Special Yoga For Adults:
Disabilities & Autism
Empower every individual to thrive.
SPRING ‘25 COURSE
Tuesday evening Webinars
No prior knowledge of yoga necessary.
Join this transformative 3-month course and learn how to enrich the lives of disabled and autistic adults through the therapeutic power of yoga.
Book now and pay one single payment or four installments
Are you ready to learn how to:
Help mental and emotional health and wellbeing.
Promote physical strength, coordination, and balance.
Empower individuals to maintain independence and self-esteem.
See improved attention, concentration, and communication skills and encourage meaningful social interaction.
These are just some of the benefits you’ll be able to share after taking this course
Whether you’re a parent, caregiver, yoga teacher or healthcare professional, our life-changing methodology will forever transform the way you connect with and support adults, creating lasting impact in their lives.
Additionally, you will discover strategies to support your own self-care and self-regulation, enabling you to embody and integrate these practices for yourself. By doing so, you’ll become a more effective guide for the adults with whom you will later share these yoga practices..
Our training equips you with the skills and confidence to support adults with learning disabilities embracing their unique perspectives and enhancing their well-being and personal development.
While Special Yoga Adults: Disabilities & Autism is designed to give you the knowhow to benefit every adult, the course specifically covers Autism, Down Syndrome, Mental health disorders, Cerebral Palsy, PDA, Epilepsy and supporting chair and wheelchair users.
Introducing Special Yoga for Adults: Disabilities and Autism
What you’ll learn.
Yoga is so much more than just the physical poses. As you train you’ll find a world opening as you understand how to use the healing power of:
Yoga Poses
Physical mobility: Yoga postures build flexibility, strength, and balance, while improved motor skills and body control will completely transform a student’s experience in the world.
Sensory Processing Differences The sensory input from stretching and balancing supports students by developing sensory integration and enhancing focus and engagement.
Improved movement and coordination: Postures help students to understand and control their movements, especially beneficial for those with coordination or spatial challenges.
Breath work
Improved breathing: Practices which help students connect with their breath for improved respiratory health, vitality and mental wellness.
Emotional awareness & regulation: Guiding students develop the ability to recognise their emotions, build self-awareness, and cultivate strategies for emotional regulation. Understanding the impact we as the people supporting adults can aid regulation who experience anxiety, depression, trauma.
Music, sound & rhythm
Communication: Sound and music have unique benefits for students, both encouraging vocalisation, utilising the breath and as a valuable method of communication, giving voice to unmet needs and emotions.
Developed attention & focus: Special Yoga teaches uses music and sound to effectively capture and maintain student’s attention, making learning and therapeutic activities more engaging and effect.
Relaxation
Deep Rest and Healing: Many students struggle with relaxation and lack opportunities for true rest, where healing can take place. This course provides a variety of strategies to help even the most rest-resistant individuals discover their own path to peace and calm.
Community
Social Interaction: Sharing yoga in group settings such as day centres create a supportive and accepting environment where students can connect to the unique benefits of social interaction.
Meaningful connections: Through the special yoga precepts to promote empathy, compassion, and acceptance, students build stronger relationships with their peers and care-givers.
Book now and pay one single payment or four installments
Student Testimonials For This Course
Start Your New Life
Three months is a tiny investment to make for a new way of being in the world, one in which you have choices, a deeper connection to the students you support and presence enough to notice your breath.
Your world after your Special Yoga training is one that includes a toolkit of practices that calm you and those around you, which can be used to promote health and allow all students the chance to thrive.
12 weeks, from burnout to burning brightly.
The Special Yoga journey starts with the breath. You learn about cultivating awareness to honestly check in with yourself, your emotions and how you are breathing.
Combining mindfulness with the postures and associated healing practices, the power of regulated breathing begins to blossom for you.
Your heightened self-awareness and transformation is a revolutionary tool, your ability to self-regulate, allows the children in your care to co-regulate, once this is possible everything changes. The space you are sharing the practices one is now one of calm, and this coupled with the powerful practices, mean that anything is possible.
And many students notice the changes as soon as they start the course.
Three months from now this could be you!
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It is no exaggeration to say training with Special Yoga has changed my life. It’s provided me with the opportunity to connect with an amazing community, it has equipped me with the tools to foster my own well being and most importantly it has enabled me to open my heart and share therapeutic yoga practices with others. It feels like pure magic!
Helen
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This course exceeded my expectations and has been a truly wonderful life-enhancing learning experience. It’s made me rethink my daily relationships at home and at work and helped me become much more grounded and mindful. Further to this I have learned yoga techniques that I can use to help my children and children at work to stay connected, relaxed and to feel happier and more confident. I would highly recommend this course.
Ivana
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I decided to study with Special Yoga because I wanted to learn how to bring yoga to my special child. I already had yoga in my life but I didn't know how to reach him through it. I could never have imagined the profoundly positive impact the course would have on my whole family.
Josie
Are you ready to begin the journey?
Start today, and make the decision that will change the rest of your life.
Learn practices to support the children in your care, techniques to change your state to one of more calm, presence and joy.
Study with a community of like minded individuals all set on helping the children in their life thrive.
And learn from and be supported by experts who’ve devoted years in helping thousands of children to thrive, despite any diagnosis, hardship or obstacles.
On this course you’ll get…
Live Webinars
Webinars offer an amazing opportunity to learn direct from Jyoti and from other teacher/advanced practitioners with many years using our methodology with children and adults.
Not only will you learn from their experience but you'll also benefit from hearing about the experience of the other practitioners on the course. There will be time spent practising together, time discussing the teachings and learning how to implement becoming more confident in adapting practices to whomever is before you.
This is your opportunity to ask questions, immerse yourself and come away with a rounder understanding of what it takes to be a Special Yoga practitioner.
Live Teaching Webinars on this course will be: Tuesday 25th February between 6.30pm - 9.00pm and Tuesdays 1st April, 6th May and 10th June between 6.30pm - 8.30pm.
The first webinar is a 'must-attend' - we all get to meet each other and from that you'll be allocated to a small study group with a study group teacher who'll support you throughout the course. We can't imagine why you'd not want to be there for the remaining webinars but we know that sometimes life get's in the way. If you can't attend you will need to watch the recording.
A great opportunity for support as you study
Study support groups to test & embed your learning. After the opening webinar when we’ve met you and heard what you want from the course you’ll join a small study group with one of our senior practitioners.
The four live study support sessions on this course provide you with the opportunity to learn from each other as you work through study group assignments set specifically to draw out what you’ve all learned and help develop your skills to share with the special children in your lives.
Live Study Groups on this course will be held on Tuesday 4th March, 8th April, 13th May and 3rd June at 6:30pm.
Recorded video and written lessons
Course Learning At Your Fingertips via desktop, app or tablet. A course space exclusively for the students on this course can be accessed via desktop, tablet or mobile phone enabling you to access the self guided elements at the optimum time for you to learn.
Content is time released so you can pace yourself as you go. You can access the videos for three months post course for ongoing support. There are two personal assignments to work through with constructive feedback from your assigned teacher.
You will get access to the first self learning module one week before the opening webinar.
Access ends three months after the date of the final assignment.
Leading the Training…
Jodie Spiers
Jodie joined the Special Yoga team in 2012. This coincided with a career shift into health and social care, where she has spent the last ten years working for a charity as a support worker and manager of day services for children and adults with learning disabilities and autism.
Since beginning her yoga training journey with the Special Yoga Adults course, Jodie has gone on to train as a yoga teacher, yoga therapist and Senior Special Yoga practitioner under the guidance of Jyoti Manuel, and mentor Christine Godwin.
Jodie has a particular interest in the co-occurrence of mental health challenges in adults with learning disabilities and autism.
Currently Jodie balances working as a Senior Special Yoga Practitioner, sharing group classes, workshops for parents and support staff, and one to one sessions with adults whilst continuing to work in health and social care, developing services for children and adults in North West London. She is passionate about advocating and sharing the benefits of yoga with the people she works with and those who support them.
Sophie Horsman
Sophie has worked with children and adults with learning disabilities and autism since 1993,supporting people in residential, day services and as a respite carer. She is a mum to adult twin sons who have profound learning disabilities and autism and grew up with a close family member who has Angelman’s Syndrome.
Sophie began practicing yoga regularly after her sons were born. She initially trained with Special Yoga whilst working at a day centre for adults in order to be able to share yoga with both her children and her clients and, loving the heart-based connection-focused practices she discovered, alongside experiencing the benefits of practices which focus on emotional regulation for herself and her children, she has subsequently gone on to train as a senior practitioner.
Sophie currently works as a special yoga practitioner, predominantly sharing yoga with adults with complex needs, PMLD and autism.
On This Course You Get….
Eight and a half hours of live teaching and group study
Fifteen hours of pre-recorded videos and written lessons
Seventeen hours of self study, self practice and assignments
Total Course Time Commitment Is Around 20 Minutes Per Day
To learn from teachers with a wealth of experience supporting adults with disabilities and autism
To share the joy of your exploration and use of Special Yoga with a supportive and understanding community
