Yoga & Somatics for Immune & Respiratory Health

Online course - with option for extra live content towards full certification

Learn the nature of breath in relation to our natural defences and how it contributes to the health of our immune and respiratory systems.

This course accompanies the book Yoga & Somatics for Immune & Respiratory Health which is laid out along the same six themes within this very course that it evolved from: Healthy Defences, Stress and Inflammation, Fluid Adaptation, Mindful Boundaries, Embodied Awareness and Good Vibrations. This follows an arc alongside the practices for each part, that together build up a complete cycle – from the ground up to standing and back down again, to bring in sound at the end, a final resonance.

Together these in-depth and rich resources take you through the functions of the immune and respiratory systems and how they orchestrate in the body with each other (and other body systems). You will explore how modern psycho-social stress, trauma, fascial movement and lymphatic flow affect these and other aspects of our health.

Through personal practice and bringing theory to life with compassionate, embodied awareness, you will explore how to design and teach practices to support optimal immune and respiratory function.

Ways to study the course content:

The first step is to sign up for the online course and buy the book – then you are on your way with the self-study, online portion of the course. This may suit your needs if you are exploring the content purely for interest or to add into other relevant study or experience.

If you are looking to incorporate the practice and teaching further, see below for the route towards certification. This includes important live contact hours with Charlotte for discussion relevant to your needs; processing of the materials for relevance in your understanding and holding embodied space for others. These can be online or in-person, and are booked separately to this online course, at an extra cost. 

Remember, you can email us at [email protected] to check your options and the pricing anytime.

Alternatively, you can book a 15-minute chat with Charlotte to discuss the most relevant path for you, especially alongside other courses you have studied, other professional qualifications or experience that are relevant to the material or if you are looking for small groups or mentoring for the live attendance hours (see below). 

1. Purely self-study using the online materials and book:

  • Designed to be studied alongside the book of the same name – course themes follow the six chapters
  • All content available once you’ve signed up – to make your way through in the time and pace that suits you
  • Introductory offer ÂŁ89 – payment plans available
  • Lifetime access
  • Does not include any live content

30 CPD hours:

  • Course presentations, practice videos and audios - 16 hours
  • Own reading, self-study and self-enquiry questions - 14 hours minimum

2. After or alongside the online content, attending live contact session options for six hours extra, choose from these options:

  • 2 x 3-hour group online sessions (one to cover three themes) - next intakes Saturdays 2-5.30pm - intakes for Autumn 2024, Spring 2025, Summer 2025 - £120 (2 places for ÂŁ105)
  • 1 x 6-hr in-person day workshop in Brighton date TBC - ÂŁ80
  • Other options possible - private mentoring, personalised with study groups (can work well when applying course content to specialisms eg with specific client types for Yoga Therapists or health professionals, for YTs who are also Nutritional Therapists) – can be discussed separately with Charlotte – email interest to [email protected]

Brings total to 36 CPD hours:

  • Live sessions need to be done after or alongside study of the online course

3. Then option to do assessment for full certification whether doing just online course or live attendance too:

  • Introduction on theme or aspect of the course that is relevant to your own teaching, self-enquiry, study or interest
  • Class plan, then taught, followed by reflections
  • Full and constructive feedback
  • Marking fee of ÂŁ30

Brings total to 50 CPD hours:

  • With research, dedicated reading, planning, writing, teaching and reflecting, allow about 14 hours work
  • When this is complete, you will receive a certificate of completion from Somatic Therapeutic Yoga Training Ltd stating 50 hours CPD

4. Full Further Training certification with Yoga Alliance Professionals:

  • As you need a minimum of 28 hours contact time with the teacher for a full further training certification, you can make this up above the 6 hours live attendance specific to this content by attending all four of Charlotte’s Yoga and Somatics for Healing and Recovery in-person day workshops in London, Brighton or Bath, see more details, prices and booking here.
  • These workshops cover aspects of any therapeutic practice and expand on the trauma-informed, embodied content of this course.

Four workshops bring total CPD hours to 74 hours:

  • 24 hours CPD for 4 x 6-hour days
  • With 6 hours live contact time via sessions above, satisfies criteria for full certification via Yoga Alliance Professionals
  • Without these, you can have a certificate of CPD hours completed from Somatic Therapeutic Yoga Training Ltd

What is covered in this course?

Over six themes you will explore the immune and respiratory systems and how they relate to movement, embodied awareness and self-compassion. We will also explore a range of practices incorporating movement, meditation and breath to develop a sound understanding of how to structure effective sequences.

The relationship between our immunity and how safe or unsafe we feel is tied into our breath, which becomes faster and shallower when we enter protective modes. This highlights the importance of a stress and trauma-informed framework for understanding how to support regulation in the nervous system, which so intimately links our breath and immunity. Healing becomes compromised when we are get stuck in heightened stress responses - we cannot be in survival and growth at the same time.

Understanding how our immune system shapes our boundaries between the outside world and our internal landscape is key to supporting it, so it can respond to perceived threat and danger. Our respiratory system has a similar response to the internal and external; constantly taking in nourishment through the inhalation and releasing that which does not serve us through the exhalation. These two systems are intrinsically linked in our function and health, and how we relate to the world around us.

COURSE STRUCTURE

Over each of the six themes you will receive the following course materials that follow content on the book (relevant page numbers are given) for more in-depth support:

Detailed presentation

on an area of physiology and how the yoga system can support this. This will be pre-recorded in video format (self-study) for you to refer back to, with a PDF of the slides to make notes on.

Pre-recorded Physical Practice

to support respiratory and immune health in different planes and with a different relationship to gravity, presence and self – video format for you to be able to revisit and explore the practices (self-study), with a PDF of images from the video to make notes on.

Supportive Practice

as an audio resource to bring in other aspects of the yoga path or related, more modern, complementary techniques (self-study).

At the end of the course there is an optional final assessment to design a class (with introduction and reflection), based on what you have learned which will be marked with teacher feedback.

Each theme will require 4-6 hrs of personal study and practice.

COURSE OUTLINE

Includes 6 themes, explored in the format shared below.

See the intro video for each section to get an idea of the course content.

1: Healthy defences

Presentation focus: Supporting our boundaries and breath – the territory. The mouth, nose and throat as gateway for immune defence. The rhythm of the breath and its anatomy.

Physical practice: Loosening and Somatic - grounding, self-regulation and recognising boundaries

Supportive practice: Mindfulness of breathing practices

 

2: Stress and Inflammation

Presentation focus: The autonomic nervous system in relation to breath and immunity; how inflammation is part of chronic stress patterns. How stress responses upset polarity and balance; how yoga can help restore these for immune and respiratory health.

Physical practice: Twisting and Undulating - for diaphragmatic movement, fascial release and lymphatic movement

Supportive practice: Cooling Heightened Responses - three stress-reducing practices; embodiment & release

 

3: Fluid Adaptation

Presentation focus: How bodily fluids and fascia are part of the whole orchestration of breath and immunity. Connections of the vagus nerve and nasal breathing on adaptive regulation and responses.

Physical practice: Lunging, Stepping and Squatting – basic, primal patterns for optimal breath and immunity that support how we rise up from ankles, knees and hips to support the upper body

Supportive practice: Heart-based Mudra meditations

 

4: Mindful Boundaries

Presentation focus: Appropriate containment for body fluids and our sense of cohesion, safety and a home to breathe fully. Clear distinction between our internal and external worlds that is part of boundaries and self-protection.

Physical practice: Standing into Full Breathing and Protective Support - full groundedness and relation to gravity for mobilising breath, fluid flow through all systems and self-protection through awareness

Supportive practice: Body Scan & Autogenic Release

 

5: Embodied Awareness

Presentation focus: How to support body self-regulation and homeostasis with interoception; tuning in and kind attention. Focus on the flow of prana and the vayus for movement of the breath body and immune fluids. How active relaxation and natural autonomic release support these aspects.

Physical practice: Rest and Recovery - consciously coming into full restorative modes for the space for breath and healing

Supportive practice: Traditional pranayama practices

 

6: Good Vibrations

Presentation focus: The mouth and throat as entry – health and softening as key to breath and immunity. How sound and mantra can support respiratory and immune health through vibration and support of tissues in the throat and mouth as first defence and gateway to the vitality of the breath.

Physical practice: Bringing it all together – a full sequence incorporating all of the aspects above, with sounding including

Supportive practice: Sounding and simple mantra

 

HOW THIS COURSE RELATES TO CHARLOTTE'S OTHER YOGA TEACHER TRAININGS

The Yoga & Somatics for Respiratory & Immune Health course is a perfect addition to Charlotte's other courses. There's overlap in ways that the courses will feed into each other but lots of new information and new practices to both.

The Yoga & Somatics for Respiratory & Immune Health course focuses on the ways these body systems work and how physical and subtle yoga practices and mindful, embodied attention affect them.

In relation to Charlotte's two Somatic courses:

Somatics for Yoga Teachers course:

As the Immune and Respiratory course is more about therapeutic considerations, the theoretical information in it differs quite a lot from this more practical course, which emphasises how to practice and teach. There's also many more subtle practices, such as pranayama and autogenic practices, etc.

LEARN MORE

Yoga & Somatics for Healing & Recovery course:

This course differs from the Immune and Respiratory as a much more general overview about how to work therapeutically from many different angles. The Yoga & Somatics for Respiratory & Immune Health course goes more into those two body systems and so goes more deeply into aspects such as nasal breathing, lymphatics, fascial connections and the anatomical considerations there. There's overlap in ways that the courses will feed into each other but lots of new information and new practices to both.

LEARN MORE

 

- YSHR Workshops - if you have already completed the YSHR workshops, you can add the Yoga & Somatics for Respiratory & Immune Health course as a specialism for the full certification; as long as you have completed the online course, live sessions and the written assessment.

- The Immune & Respiratory course is one of three Charlotte runs with different health specialisms, influenced by her work as a Nutritional Therapist. The others are Teaching Yoga for Digestive Health, and Teaching Yoga for Stress, Burnout & Fatigue.

- The health specialism courses above are supported by Charlotte's two Somatics courses that guide therapeutic and trauma-informed teaching. The Somatics for Yoga Teachers, and Yoga & Somatics for Healing & Recovery courses together make up the 170-hr Therapeutic Somatics for Yoga Teachers certification. The health specialisms can then add into these.

- All five courses feed into each other and are designed to be done in any order. Any reiteration of content helps to instil its value within practice and look from different angles to ensure a continually curious and multi-faceted view.

PURCHASE THE COURSE

PURCHASE THE LIVE SESSIONS

2 x 3-hour group online sessions (one to cover three themes)

Next dates

Saturdays 2-5.30pm UK time (with 2 x 15 min breaks)

autumn 2024 intake: October 29th, December 14th

spring 2025 intake: January 4th, February 22nd

summer 2025 intake: May 31st, June 7th

NB: you can sign up with a friend or fellow yoga teacher (or other health professional) as a 'study buddy' at a discounted rate of £210. After purchase, you'll be sent a coupon code to share with your friend so they can register for the sessions.

Please get in touch at [email protected]  for further discounts for groups. 

Additional Live Workshops for this training

Available in-person and online

In-Person Options
Online Options

Hi, I'm Charlotte Watts.

Charlotte attended her first yoga class in 1996 and immediately knew that it would be a large part of the route to overcoming her stress-related, digestive, mood and energy issues. She trained at the Vajrasati Yoga School in Brighton (500 hour Yoga Alliance training) founded by Jim Tarran who is influenced by Buddhism and brought a natural mindfulness aspect to practising yoga. This was the beginning of a relationship with yoga focusing on taking time and finding space to feel subtleties of the experience, energetics and responses within the practice and create full body awareness within postures.

Charlotte then went on to train in teaching yoga for people with ME and Chronic Fatigue with Fiona Agombar and teaching for chronic pain with Heather Mason, continuing her interest in yoga as therapy for anxiety, depression and stress states. She deepened her mindfulness practice as a result of a specific mindfulness course for yoga teachers with Cathy-Mae Karelse. She continues to study with teachers Tias Little and Joanne Avison as they combine her love of mindful, somatic practice, yoga as meditation, the contemporary anatomy of biotensegrity and an explorative and compassionate attitude – alongside attention to alignment with respect to the individual needs of students.

Charlotte is an author with many published books, including Yoga and Somatics for Immune and Respiratory Health (Singing Dragon 2022), Yoga Therapy for Digestive Health (Singing Dragon 2018), Good Mood Food (Nourish 2018) and The De-Stress Effect (2015). She is also an award-winning nutritionist, practising since 2000 and specialising in stress-related and fatigue conditions and burnout, and digestive issues.

Charlotte teaches classes in Brighton and London, workshops, UK yoga weekends and retreats abroad. She also runs courses and retreats specifically for yoga teachers to attend to their own self-care so they have the resources to support others.