musicians to produce beautiful, moving, wild rhythms, melody and harmony. I could never imagine life without it. What a blessing music is in our lives!
Yoga is my other love. I regularly join the two together in my own practice and in my classes you will often hear me playing music to support the Yoga. Sometimes I may even bring my guitar and play live for people.
Donna Farhi, on New Zealand National Radio with Kim Hill, talks about abuse in Yoga
Donna Farhi is an internationally respected Yoga teacher who has been practicing for over 40 years and teaching since 1982. Donna Farhi is also the primary Yoga teacher for Karla Brodie and Neal Ghoshal, core faculty at Contemporary Yoga. She is the author of several...
The Power Of Your Authentic Voice
Have you ever been told you can’t sing?
For those of us who have, there are a few paths we consciously, or unconsciously, choose: we either stop singing, or we contain our singing to the shower or car, or to when we’ve consumed the right amount of alcoholic beverages to let ourselves belt out the anthems of our youth.
Yet in my work, my voice is one of my most important tools I use in teaching Yoga. It’s not just what I say, but how I say it. Here I share my journey with reclaiming the power of my unique voice.
Music for Yoga – Ideas, Suggestions and Playlists
I LOVE music. I am constantly astonished by music. By the endless creativity of musicians to produce beautiful, moving, wild rhythms, melody and harmony. I could never imagine life without it. What a blessing music is in our lives!
Yoga is my other love. I regularly join the two together in my own practice and in my classes you will often hear me playing music to support the Yoga. Sometimes I may even bring my guitar and play live for people.
Donna Farhi, on New Zealand National Radio with Kim Hill, talks about abuse in Yoga
Donna Farhi is an internationally respected Yoga teacher who has been practicing for over 40 years and teaching since 1982. Donna Farhi is also the primary Yoga teacher for Karla Brodie and Neal Ghoshal, core faculty at Contemporary Yoga. She is the author of several...
Freedom Yoga with Erich Schiffmann
Erich Schiffmann teaches what he calls Freedom Yoga – the freedom to teach and practice any style of Yoga he likes! His approach is about tuning in, listening to guidance from within, the inner teacher, and then doing as is prompted.
This encourages and empowers the student to listen and respond to their own body and movement, to practice in a way which respects their body, and how they find themselves at the beginning of each practice.
The Power Of Your Authentic Voice
Have you ever been told you can’t sing?
For those of us who have, there are a few paths we consciously, or unconsciously, choose: we either stop singing, or we contain our singing to the shower or car, or to when we’ve consumed the right amount of alcoholic beverages to let ourselves belt out the anthems of our youth.
Yet in my work, my voice is one of my most important tools I use in teaching Yoga. It’s not just what I say, but how I say it. Here I share my journey with reclaiming the power of my unique voice.
Music for Yoga – Ideas, Suggestions and Playlists
I LOVE music. I am constantly astonished by music. By the endless creativity of musicians to produce beautiful, moving, wild rhythms, melody and harmony. I could never imagine life without it. What a blessing music is in our lives!
Yoga is my other love. I regularly join the two together in my own practice and in my classes you will often hear me playing music to support the Yoga. Sometimes I may even bring my guitar and play live for people.
The Body-Mind Approach
We’re dedicated to excellence in body-mind approaches to Yoga.
The main focus of the Yoga tradition is a very personal journey. It’s always been about self exploration, discovery and healing.
There’s a common trunk to this tradition, rooted deep in the universal desire for freedom, and over millennia it branched in many directions, flowering into a multitude of insights and revelations about life, the body and our true nature that we still study and explore today.
Yoga teacher training with Contemporary Yoga embodies yoga philosophy and supports deep personal investigation with leading edge learnings and technologies as tools.
All throughout history, the yoga tradition has honoured the past and transcended its limits at the same time.
Our specialist teachers follow the latest investigations in fields of movement, body-mind centering and yoga therapeutics.
You’ll study the natural sciences with us from the smallest building blocks of life to the biggest theories in biomechanics, along with Patanjali’s Sutras, Buddhist teachings and the Bhagavad Gita.
Yoga offers personal experience and personal accountability. We support students in their own explorations and teaching styles with humour, wisdom and passion.
To us, the mark of a masterful teacher is to fully support the student’s independence, inner resources and wisdom so they step forward on this path with a clear idea of their own voice and offering as a teacher themselves.
Next 200-hour courses
January Intensive
6th til 26th January 2020
includes 2 break days
9 Weekends
April - August 2020
2x9 Days 2020
22nd-30th August
3rd-11th October
Advanced Yoga Teacher Training and Ongoing Professional Training
What You'll Learn
The 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training provides excellent foundations in human anatomy and movement, increases your awareness and understanding of the postures, and explores the philosophy of underlying yoga traditions.
Our 200-hour Yoga Alliance Registered Teacher Training is an indepth and comprehensive foundation for teaching yoga.
The 350-hour Yoga New Zealand Registered Training further extends and deepens the foundation set by the 200-hour training.
The 300-hour Yoga Teacher Training refines and expands your expertise and proficiency in teaching and deepens your personal practice.
Fully explore how developmental movement patterns grow into naturally aligned asana.
Discuss groundbreaking research into human anatomy & physiology and its relevance to yoga.
Hands on with bones and muscles and how they work together in an asana practice.
Investigate the biomechanics of Yoga with a focus on containment and stability.
Understand postural analysis, using yoga to restore natural balance and your full range of motion.
Work with the subtle energies of the body to purify the nadis and touch the natural mind.
Yoga philosophy has the power to reshape your daily life
Gain confidence in your teaching skills and teaching practice.
Yoga Teacher Registration Pathway
We are delighted and proud to be registered with two major Yoga organisations - Yoga New Zealand and Yoga Alliance.
