Yoga and teacher training

Abstract

Yoga is one of the oldest and most contrasted meditation-based training methodologies. In recent years has increased its presence in Western education. There are more and more educational centers where yoga is developed for children. However, its relationship with teacher training remains a barely attended pedagogical challenge. The objective of the study is to know how the systematic practice of yoga influences the consciousness of the teacher of early childhood and primary education. It is about understanding, if this practice is relevant from the perspective of the formative and professional experience of the teachers. It starts from a conceptualization of consciousness, both from an "ethic" point of view, or from the theory, as "emic", or from the participants, according to the terminology of Harris (1980). To answer the objective, twenty-one case studies are conducted through in-depth interviews. The participants are sixteen teachers of early childhood and primary education who practice yoga systematically, and five yoga teachers, experts and recognized. The results, obtained through content analysis, indicate that the practice of yoga helps to develop the teacher's consciousness in an effective way, and other important qualities for the teaching function closely linked to consciousness, such as empathy and didactic