This yoga philosophy course visually breaks down complex concepts from the seminal yoga text, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and helps students apply their understandings to their daily lives through journaling, discussion, meditation, and arts-based applications. The materials for this synchronous course consist of a unit plan, lessons, an assessment, and a slide deck for in-person or online instruction. The slide deck describes the relationships and meaning of philosophical concepts through diagrams and pictures, which is unusual for a yoga philosophy course. I collaborated with AI Sandbox to write a course description, enduring understandings, essential questions, course objectives, and an assessment rubric. This course is designed for students taking a five-week philosophy course at a yoga studio or as a part of a longer yoga teacher training program.
While designing this course I wove together elements of Universal Design for Learning and Understanding by Design to engage students’ interests and represent philosophical concepts in meaningful and accessible ways. For example, in order to engage students in their learning, I intentionally gave them choice and autonomy over the content and format of their formative and summative assessments. In addition, in order to help students access knowledge, I organized learning experiences around big ideas and provided learners with multiple ways (i.e., textual, auditory, visual) to perceive knowledge. By designing for engagement and accessibility, I hoped to ignite students’ sense of purpose and internal motivation while supporting them to deeply digest ancient yogic wisdom and apply it to their everyday lives.
