Roots & River Psyche + Soma

Established 2026

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Roots & River Yoga

Program Instances

Hybrid

Dates: TBD

300 hours • TBD

Led by

Machelle Lee

CYT-L3

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Purpose

Psyche + Soma Yoga is an advanced 300-hour teacher training for experienced yoga teachers who are ready to deepen their personal practice, expand their understanding of yoga, and explore the relationship between body, psyche, breath, philosophy, and energetic systems.

What to expect

Throughout the training, we continue to explore yoga through both traditional wisdom and contemporary scientific understanding. The physical body becomes a doorway into deeper inquiry, while philosophy, psychology, breath, mythology, and energetic traditions offer additional lenses through which to understand human experience.

You will deepen your study of functional anatomy, nervous-system-informed teaching, pranayama, Yin Yoga, Restorative Yoga, Chinese Medicine, Five Element theory, mythology, and storytelling. The training also moves beyond the mat, inviting you to explore teaching, leadership, professional identity, and the sustainable practice of teaching yoga.

Style/Lineage

The Seven Movements of Embodied Wisdom

The Level 2 journey unfolds through seven movements, each building upon the last:

🌿 ARRIVE - Self → Body
I am here. Cultivate embodied presence, self-awareness, self-nourishment, and a deeper ability to see and experience the individual body.

🌙 DEEPEN - Psyche → Philosophy → Breath
I seek to know myself. Explore Yoga Philosophy, Depth Psychology, mythology, and pranayama as pathways into the inner landscape.

🧘 PRACTICE - Yin Yoga → Restorative Yoga
I experience. Deepen your understanding and teaching of stillness, sensation, support, adaptation, functional anatomy, and nervous-system regulation.

🌱 EXPAND - Chinese Medicine → Energetic Awareness
I see more subtly. Explore Qi, Jing, Shen, meridian theory, Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, seasonal cycles, and the energetic body.

✨ INTEGRATE - Knowledge → Experience → Teaching
I bring it together. Bring anatomy, philosophy, breath, Yin, Restorative Yoga, Chinese Medicine, storytelling, and personal experience into integrated teaching through practice, feedback, and reflection.

📖 CREATE - Myth → Story → Meaning
I make meaning, purpose, and connection. Explore myth, archetype, metaphor, poetry, and story as tools for experiential and meaningful teaching.

🔥 EXPRESS - Leadership → Teaching → Authentic Voice
I offer my wisdom into the world. Develop your personal teaching philosophy, professional identity, leadership skills, and a sustainable approach to sharing your work.

Through this approach, you will:

Deepen your understanding of functional anatomy, individual structural variation, fascia, tissue adaptation, and nervous-system-informed teaching.
Expand your study of Yoga Philosophy, the Yoga Sutras, Depth Psychology, mythology, archetype, symbol, and meaning.
Deepen your understanding and teaching of pranayama, Yin Yoga, and Restorative Yoga.
Explore Chinese Medicine, Five Element theory, meridian systems, seasonal cycles, and energetic awareness.
Learn to integrate anatomy, philosophy, breath, energetics, movement, and story into meaningful and responsive teaching.
Strengthen your presence, discernment, communication, leadership, and ability to respond to individual students in real time.
Develop an authentic teaching voice, personal teaching philosophy, and sustainable professional identity grounded in practice, reflection, and lived experience.

Additional Information

This Training Is For You If…

You have completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training and feel called to continue your study.
You are an experienced yoga teacher who wants to deepen your understanding beyond foundational teacher training.
You are curious about the intersections of yoga, psychology, anatomy, philosophy, mythology, Chinese Medicine, and embodied experience.
You want to develop greater discernment, confidence, and authenticity as a teacher.
You are ready to move beyond simply knowing about yoga and toward embodying what you know.

Core competencies

By the end of this program, graduates will be able to…

Teaching Skills	Evaluate a teach-back recording against prior feedback, justifying whether the noted growth areas show measurable improvement. Develop a set of adaptable cues, structuring language and adjusting cues in real time based on a student's response, offering an alternative that better fits their practice. Construct a complete class arc that integrates anatomy, breath, and philosophical theme, sequencing each element to reinforce a single guiding idea. Design a Restorative teaching script that uses sensation-based language throughout, structuring pacing and silence to avoid imposing an outcome. Practice storytelling connected to a class theme, crafting it to create experiential meaning, allowing the students to draw their own connection.
Anatomy, Physiology, Biomechanics	Evaluate a student's range of motion at a given joint, structuring cues by region rather than by a single ideal shape, justifying whether the limitation reflects structure or another contributing factor. Compare different students' expression of the same posture, examining how differing skeletal proportion explains the range of motion, offering variations that better honor individual skeletal variation. Develop a teaching approach that builds sensory awareness of loading and adaptation, structuring cues that invite students to track internal sensation. Design a sequence structured around nervous-system regulation, ordering postures and pacing to guide students toward a settled state.
Business Skills	Explain why understanding one's audience shapes an offering's design, describing how audience needs inform pricing and format. Explain how marketing communicates the value of an offering, describing the relationship between clear messaging and community trust. Examine a teacher's current schedule for signs of unsustainable rhythm, distinguishing sustainable pacing from early burnout.
Lifestyle & Ethics	Evaluate a personal reflection for evidence of witness consciousness, justifying whether the reflection observes rather than reacts. Apply invitational language when leading a class, offering options within directional language rather than commands, while assessing whether phrasing support student autonomy. Compare an authentic leadership presence with a performed one. Examine differences in communication and power dynamics, while evaluating whether decisions align with authentic presence, and reflecting genuine boundaries or external performance.
Practice Skills	Construct a personal Yin practice sequence addressing several target areas, arranging postures and hold times to support tissue-level change. Design a complete Restorative sequence building toward a fully supported final rest, selecting props and postures that encourage surrender. Evaluate one's own pranayama practice for signs of strain, justifying whether retention or ratio should be reduced for safety. Construct a personal practice variation of a common posture based on functional anatomy, adapting the shape to serve one's own structural needs.
Yoga History & Theory	Apply a concept from Sankhya philosophy when introducing the Yoga Sutras to students, connecting Purusha and Prakriti to a lived teaching example. Apply an archetypal concept from depth psychology when interpreting a myth for teaching purposes, connecting the archetype to a lived human experience. Differentiate Qi from Jing as distinct concepts within Chinese Medicine, examining what each is understood to govern. Compare two elements for their associated emotional and organ relationships, examining how each element's qualities differ from the other.