Autumn Teacher Training
19 - 29 October, 2026, Portugal
An immersion for teachers in the Yogalap Pranayama Method™
Welcome to the first-ever in-person Yogalap Teacher Training.
This training is designed to ground you deeply within the Yogalap Pranayama Method™, sequencing, and philosophy, and to give you the confidence and skill to go out into the world and teach.
The training is comprehensive, covering a range of movement, breathing, and meditation techniques derived from Yoga and Qigong, as well as the signature Yogalap sequences and methods we teach.
Alongside practical techniques, the course also explores Yoga philosophy, other spiritual traditions, and modern scientific insights into the relationship between mind, body, and breath.
This is a 75-hour YACEP (Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider) training for certified yoga teachers (RYTs) seeking advanced study and continuing education credits.
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Become Part of the Mission of Life Awareness Project
At yogalap, this work is part of a wider vision. Through the Life Awareness Project, we aim to make powerful self-care practices accessible to everyone. In a time when stress and mental health challenges are rising globally, practices such as breathwork, meditation, and qigong offer practical ways for people to cultivate balance, clarity, and resilience. This training gives you the opportunity to join us in this mission as an ambassador of global change.
The Yogalap Pranayama Method™
The Yogalap Pranayama Method™ as developed by Michaël Bijker, is a sequence of ancient practices designed to harmonize body, mind, and emotions.
It involves:
• Gentle movement from Yoga and Qigong, accessible to all levels
• Cycles of strong, medium, and slow breathing, breath retention, and bandhas
• Mind training and meditation
• Practices to generate positive emotional states such as gratitude, loving-kindness and equanimity
More than a method
Rather than being a fixed method to be followed precisely, the system is designed to be adapted intuitively. It can be made longer or shorter, stronger or gentler, and adjusted by including or excluding specific techniques depending on the needs of the moment.
Ultimately, the method supports a direct connection to one’s own body, breath, mind, and emotional system, developing the capacity for intuitive self-regulation and a deeper lived experience of pranayama and meditation.
While many people, including us at Yogalap, continue to practice the traditional sequence, the deeper purpose of the methodology is to help the practitioner move beyond technique. The method serves as a structure for practice and teaching, guiding the practitioner toward direct experience of prana and meditation — the interplay between life force and consciousness within ourselves.
As teachers
Teachers will be trained to develop a high level of skill, direct experience, and embodied understanding of pranayama and meditation. This includes sensitivity to their own internal process, as well as the ability to read and understand others clearly.
They will learn how to teach the method in a grounded and effective way, and how to adapt it according to different students, settings, and contexts.
Training in Person
Many of you have completed our online trainings and have experienced meaningful results from them.
However, the ability to truly hold space, guide breath, and transmit practice develops more fully through direct immersion.
Pranayama is subtle. It is shaped through repetition, sensitivity, and direct experience. In a shared physical setting, the nuances of breath, energy, and awareness can be observed, refined, and corrected in real time in a way that online learning cannot replicate.
In this 10-day immersion, you enter a focused environment dedicated entirely to pranayama practice, study, and transmission. Through daily guided sessions, close mentorship, and shared practice with other committed students, the work moves beyond conceptual understanding and becomes embodied. This is where practitioners begin to develop into capable and confident facilitators.
Why In-Person Training Matters
In-person training allows learning to happen through direct experience rather than conceptual understanding.
Direct guidance
Teachers can observe subtle patterns in breath, posture, tension, and effort and offer precise adjustments that support real development.
Shared practice field
Daily group practice creates a collective field of focus, discipline, and consistency that is difficult to replicate individually.
Real life transmission
Aspects such as timing, presence, space-holding, meditativeness and energetic awareness are more clearly transmitted and demonstrated through co-practice in the same space.
Integration time
Stepping away from daily life allows the nervous system to settle and supports deeper assimilation of the practice.
What Our Days Will Look Like
During these ten days you will deepen both personal practice and teaching capacity.
Topics and activities include:
• Daily self-practice sessions
• Daily guided sessions, philosophy, anatomy and science talks
• Refining foundational pranayama techniques
• Understanding physiological and energetic effects of breathwork
• Structuring and sequencing pranayama sessions and understanding the Yogalap Pranayama Method
• Developing sensitivity to different students and their limitations
• Teaching sessions to others in the group
• Integrating pranayama with meditation and awareness practices
• Learning how to give talks with confidence
• Learning how to hold retreats
• Learning how to structure workshops
Requirements to Attend the Teacher Training
Those wanting to attend this training will need to:
• Have finished the Breathwork Instructor Course Online
• Must have a regular pranayama practice going
• Be emotionally stable to attend an intensive ten day training
You do not need advanced experience. What matters is consistency in practice, openness to feedback, and willingness to learn through direct experience.
A Step Within the Yogalap Path
This training is one step within a broader pathway of practice, study, and teaching within Yogalap.
For those called to share this work more widely, becoming a recognized Yogalap instructor requires sustained training, real teaching experience, and immersion within the method over time.
Requirements for Becoming a Recognized Yogalap Instructor
Official recognition as a Yogalap instructor is based on completion of a full pathway that ensures depth of understanding, embodied practice, and teaching maturity.
It is not based on completion of courses and trainings alone, but on demonstrated competence in real-life teaching contexts.
The official training requirements include:
• Completion of the online Pranayama Instructor Course
• Completion of the online Meditation Instructor Course
• Completion of the 10-day in-person Teacher Training
• At least one year of active teaching with Yogalap methods
• Participation in at least one of our silent retreats
This structure ensures that teaching is grounded in lived experience, repetition, and an ongoing mentorship in real life.
Beyond these minimum requirements, practitioners are encouraged to revisit this training and attend other retreats as part of their ongoing development within the Yogalap path.
We encourage teachers to continue practicing with us, returning to trainings and retreats whenever possible, and staying connected to the Yogalap community.
Schedule overview
Each day balances practice, study, reflection, and integration.
07:00 – 09:30 — Morning Session & Practice
09:30 – 11:00 — Breakfast
11:00 – 13:30 — Philosophy / Teaching Lab / Guided Pranayama
13:30 – 14:30 — Snack
14:30 – 16:30 — Break
16:30 – 18:00 — Reflection, Dharma Talks, Group Practice, Student-Led Practice
18:00 – 19:00 — Dinner
20:00 – 21:00 — Evening Session (Meditation, Light Pranayama, Yoga Nidra)
The Teachers
The training will be led by Yogalap founder Michaël Bijker, alongside Life Awareness Instructor Thomas Mathias.
Location
The training takes place in a secluded valley near Aljezur. The center includes a sauna, swimming pool, and accommodation in comfortable yurts with fireplaces.
Practical Information
Training length
10 days
Included
• Training sessions
• Course materials
• Accommodation
• Two meals per day and one snack
Group size
Group Size is limited to 16 people.
Tuition
Prices include accommodation, brunch, snack and dinner, and the course fee.
Shared yurt: €1950
Commuter: €1550
Very limited private accomodations available starting at €2500 onward. Please reach out to us in the contact form for more info.
Application
Because the training environment is intentionally intimate, spaces are limited to 16 people.
If you feel called to deepen your practice and develop as a pranayama teacher, you are welcome to apply.
We will carefully select the group, and may invite you for a video call with us.