Breathing Space trains teachers because yoga gives children tools to care for themselves and each other, and children who have those tools grow up to build a more peaceful and just world. We teach yoga as a practice for community, healing, and personal growth, with its ethics and cultural roots intact.

Teaching kids yoga is fun. It is also genuinely hard, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not spent much time in a room full of kids who each have a different idea about what should happen next.

Most yoga teacher training programs prepare you to teach adults – adults who choose to be there, who respond to verbal cues, who stay on their mats. Teaching children requires something else entirely. The skills are different. The classroom management is different. The developmental knowledge is different. And the philosophy, not the postures, is the foundation of the work.

Our training prepares yoga teachers, educators, and caregivers to teach children confidently at every stage of childhood, from pre-crawling babies to preteens. It is grounded in child development science and yoga philosophy. You will leave knowing how children actually develop, what they need at each stage, and how to hold a room where participation looks nothing like it does in an adult class.

Not sure where to start
or have questions?

Why We Train Teachers

Breathing Space has taught yoga to children and families in Washington, DC, since 2008. We've seen what a steady practice gives a child: ways to settle a busy body, name a big feeling, and treat classmates with kindness. Those skills last a lifetime, and they shape the communities children grow up to build.

We can reach only so many children ourselves. Training teachers carries this work to children we'll never meet.

For us, teaching children is a calling. We train teachers who share it: educators, caregivers, and yoga practitioners who are science-minded, committed to justice, and ready to make a difference in children's lives.

Most children's yoga programs begin at age three. We begin with newborns. Our training follows infants from just a few weeks old through the teen years.

We teach child development and yoga philosophy as one framework, starting in a baby's first weeks.  What a pre-crawling baby's nervous system is doing is the same thread you follow when an eight-year-old won't settle. Our Foundations of Teaching Yoga for Children module is essential for each of the age groups described below, so it comes with your first module.

• Baby Yoga & Play: You learn to read a pre-verbal baby, guide the caregiver's hands, and lead a class arc built for a room of new parents and pre-crawling babies.
• Toddler & Preschooler Yoga: You learn to teach mobile babies, toddlers, and preschoolers in studios, daycares, preschools or public caregiver-child classes with our Tot Yoga and Preschooler Yoga class formats. 
• Kids & Preteen Yoga:  You learn our yamas-and-niyamas curriculum framework and how to teach yoga inside a real school day.

Trainees can start with any module and complete one or all three.

• Mentorship and Certification: You get observed teaching, coursework designed with your mentor, two years of coaching, and our Teaching Teens curriculum for ages 12 to 17.

You've been practicing yoga, working closely with children, or both — and you're starting to think seriously about building something around it. Teaching. A school program. Sessions for families with young children. You don't need to have the full picture before you start the conversation. Most people who end up in this training didn't.

Community Builders

You see yoga as a way to support families and strengthen your community. Children who practice kindness, truthfulness, and generosity, and who notice how their choices affect the people around them, grow into adults who do the same. Our curriculum builds each semester around those values, drawn from yoga's ethical teachings, the yamas and niyamas.

Baby and toddler yoga involves caregivers as active participants. Supporting the caregiver-child relationship is not just leading the adult through poses. It is a distinct skill that takes practice to develop.

Teaching yoga in a school where you have 25 kids, a classroom, no mats, and 45 minutes is a completely different context than a studio. You'll learn how to design for it.

Building a class arc that works for children at a specific developmental stage, connects to themes they recognize, and stays flexible when the room has other ideas.

Jessica Lagarde (RYT, LMT) approaches children's movement from a direction most yoga teachers don't: she started with the body. Nearly two decades as a licensed massage practitioner — including teaching in a professional massage training program — means she understands how bodies hold tension, how touch communicates, and what it actually feels like to move with intention rather than just through it.

Jess has been teaching creative movement and children's yoga in the DC metro area since 2005, and at Breathing Space, she teaches classes for infants through tweens, directs the summer yoga camps, and keeps the studio running day to day. She also maintains a private massage practice through Shine Massage & Wellness in College Park — because she never stopped doing the work.

The full 95-hour Yoga Alliance-approved certification includes 39 additional hours beyond Phase 1, completed with individualized mentor support:

• 16 hours of practicum: observed teaching sessions with structured written feedback, scheduled alongside workshop days or self-arranged with mentor approval
• 23+ hours of custom coursework, developed with your mentor based on your goals and background. Topics include yoga philosophy, anatomy and physiology, adaptive teaching, lesson planning, and program development. Includes access to on-demand workshop recordings as they become available.
• Unlimited laser coaching for up to two years: 15-minute individual calls with your mentor to design your path, track your hours, answer questions, and keep you moving

The Mentorship and Certification module is individualized by design. No two trainees follow exactly the same path, because no two trainees are starting from the same place or working toward the same goals. The certification is the same. The route is yours.

Total program hours at a glance:

• Foundations: 8 hours
• Three age-group modules: 48 hours (16 each)
• Phase 1 total: 56 hours
• Phase 2 total: 39+ hours
  • Practicum: 16 hours
  • Custom learning path: 23+ hours
• Full certification total: 95+ hours

Navigation: