James Bailey has been teaching ayurveda and meditation workshops and retreats worldwide. These highly educational and practical teachings are designed as workshops for students and teachers of yoga in training, but can be adapted to any audience. These courses have been popular within many yoga teacher training programs and serve to create a more skilled and resourceful teacher as well as a more mature teaching environment with the modern yoga studio. Schedule a course at your own studio or center.

These courses are designed and taught specifically for yoga teacher training programs around the country. Courses can be structured to meet individual training program needs, with total hours of training ranging between 10 and 16 hours. A 10 hour course for example (2 hours Fri evening, 4 hours Sat and 4 hours Sun) provides 10 hours of approved Yoga Alliance (YA) Yoga Lifestyle, Philosophy or Energetic Anatomy credits. Longer or shorter courses are possible.

Ayurveda Workshops Designed for the Public and for Yoga Teacher Training Programs

(1) "Swasthavritta: Radiant Health with Yoga and Ayurveda" is an in-depth ayurveda training module designed to teach the lifestyle principles of Ayurveda (swasthavritta) that are relavant to the pracftice and teaching of yoga. This intensive will look specifically at the feedback loop between one’s yoga practice and lifestyle patterns to identify what may be hindering or regressing one’s transformation and evolution both as a teacher and as a practitioner. In this course, yoga teachers will learn to

For more on these intensives, click here:

Meditation Courses

Few practitioners of yoga are practicing traditional vedic techniques of meditation, and too few schools and teachers of yoga today have the training to provide meditation as a part of their daily instruction. Even fewer practitioners and teachers are practicing the traditional pratyahara practices considered the actual doorway into the deep subconscious mind and the realm of the inner silence. Courses include:

(1) “Dhyana: The Yogic Path of Meditation” This course is an introduction to meditation (dhyana) as yoga from the Vedic and Yoga Tantra tradition. Here the big view of meditation is articulated and experienced. Doubts and misconceptions are discussed and dispelled, and a fresh understanding and motivation to practice is realized.

(2) “Antar Mouna: A Pratyahara Practice of Inner Silence” Antar Mouna translates as Inner Silence. Antar Mouna instructs us in the fundamental experiences of sensory witnessing and control. In the conventional sense, the mind was designed to engage the world of sensory information, but on the yogic path meditation requires the opposite - inner silence. How do we turn off the mind? Pratyahara practices such as Antar Mouna were designed to address such questions.

(3) “Pancha Maya Kosha Dharana: Roadmap to the Soul” Here the practitioner, through inner visualization, explores and experiences each of the Pancha Maya Kosha (Five Layers of Illusion) that trap the mind into a perpetual self identification with the expressions and experiences of the current body and mind. In this practice we learn to release ourselves from the limiting bounds of the Pancha Maya Kosha, freeing ourselves to experience our true essence.

(4) “Ajapa Japa Meditation” offers several ajapa japa practices that explore the inner subtle realms of the mind-body connection. Learn to integrate internal pranayama, breathing into the psychic channels (nadis), with mantra and exquisite visualizations that will steady the nervous system, uplift the spirit, and remove the root cause of most stress related physical and mental ailments.

(5) “Tantric Meditation Series” is a comprehensive exploration of all of the meditation practices listed above, and more. This course is usually taught over a weekend workshop, or while on retreat during morning sessions before breakfast and morning asana practice.

For more on the meditation courses, click here:

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Ayurveda describes a sacred juice or sap within us that when preserved through life defines our youthfulness and longevity. The practice of yoga can potentially either cultivate or deplete this juice. Otherwise known as ojas, or rasa, the fluid body is an often overlooked aspect of yogic physiology. Strong heating practices are known to dry up the fluid body, drying up the tissues, joints, and nervous system, robbing the tissues of needed ojas and vitiating Vata dosha. The tissues then lose suppleness and become increasingly vulnerability to injury. Rasayana practices and lifestyle awarenesses are key to a healthy and long term vinyasa practice. This course will introduce the practitioner to the fluid body and methods of rejuvenation known as rasayana chikitsa that can be done at home, including daily warm oil massage (abhyanga), the use of oils such as ghee in our diet, ayurvedic nutrition, Vata reducing lifestyle tips, as well as daily and seasonal health routines.

Rasa, Rasayana and the Fluid Body

Yoga injuries are the sacred cow of the practice. Vinyasa practitioners play on the edge as they explore the limits of strength and flexibility. When an injury occurs, it helps to be prepared. Untreated injuries, even minor ones, can potentially become chronic obstacles to the practice. At the very least, recovery can be slow. This course will provide home based practicle solutions to the care and management of injuries most commonly found within yoga and the vinyasa tradition. Healing techniques include ayurvedic herbs (internal formulas and external linaments and balms), herbally medicated oils, daily abhyanga (self massage) with warm oils, nadisampradayam (massage of the 14 primary nadis), marma massage, steam therapy (swedana), heat versus cold therapies, healing mantras and nyasa, and cleansing diets.

Treating Yoga Injuries with Ayurvedic Home Remedies

Homa, havan, agnihotra, cremation, arti, and sati are among a few of the many ritual cycles which center around the element of fire, or agni. Once considered a diety, Agni was the messenger of the Gods, the acceptor of sacrifice, taking offerings to the Gods, the cult of Fire in Vedic times was later downgraded during the Hindu period to domestic and templar ritual. Through fire all offerings and prayers are delivered to the Divine. Through fire all metabolic transformations occur, all thoughts are thought, and all organs and tissues nourished. In this course practical yogic techniques and ayurvedic remedies to rippen and strengthen one’s agni are presented. Herbs, spices, teas, fasting and cleansing techniques included.

Agni:  The Fires of Transformation

James Bailey, LAc, MATCM, MPH, Dipl Ayu

1502 Montana Avenue, Suite 207

Santa Monica, CA 90403

phone        (310)  393 - 4124

email         james@sevanti.com

integrate and apply practical tools from Ayurveda that support both the teaching of yoga as well as their own personal living of yoga in a way that is accessible and applicable to one's individual life rhythm.  

(2) “Awakening the Subtle Body: Prana Marma Nadi Chakra” will explore the world of marmas and nadis that compose the subtle (pranic) body. This unique course will deepen the teachings and practice of Yoga by helping the student instructor to recognize areas of their student’s pranic body that are blocked or weak. Techniques to clear or strengthen each of the 14 nadis and many of the 108 marmas will be taught in a practical manner that can be integrated into the Yoga classroom environment.