Keys to a Healthy Asana Practice: The Art of Building Core Stability

By now it’s become an article of faith that core stability is a key element in a healthy asana practice and crucial to a happy lower back. But what is the core and how do we strengthen it? Too often classes with a core emphasis focus on the superficial musculature of the front body and end up creating imbalances that actually inhibit true stability. In this two-part course Natasha Rizopoulos explore the myriad muscles that make up the core. We’ll then look at how strength and intelligence in these muscles can translate into greater ease throughout the practice and especially with arm balances, the bête noire of so many students and even teachers, who are not sure how to translate their own experience in these poses for their students.

In the first session, we’ll begin with a review of the key muscles that create steadiness at the center. Next we’ll explore the essential postures and transitions that tone these muscles. Many of these poses are not commonly thought of as core strengtheners and you may be pleasantly surprised to discover that a well-rounded and correctly aligned practice of familiar poses will give you greater strength than endless abdominal work. 

In the second session, we’ll use the foundation from the previous week to dive into arm balancing. We’ll discuss short home practices that will develop and maintain the strength (core and otherwise) needed for healthy arm balances, as well as how to design sequences that build toward specific poses. The homework poses function as a kind of daily vitamin regimen that, combined with intelligent sequencing and clarity of intention, will make arm balancing accessible and fun.

This Premium Package Includes These Bonuses!

• Yoga Practice Videos – Enjoy two accompanying videos, one on the core and one on arm balances.

• Recordings of Both Sessions -Yours to keep. It’s generally acknowledged that many people only retain 10-20 percent of what they learn in a workshop. You will get the recordings of both webinar sessions (both MP3 and MP4), enabling you to go back and listen to the workshop as many times as you like.

• Transcripts of Both Sessions – Ever wanted to refer to a certain part of a course? Even the best note takers miss a point ever so often. With the transcripts of the sessions, you can go back and refer to particularly important passages or clarify sections you were in doubt about.
   

Join us live or listen to the recordings at your convenience.

Dates: Saturday, February 6 & Saturday, February 13, 2016
Time:  11:30 am Eastern / 8:30 am Pacific

Each session is approximately one hour long and will be recorded. No matter where you are in the world — and even if you cannot tune in at the time of the actual broadcast — you can still benefit from taking the webinar at a time that works best to you. Listen to it as many times as you like!
 

Natasha Rizopoulos: As a dedicated Ashtanga practitioner for many years, Natasha is equally captivated by the precision of the Iyengar system. These two traditions inform her teaching, creating a mindful and dynamic blend of Vinyasa Flow.  Now a Senior Teacher with Down Under Yoga, and a writer, teacher, and DVD instructor for Yoga Journal, Natasha is known world-wide for her ability to communicate the essence of sophisticated postures and ideas in ways that have a transformative effect upon one’s understanding of Yoga. Over the past twenty years, she has refined a method of teaching that empowers students to make profound connections between the alignment of the body and the mind, the physical and the spiritual. This perspective on Yoga and Asana is Align Your Flow.™