All yoga students come to their practice with pre-existing physical limitations. Whether it’s lack of flexibility, poor posture, limited strength – or something else, these all have one thing in common: They hold you back from progressing in your practice as smoothly and quickly as you might otherwise.
Moreover, these physical blind spots not only hamper progress, but may predispose us for injury and chronic pain issues as we get older.
What if there was a way to not only understand what your unique limitations are – but also learn how to structure your practice to overcome them? And what if overcoming these limitations not only help you develop a more fulfilling yoga practice, but also can help heal previous injuries and other limitations in the extended body-mind?
No matter what your age (or that of your students), learn the essential biomechanics that will help you lay the foundation for a lifelong healthy yoga practice. In this online course, Julie draws on her 30+ years of yoga teaching experience to demonstrate the common biomechanical limitations students bring to their practice, how to observe them, and how to overcome them.
In this course, Julie Gudmestad draws on her 30+ years of yoga teaching experience to demonstrate the common biomechanical limitations students bring to their practice, how to observe them, and how to overcome them.
The course comes in two parts: Yoga Foundations I focuses on the Biomechanics of Upper Body Balance and Yoga Foundations II focuses on the Biomechanics of Lower Body Balance.
What Your Will Learn: Yoga Foundations I
- Telltale signs of posture imbalances and how they affect alignment in yoga postures
- The key muscles involved in common posture imbalances and best yoga poses to counteract them
- Yoga poses and sequences that are particularly useful to help correct shoulder tightness and imbalances in the erector spinae, to improve spinal alignment and relieve back pain
- How to focus the stretch or strengthening actions on the thoracic spine, or mid-back, while avoiding compensations in the lumbar and cervical regions
- Participate in asana practice sessions that allow you to feel, in your own body, the actions of muscles and the dramatic effects of subtle changes in alignment
What Your Will Learn: Yoga Foundations II
- Essentials of healthy core strengthening – Learn why core strengthening is so important and why most people go about it completely wrong
- Why imbalanced core strengthening can lead to neck and back pain, and even difficulties breathing
- The hamstring conundrum facing most yoga practitioners and how to avoid the fall-out of tight hamstrings
- The most ignored muscles in yoga classes that you need to get to know, which impact everything from inversions to arm balances and standing poses
- One of the most critical muscle groups to focus on to stay mobile and fully functional as we get older
