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$35.00 Secrets of Yoga: It's About the Joints Hips and Shoulders with Doug Keller

Each individual workshop is $35. Pricing for all four workshops is $140.

So much of our thought about yoga revolves around flexibility — the flexibility and strength of our muscles. It can be misleading, not only to those who are inflexible and wonder if yoga is for them, but also to the hyper-mobile, who are able to bask in their flexibility in yoga classes, but end up with joint pain. 

The secret for both ends of the spectrum — and everyone in between — is that it’s about the joints. Good muscle tone, range of motion, and healthy joints come when we pay attention to the joints first - and don’t force them to extremes.

In this two-day teacher training event, Doug Keller will explore our ‘four corners’ of healthy movement — our hips and our shoulders — and principles for healthy joints and safe mobility in these areas.

Saturday’s session: Principles for Healthy Hips

Though we’re used to talking about ‘hip openers,’ it might be better simply to focus on ‘healthy hips,’ since ‘hip openers’ implies just one kind of action for the hips. Think baddhakonasana, bound angle pose.

The point is to find healthy space for movement within the joint, which involves many kinds of movement, none of which need to be extreme. A healthy yoga practice needs to include all of these, starting with a focus on ‘joint play’ or the natural space for movement within a joint. ‘Alignment’ is really about reestablishing that natural space for joint play, and developing healthy coordination between muscles from there.

This includes honoring the shape and structure of our own body - and of our students’ bodies; recognizing and understanding their features, and not forcing according to some external standard of being ‘open.’ If we honor the health of the joints, everything follows 

The first session will focus on these principles and practices for healthy hips, including the kind of knowledge we need to recognize the different characteristics of different peoples’ hips which impact their health and movement — and how to accommodate and work with them.

This will get into areas of movement patterns that can be improved through asana, as well as issues of the low back, sacrum, sciatica, and the knees and feet.

The second session will be a guided practice in which we can feel and experience how these ideas work in a normal, all-levels asana practice focused on the hips.

Sunday’s session: Principles for Healthy Shoulders

Everything said about the hips also applies to the shoulder joints. The difference is that the shoulders are designed to be even more naturally mobile than the hips, and depend upon a balance of tone between the muscles controlling the joints — muscles that notoriously get tight from our modern lifestyle, including the muscles of our neck.

Still, it comes down to the joints first, including the joints of our cervical spine, before we look to stretching tight muscles to relieve shoulder and neck pain. 

Joint mobility precedes muscle flexibility — and joint mobility is not about extremes, but about the natural space of movement within the joint that is the point of ‘alignment.’

In the first session, we’ll explore the joints of the shoulders, their natural movements, and the impact of posture and movement patterns upon them. From there, we can better understand how to work with the muscles for greater shoulder and neck health and freedom. This will include remedial exercises and variations on actions and alignments in yoga poses, which make the poses work better for you. 

In the second session we’ll put these inquiries to work in a an eminently manageable all-levels practice.

The lectures will include illustrated notes for you to keep and review, as well as illustrations of the practical examples and applications in asana that we’ll be practicing in the workshop.

Doug Keller