Let's Get Moving

Therapeutic yoga is a fantastic way to support a healthy, active, and dynamic lifestyle. 

Let us help you fine tune your own wellness goals and use yoga as tool to support more fluid movement, reduced pain, improved balance, improved energy, better body awareness, improved strength, improved focus, reduced anxiety, improved sleep, deeper breathing, and enhanced vitality. 

Check out below for a short video and more info on our current class offerings. 

Yoga for Balance and Posture: Spring 2023

When you imagine the image of a "yoga master" in your mind what does that person look like? For many the first details that come to mind are someone with excellent posture and a calm and centered demeanor. You might also assume that this person is able to stand on one foot in various positions for extended periods of time. 

This image permeates our cultural ideas about yoga to the extent that there is now research into how the practice of yoga can improve posture and balance. With this research, we can now say, unequivocally, that doing yoga regularly will improve both posture and balance. 

So, why is that important? 

The human body has a unique and genius design that allows us to stand upright and still have an enormous and heavy head. However, gravity is a cruel mistress and once we start to lose the alignment of the head over the shoulders, our enormous head become functionally much, much heavier.  This results in a tight and painful neck and shoulders as well as hunching. 

This progressive hunching has multiple impacts on our bodies affecting breathing, digestion, the immune system, blood flow to the brain and extremities in addition to causing structural problems. 

One of my favorite ways of thinking about posture is through the lens of balance. 

Posture is really just about coordinating the muscles and tendons to help the bones balance on top of each other. 

When the bones are correctly "balanced" our bony structure is like scaffolding that allows us to stand erect with very little effort. 

Achieving this effortless buoyant stature takes persistent effort but is possible. The yoga "asanas" or postures are one of the best ways to work on balance. 

In this yoga class, we explore the concept of finding balance and posture simultaneously. 

 We do this through learning about proper alignment and efficient muscular usage in addition to supporting healthy vestibular function. 

The vestibular system is the part of the nervous system that helps us coordinate movement and balance.

Most people are familiar with this system through the little crystals in our inner ears that help us with our balance. 

As we age and stop engaging in as many varied and fluid movements, the vestibular system becomes less robust and our ability to balance in both static and moving situations is reduced. 

This reduction in function is part of why we become less steady on our feet as we age and why movements like playing on a swing or going on a roller-coaster might make us motion sick as an adult even though that never happened to us when we were kids. 

In this class we work on balance and posture using yoga postures and evidence-based movement practices that are known to improve the tone of the vestibular system.  

Having a robust vestibular system has benefits in addition to better balance we well. It impacts overall level of alertness, muscle tone and and is strongly connected to the limbic system which plays a role in regulating our stress response, attention, motivation and mood. 

This class incorporates traditional Hatha yoga (coming from the Viniyoga, Integral Yoga and Iyengar Yoga traditions), aspects from the Feldenkrais and Egoscue methods of therapeutic movement and neurological research into vestibular function.

All skill levels are welcome. Multiple options for modification are given throughout the class to allow for more gentle and more challenging alternatives. 

Join us in this unique eleven-week program as we improve our balance and posture on and off the mat.