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 Part Two :

Summer 2023

When was the first time a fear of falling crept into your mind?

Like an awareness of mortality, the awareness that we are not as steady or supple as we once were is an inevitable part of aging.

For most people, this starts in their thirties and intensifies with each decade that passes.

The image of the "yoga master" stands in contrast to our fears about shrinking, hunching and staggering through "old age". 

If you google "yoga images", you are inundated by serene looking people with excellent posture, often in the mountains or at the beach, looking contented as they balance on one foot with the other foot in the air. 

These images are part of the cultural myth of yoga. Though there are a minuscule number of folks for whom this type of yoga is a reality, for the majority of us, these images can stand in the way of us developing a yoga practice that is right for our bodies. 

I like to think of the image of the decrepit, hunching old person barely able to walk or leave the house and the serene yogi perched on one foot overlooking a waterfall in the jungle as a continuum. 

Each of us is somewhere between these two points.

The promise of yoga is that if you practice with regularity, you will slow the rate at which you move toward aging with debility and even make steps toward becoming like the yogi at the waterfall. 

There is a compelling body of research that shows unequivocally that doing yoga regularly will improve both posture and balance. 

Poor posture and balance have real negative impacts on our health and quality of life. 

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 and pain. 

Poor balance and dizziness play a major role in becoming more sedentary, have a correlation with anxiety and cognitive decline. Poor balance also makes it more likely that we will fall (which has potentially severe consequences). 

The yoga "asanas" or postures are one of the best known ways for humans to work on improving balance and posture. 

In this class, rather than jumping straight into forcing ourselves to stand up straight and balance on one foot, we begin by working on micro skills and re-educating the body and brain on how to do these smaller movements correctly and automatically.

We do this through learning about proper alignment and efficient muscular usage in addition to supporting healthy vestibular function and improved body awareness (introception and proprioception). 

By improving micro-skills like foot strength, ankle stability and neck range of movement, we are able progress with more ease  through increasingly complex and challenging movements and poses.

 In this class we work on balance and posture using traditional yoga postures (coming from the Viniyoga, Integral Yoga and Iyengar Yoga traditions) and evidence-based movement practices from Western biomechanics, neuroscience and occupational therapy. 

The practice is a healthy mix of focused small movements geared towards neuromuscular re-education and flowing dynamic sequences of movement that are both fun and challenging. 

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.