Yoga Teacher Certification Available at Ramapo College

Ramapo College, in Mahwah, has several vibrant yoga programs started by two professors, Carol Bonilla Bowman and Jim Morley, who wanted to share their knowledge with the community by integrating academic courses in psychology and education with applied workshops within the certificate requirements.

The programs are offered through Ramapo’s Center for Innovative and Professional Learning. The campus provides a peaceful mountain setting as a backdrop, with spacious, modern classrooms, a fitness center and the Salmeno Spiritual Center, which includes a meditation building overlooking Kameron Pond.

The 200-hour Yoga Teacher Certification program was started in 2009 and has graduated 32 certified yoga teachers to date. The goal is to offer serious students of yoga an opportunity to advance their personal practice and become instructors. A 100-hour Yoga Studies certificate is also available for those wishing to deepen their own practice and knowledge of yoga. The Ramapo yoga program is a registered yoga school (RYS 200) with the Yoga Alliance, the national certifying body for yoga teachers and schools.

Ramapo yoga programs are academically rigorous and thoroughly practical, emphasizing yoga as a long-established system of meditation, scholarship, psycho-spiritual development and holistic health. The programs emphasize the scholarly and experiential contemplative core of yoga, while remaining as faithful to its Indian cultural roots. The classical approach is inspired by Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras in a manner appropriate to the self-reflective character of yogic thought.

Students in the Teacher Certification program take a Contemplative Practices in Education class, acquiring a broad view of contemplative practices, developing their own and exploring the physiological effects of yoga and meditation. The philosophy and practice of yoga is instructed as a liberal art and science that prepares students to confidently practice or teach yoga and live their lives as fully and consciously as possible.

The Teacher Certification program features master teachers from several yogic traditions that bring their own blend of rigorous practice, academics and pedagogy within a classical approach to yoga, honoring its history and meditative focus.

The program is conveniently planned with the classes and workshops on weekends and evenings. Program participants and graduates are encouraged to continue to develop their teaching skills by teaching classes for the Ramapo Yoga Club and have other opportunities to teach, such as “stress buster” yoga classes for students during finals week, to gain the practical experience necessary for entering the yoga teaching profession.

Some graduates teach in yoga studios and others incorporate their expertise to enrich their professional practices. Psychologists have integrated yoga into their work with clients, teachers have used yoga and meditative practices in the classroom, businesspersons have introduced yoga and mindfulness to their work environments and health professionals use yoga in healing their patients.

Community members and students are welcome to attend the yoga workshops offered on campus, which include a chakra workshop and a bandha workshop with Allison Datwani, a Sanskrit workshop with Jo Brill and a pranayama workshop and chanting workshop led by Fran Ubertini.

For more information, call 201-684-7370 or visit Ramapo.edu/CIPL/Yoga. To view the schedule of fall workshops, visit Ramapo.edu/cipl/yoga-workshops in August.