For the trained eye, the body has many secrets to tell. As yoga teachers, we quickly develop the ability to observe when students have difficulty with alignment in yoga postures. But observing is one thing, knowing how to help students overcome alignment issues is another issue altogether!
Many alignment issues are not so much rooted in lack of proper instruction, but rather are caused by physical limitations students may have, such as overly tight muscles in different muscle groups. In such situations, how do we help students progress? And how can we protect students with physical limitations from potentially injuring themselves?
In this course, physical therapist and yoga therapist Chrys Kub will help you develop your eye for your yoga students’ movement patterns and how those patterns relate to yoga postures and musculoskeletal dysfunction. This is important not just for our yoga asanas practice. Inefficient movement patterns often develop into chronic areas of dysfunction, leading to pain and/or disability as we get older.
To help students progress and overcome alignment issues based in physical limitations, yoga teachers need to be able to assess which muscle groups are involved in creating the physical limitations. But this is an area where most yoga teachers have little, if any, training.
You will learn to identify efficient movement patterns and common compensations in the physical body, and how these in turn impact alignment in yoga asanas. This creates an entirely new foundation not just for working with students in individual sessions, but also for knowing which yoga poses to emphasize to help students make the most progress in your yoga classes.
This screening tool is useful not just for yoga teachers, yoga practitioners can benefit greatly as well from practicing with greater awareness of their body’s tendencies and limitations.
What You Will Learn
- The role compensatory patterns in the body play in the development of long-term musculoskeletal dysfunction and chronic pain
- The most common compensatory patterns you are likely to encounter in your students, and the long-term musculoskeletal issues these often are linked to
- Dynamic assessment tools to help you observe the individual patterns of each student
- General principles for how to help students unlock these patterns,
- Specific yoga tools and yoga asanas you can apply in individual yoga sessions or in your yoga classes
This Course Also Includes:
- Video Practice: Enjoy a video practice with Chrys demonstrating an actual screening being done and what to look for, as well as some of the common dysfunctions you might encounter when you’re doing the assessment. Chrys will demonstrate how to become more aware of a student’s unique imbalances and tendencies during the yoga practice, as well as techniques to help students progress faster and prevent injury.
- 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 sessions (MP3 downloadable – MP4 streaming online), 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 every 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.
This course qualifies for 3 CEs with Yoga Alliance.
