This workshop puts into practice findings from recent exercise research. Recent studies indicate that simply exercising as hard as you can does not necessarily confer the greatest health benefits. In fact, pushing as hard as you can may actually limit your ability to create wellbeing in many ways. Instead, this course emphasizes a skill-based, mindful approach to exercise, as well as emphasizing the importance of finding joy in your routines if you want to get the most benefit from them.

In addition, this workshop emphasizes the importance of creating balance between different components of wellbeing. Where this comes to the fore is in the challenges of building strength versus improving range of motion.

If you are strong, but have limited range of motion, the temptation is to muscle your way through your yoga practice because playing to our strengths makes us feel more accomplished. Feeling more accomplished makes us think we are accomplishing more, even when we are actually accomplishing less. Similarly, if you have good range of motion, but limited strength, the temptation is to “take a vacation in your joints” in your practice. This allows a flexible person to play to their strengths to feel more accomplished.

Wellbeing is a place of balance, not extremes

However, in both cases, focusing on the aspect that we are not so good at is actually more important for creating true wellbeing. Wellbeing at its essence is a place of balance, not a place of extremes. If you are already strong, but tight, you will derive more benefits from increasing your range of motion where you are tightest. If you are very flexible, but weak, you will gain more benefits from increasing strength where you are weak, rather than stretching ever farther.

If this sounds complicated, it doesn’t have to be. There is one simple thing we can focus on that increases mindfulness and skill, that increases your enjoyment of your practice, and that ensures that you don’t simply play to your strengths.

The simple emphasis to add is to focus on savoring (or enjoying) each breath. To savor your breath you actually have to be able to breathe freely. To do that, you simply need to focus on creating more neutral spinal alignment. And to create a more neutral spine, you simply need to learn how to stop using your spine to do movements that are actually hip or shoulder movements.

But the key is the breath. If you simply begin to emphasize a free and spacious breath in each movement, in each pose, everything else will fall into place. This workshop will show you how.

Each course segment is a combination of brief lectures and experiential exercises. The course also includes a Practice Guide document that you can download, view on any device, or print out. The Practice Guide has detailed written and photographic instructions for all the exercises covered in the course, so that you can continue practicing them with ease.

Topics

Chapter 1: Fine-tune Your Practice to Your Own Individual Needs

Chapter 2: Posture Tune Up: Hips, Core & Lower Back

Chapter 3: Posture Tune Up: Neck, Shoulders & Upper Back

Course Objectives

Join me to

• Learn how playing to your strengths and following the path of least resistance in your movement impedes wellbeing
• Observe how we replicate these detrimental patterns in our yoga practice
• Explore the science behind how we get stuck in unhelpful movement ruts
• Learn to recognize patterns of movement (and thinking) that don’t serve you
• Develop new patterns of movement that disrupt your habitual patterns through a focus on a free and delicious breath
• Practice how not to get stressed out when stressful things are happening
• Create more joy in your practice through prioritizing your breath

This Course Includes

• Over 3 hours of on-demand videos
• Lifetime access
• Lectures and experiential exercises
• Lifetime email support for questions related to the workshop
• Downloadable and printable Practice Guide with detailed written and photographic instructions for all the exercises covered in the course, so that you can continue practicing them with ease

Cost: $70