Are you...
…Ready to take your practice and teaching beyond the context of "traditional" yoga asana?
…Unsure of how to integrate strength and stability work into your yoga classes?
…Struggling with frequently injuring and re-injuring yourself in yoga?
…Seeking non-traditional modes of strength-building?
If so, you're in the right place!
Each Yoga with Resistance Bands class teaches you how to use resistance bands in over 25 variations of yoga poses and non-traditional movements! Build strength in interesting, innovative ways!
Ready to build massive strength in your yoga practice and gain tons of new ideas for your practice and teaching?
"I wanted to tell you that I used your mini-sequence from the Half Moon Hip Resilience class. We started with your sequence on our backs…It went so well! So many mentioned afterwards how it changed half moon for them. It's not often that I finish teaching a brand new class and think "wow I nailed that" but this time I did and I felt that "this is what I'm supposed to do" feeling again!"
~ Kristin Frederick Leonard, Yoga Teacher
Classes Available Now
Practicing and teaching yoga left my joints unstable and my body in pain
I had been teaching for about five years and was feeling very disillusioned by chronic injury, re-injury and pain, specifically around my hips, SI joints, shoulders and neck. The reality of my chronic discomfort left me wondering, how was I teaching 'a healing art' but also in regular pain? I felt like a failure and a fraud.
I'm not a genetically hypermobile type, but, yoga asanas, over the course of 18 years of practice, helped me acquire some hypermobility. I had pain, clicking and a persistent feeling of 'tightness' around my joints. Passive stretching, so common in yoga, wasn't helping. If anything, it was making me feel worse. I started to wonder if my practice was hurting me.
This prompted me to seek out further education in biomechanics, injury prevention, and pain science. What I learned?
My felt sense of 'tightness' signaled instability. I didn't need more stretching. I needed more strength!
Sometimes the brain increases resting tension in muscles if it feels extra reinforcement is needed around an unstable joint. One way to soothe the brain so the muscles can be like 'I got this, boss! Don't worry!' is to make those muscles stronger. The brain might begin to trust them with a lower resting tension and a higher stretch tolerance. Meaning, if you get stronger you might also get more flexible! Ultimately, the brain decides how tight you feel.
Passive stretching isn't inherently bad, it just doesn't make you stronger.
It just doesn't make you stronger. Getting stronger might be more of what you need. I felt this to be true for my body slowly over time. Resistance bands opened up a whole new mode of exploration for me in my yoga practice and teaching career. Through incorporating them in my practice, common, intermittent aches and pain disappeared.
This is why I am passionate about sharing the benefits of this work. The resistance bands helped me get stronger at my end ranges of motion while offering me a completely new experience of my body in my practice.
IN THESE CLASSES YOU WILL LEARN:
- How to blend of traditional yoga postures, interdisciplinary movement and resistance bands.
- To better feel where you body is in space from the invaluable sensory feedback of the bands.
- Steps toward building skills to approach the peak pose.
- How to continuously progress your strength within the same exercise or pose variation by adjusting the resistance of the bands.
- Ideas for smart, logical ways to sequence yoga classes that use resistance bands.
I've long felt a need to add strength work to my yoga practice. These classes gave me a superb repertoire of exercises, as well as inspiration to play around and discover other movements using the resistance bands. This innovative work is already shifting my personal practice and will, I'm sure, influence my teaching as well. I travel a lot, so I especially appreciate having recourse to "gym equipment" that won't weigh down my suitcase.
~ Jennie Cohen, Teacher Trainer and Anatomy Teacher
I've long felt a need to add strength work to my yoga practice. These classes gave me a superb repertoire of exercises, as well as inspiration to play around and discover other movements using the resistance bands. This innovative work is already shifting my personal practice and will, I'm sure, influence my teaching as well. I travel a lot, so I especially appreciate having recourse to "gym equipment" that won't weigh down my suitcase.
~ Jennie Cohen, Teacher Trainer and Anatomy Teacher
What's included when you buy?
Watch immediately upon purchase
Class videos are accessible forever
3.75 Hours total (if you choose to purchase access to all 3 videos)
3.5 CEUs via Yoga Alliance
Classes Available Now
About the Courses
REVIVE YOUR WRISTS AND SHOULDERS AND REVISIT SIDE PLANK FROM MANY DIFFERENT ANGLES!
Combining interdisciplinary movement and classic asanas, you will progress through a sequence that exposes your wrists and shoulders to a wider variety of loads, training both pushing and pulling against the resistance of the bands.Learn innovative exercises for heating up and conditioning the joints of the upper extremities in preparation for weight-bearing work. Additionally, learn ways to cross train all of the pushing in asana with many opportunities for pulling. You neck might like that a lot, too! The practice culminates with several variations and resistance band strategies in Side Plank Pose for a dynamic, expressive culmination of component skills explored earlier in the practice.In Side Plank Shoulder and Wrist Reset you will:Address areas of weakness or instability in and around the shoulder and wrist joints by progressively conditioning these joints for more strength and resilience for weight-bearing. Increase your ability to gracefully coordinate all of the moving parts when coming into Side Plank Pose. Learn how to add pulling to your yoga practice and balance the loads to your shoulders and wrists. Explore multiple variations of over 10 classic asanas. Learn multiple variations of 5 corrective exercise techniques.
PROGRESS YOUR STRENGTH FOR HANDSTAND IN A MANNER THAT MAKES SENSE!
Partake in the challenging process of practicing handstand in small, doable, progressive chunks! Regardless of whether or not you do handstand, the component skills you’ll practice in this class will set you on a path to a deeper connection to your shoulders and core. With attention to detail and a sense of humor, Laurel helps you to gradually build your ability and boldness to go upside down. The practice culminates with a handstand practice incorporating resistance bands to home in on cultivating more power, grace and control. You might even strike a balance!
In Handstand Core Integration you will:
Bolster your core strength and coordination.
Build shoulder and wrist resilience for weight-bearing poses in asana.
Increase your ability to gracefully coordinate all of the moving parts when kicking up into handstand.
Explore multiple variations of over 10 classic asanas.
Learn multiple variations of 5 corrective exercise techniques.
Experience how working with external resistance can lead you toward increased confidence, precision and grace in your handstand practice! More importantly, this class highlights the journey, not the destination!
Gain 360 Degree Hip Strength and Stability for Better Balance and Happier Hips
HALF MOON POSE MAY NEVER BE THE SAME FOR YOU AGAIN!
This complete and well-rounded hip-stability and mobility-focused class explores a combination of corrective exercises and classic asanas building toward the skills of Half Moon Pose. After a dynamic, logical and playful sequence, you will practice this pose statically held, as well as in an adventurous, dynamically-flowing way.
Learn ways to incorporate resistance bands and add some serious spice to some odlie-but-goodie hip-opening and hip-strengthening poses!
In Half Moon Hip Resilience you will:
Work on skills like building hip flexibility and stability along with core strength.
Increase your ankle stability and find a greater sense of balance.
Explore multiple variations of over 10 classic asanas.
Learn multiple variations of 5 corrective exercise techniques.
Experience how working with external resistance can lead you toward a stronger and more fully-integrated experience of Half Moon Pose. And happier hips and SI joints too!
Resistance Bands Overview
Check out these brands of resistance bands:
Select the button below to download a free guide to buying resistance bands.
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FAQ
Yoga asana offers many benefits, including flexibility, stress reduction, and body awareness.
However, after years of practice, many yoga students find that they have acquired hypermobility and joint instability, which can result in chronic aches and pains. Oftentimes, increasing strength is a safe and effective solution.
Adding resistance bands to your practice will give you opportunities to build strength and motor control as you move your body through its full range of motion against external resistance.
Additionally, after using resistance bands, you might discover that traditional poses feel more stable and supported, because of your newly acquired strength. You might also notice you have fewer aches and pains!
Why should I buy these classes if I can just go on Instagram and find dozens of ideas for incorporating resistance bands into my yoga practice?
It’s true, you can get a lot of ideas online. However, you could lose hours going down a rabbit hole searching for a handful of ideas without context or explanation that might work in your class, or you could have an on demand resource of clearly organized ideas from a trusted source!
With Yoga with Resistance Bands, you’ll get:
- Exercise ideas clearly organized for you in a complete and well-rounded class that progresses systematically toward a peak pose.
- Modifications, step by step instructions, and demonstrations with clear audio and multiple camera angles.
- 3 classes that each include over 20 poses/exercises and modifications, all of which progress in an intelligent and accessible way toward skill and strength acquisition.
The good news is that because you can decrease the level of resistance band you use, you have a simple way to tailor the class to meet you where you’re at in any given day or time.
This is different from traditional poses where your primary option is the weight of your limb against gravity, because you have an entire spectrum of resistance to choose from (aka multiple levels of resistance bands).
Additionally, the classes are sequenced to prepare your body for more challenging movements, so exercises earlier in the class are scaled down versions of exercises that come later.
This means that you can use the exercises in the beginning of the class to prepare yourself for the more advanced exercises when you’re ready.
Finally, these classes are yours forever and so you can keep going back to them as your strength and skill improve.
In summary, these classes are for all skill levels!
Increase resistance! These classes will never be too easy for you if you keep progressing the rigidity of the bands.
These classes are also designed to inspire your creativity in incorporating resistance bands in your yoga practice and can act as as jumping off point for you to come up with your own ideas for how to challenge your strength and skill progressively in your yoga asana practice.
Once you buy them, they’re yours forever!
About Laurel
Laurel is an international yoga educator and interdisciplinary movement educator specializing in anatomy, biomechanics and yoga teaching pedagogy. She is an integrated Yoga Tune Up® teacher and trainer, the creator of Body of Knowledge™ Anatomy and Biomechanics workshop series and a senior teacher and trainer at YogaWorks in New York City.
Laurel is committed to raising the bar on the content and quality of yoga education. She teaches in order to help her students reclaim and strengthen a sense of power and belonging in their bodies, the bodies through which they share their gifts and transform the world.
