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LAUREL BEVERSDORF

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3608 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213 United States

412-683-2408 https://www.yogaupgh.com/

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laurelbeversdorf

Yoga with Resistance Bands
Body of Knowledge
Online Classes
Workshops & Trainings

Where to begin? Around 2012, late, sleepless nigh

Where to begin?

Around 2012, late, sleepless nights, I’d Google “do I need my hip replaced?” The cognitive dissonance—teaching what (in part) hurt me—weighed heavily. Meanwhile, I was afraid I’d have to quit teaching & lose my community.

Luckily, with @strongandbendy’s help, I learned to lift weights and re-discovered resistance bands. With “time under tension” my pain subsided.

Fast forward to last Nov. An editor @yogajournal reached out with a proposal.

It’s all in the timing. In 2018, while pregnant, I created online Yoga with Resistance Bands classes DIY - filmed (iPhone), edited (Camtasia), launched (@psbuymyshit 🙏 )

This took 100s of hours. Now I’m a mom. My baby loves parks, books, and shooting Nerf hoops. I love my time with her.

When this offer came, I knew what it meant. With an entire team helping, we’d create something important and worthwhile this year. We negotiated, came to terms, and I signed. Last week we filmed Resistance Bands 101. I’m proud of what I created with YJ.

This course is my brain unleashed. I share approaches and opinions not readily seen on YJ’s platform. The 6 in-depth banded practices, body science discussions, and band technique tutorials focus on loading principles rather than alignment rules. We center movement *feeling* rather than appearance. I drew inspiration from some of the very best - @julesyoga, @nutritiousmovement, @toddrhargrove, and @jenni_rawlings, to name a few.

This course is an in-depth look at the what, how, and why of incorporating bands into embodied yoga practices. It’s hardcore AND accessible (yes, both.) Expect box on screen pose customizations + digestible body science talks. Theory + practice work symbiotically to re-frame alignment, compensations, flexibility & strength. There’s fragility-consciousness myth-busting + what biomechanics teaches about increasing capacity & resilience.

This course deep dives on how bands offer ways to increase capacity and enhance body perception in versatile, accessible ways.

Yoga Journal is on board.💥
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The course launches soon. If you wanna hear more, my next newsletter drops tomorrow. Link in bio to get on my list👆#yogawithresistancebands

Scenes from Christmas in South Florida...#betterla

Scenes from Christmas in South Florida...#betterlatethannever
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#yogawithresistancebands

Feelin’ the love today after a packed house @yog

Feelin’ the love today after a packed house @yogaunionnyc for Pelvic Floor, Core, and More! Who knew Mondays were for Pelvic Floor workshops!? 🤷‍♀️
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This workshop centered the pelvic floor. But we can only do that when we explore its relationship to other structures & functions, as well as to our stories, personal and societal.
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The scope of this area’s complexity is overwhelming and unclear, but the scope of the workshop (and our scope as movement teachers) is grounded and well-defined. We provide movement-based ways to heighten awareness, control, and embodiment (we don't assess, prescribe, or treat). Referrals abounded afterwards.
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The idea that there is a separate structure called the pelvic floor is a mental abstraction. It’s likely what has left us with stiffness-focused isometric or high rep ways of ‘engaging’ like mula bandha and kegels, but literally nothing else and nothing to consider for relaxing and simply feeling this area.
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We either treat it like an island, isolated and alone, or ignore it (embarrassed to acknowledge its existence?)
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Yet it’s one whole part of our core. It’s a diaphragm - a pressure modulator. It’s a group of muscles, that yes, is highly specialized, but also very much like all the other muscles and so kinda ordinary, too.
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If yoga is the union of opposites, then bringing the pelvic floor away from extremes of focus is one way to practice. Like you and me, it’s utterly ordinary AND extraordinarily special.
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Somewhere in the middle of those two truths is peace.
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My passion for teaching body science and movement is that I get to explore these seemingly oppositional perspectives with others.
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The images, teaching tools, and lecture component at the beginning lays the ground work for deeper meaning-making in the practice where we feel it.
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The practice is the biggest piece, though, because that’s where we CONNECT the science to the experience. It’s where information sinks in and sticks to us so we can learn more and share.
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I pinch myself daily. THIS is the job I’ve always wanted. I am professional learner, teacher, connector.
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Wanna host me for this workshop? DM me! #yogawithresistancebands

You might have taught that cuing your students to

You might have taught that cuing your students to brace their core or pull the navel to spine would help protect the low back. Or, you might have been told that this should happen automatically.
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So, who’s right?
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If you’ve ever wondered what it means to brace your core, hollow your abs, or what the difference is, then the Movement Logic Low back Pain Tutorial is for you.
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This Tutorial is packed with 2+ hours of corrective exercise techniques, 45 minutes of pain science, anatomy, biomechanics and kinesiology...and more!
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Interested, but don’t have time to watch it right now? No worries. After purchase, it’s yours forever!
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Click the link in bio 👆 (or go here — https://laurelbeversdorf.com/movement-logic/back/) to get all the details and enroll – but hurry, because availability ends TONIGHT at midnight and we don’t know when we’re offering it again!

I’ve been talking with @caitlincasella a lot lat

I’ve been talking with @caitlincasella a lot lately about teaching. Namely, what teaching is (and how it’s different from other forms of influence like marketing/branding and indoctrination.)
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In the yoga community, we are often always navigating these three forms of influence simultaneously, aren’t we? It can get sticky...
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As movement teachers (not movement brands or movement gurus) I think it’s less about filling someone’s head with opinions, or trying to manipulate behavior, creating “followers” and more about inviting people into their own experience of movement, their ability to notice, and then also to organize that understanding within the bigger picture of their lives - to make meaning of the movement and why it’s beneficial or interesting or difficult.
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And then as teachers of teachers, it’s training teachers to center their students rather than themselves.
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What does that look like? Well in the words of my friend Caitlin, it’s not rocket science.
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Organizing learning can be as simple as inviting someone to take a shape, and then to reflect on the experience.
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Come into tree pose.
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Come out.
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What did you notice?
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Because the shapes are literally organized learning. Body geometry and orientation to gravity determines how forces interact and our nervous system responds.
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Each lesson is private. Input and output varies by the nervous system of each person practicing.
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So as teachers what can we offer each person? What did we observe and how do we make meaning of that within our own experience?

Can we open our toolbox and curate another experience for further inquiry and discovery?
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Maybe change some details of tree - add props, impose tasks, offer points of focus, or present different exercises to awaken some parts for new integration?
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And then...
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Take tree pose, again. What’s different?
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Here’s what I think: As teachers, we model learning. Our relationship to “knowing things” is really what we’re teaching. It’s the learning we’re organizing (which is the way we’ve organized ourselves around our own process of learning.)
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Do we tend to trade one dogma for another? More in comments 👇

The Low Back Pain Tutorial goes away after tomorro

The Low Back Pain Tutorial goes away after tomorrow! We don’t know when we’re offering it again. Link in bio👆
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More from Erica:
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🗣I also had so many resounding "YES!" moments in listening to you women speak -- some that come to mind, the idea of posterior tilt not being a moral failing (I laughed out loud), and the idea of observing / treating someone through movement, and not diagnosis-based (solely). I feel lucky to have crossed paths with you, and intend to soak up all that I can as I can!

Wanna learn the tools Erica learned? You’re in luck! Right now we’re making our Movement Logic Low Back Pain Tutorial available for a LIMITED TIME. The cart closes after tomorrow and the course goes away.

Click the link in bio to purchase. 👆Or go here — https://laurelbeversdorf.com/movement-logic/back/ .
We don’t know when we’ll be offering this tutorial again.

💥We are so excited to share that we’re openin

💥We are so excited to share that we’re opening the cart on the @movementlogictutorials online course on Low Back Pain — you have through Feb 9 to get it!
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💥Check out this video of @sarahcourtdpt, @trinaaltman and me for a sneak peak of what you get when your purchase the course.
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💥The Movement Logic Low Back Pain Tutorial is packed with 2+ hours of preparatory exercise techniques, 45 minutes of pain science, anatomy, biomechanics and kinesiology...and more!
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💥If you’ve ever wondered what it means to brace your core, hollow your abs, or what the difference is, then this course is for you!

Want in? 👆Click the link in my bio to learn more and grab your copy. Or go here — https://laurelbeversdorf.com/movement-logic/back/

#movementlogic #lowbackpain #teachsmarternotharder #movementtherapytutorials

Let us explain. There is a theory that muscle test

Let us explain. There is a theory that muscle testing to see which muscles are under or overactive can help address pain. While relative muscle strength or weakness could contribute to how you feel, this overlooks important movement relationships within the body (e.g. how the pelvis moves relative to the spine).
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Furthermore, we now know that there isn’t a 1:1 correlation between motor units and muscle activation (aka you can’t isolate one muscle at a time). Muscles normally engage faster than we can even consciously think to activate them! This is why making task completion (cue example: push the floor away) the impetus for movement is more effective than activating a muscle (cue example: engage your glutes) for the impetus for movement. When we focus on the task, our muscle patterning is more efficient and maybe more functional as a result. This isn’t to say there isn’t a place for cueing muscle activation ever. There is, but it may not yield the most efficient and functional patterning of movement.
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The idea of specific muscle engagement being the cause (or solution) to pain over simplifies what’s happening in a complex system. Doing this can cause missed opportunities in problem solving, while developing a false sense of certainty about ‘what it must be.’
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Movement is complex. Pain is complex. Complex problems require complex solutions. Movement, for this reason, is a good solution to working with people who have pain as long as you don’t try to oversimplify it by narrowing your idea of movement down to isolated muscle function.
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If you've had difficulty working with your clients with low back pain in the past, and you're looking for a comprehensive tutorial that covers anatomy, biomechanics, movement-based solutions, pain science, scope of practice, and more, you're in the right place. Link in bio to purchase the Movement Logic Low Back Pain Tutorial.
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That’s right, the massively popular low back pain tutorial is back for a LIMITED TIME only.
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And once you buy it, it’s yours forever. DON’T DELAY we don’t know when we’ll offer it again! Click link in bio 👆for more info and to purchase or go here – https://laurelbeversdorf.com/movement-logic/back/

Psoas I was saying...that silver band, tho. And t

Psoas I was saying...that silver band, tho.

And the hip glide in Warrior 3 makes my 🍑 go WUT? 😳😀 #yogawithresistancebands #threshold #getstronger #dontgetstuckonred

If you tried to sign up for Pelvic Floor, Core, an

If you tried to sign up for Pelvic Floor, Core, and More @yogaunionnyc and it was sold out, we opened up more space in a larger studio!
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We extended the early bird though today, too! Feb 10th 6-9pm.
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Link in bio 👆#yogawithresistancebands

What do you get when a plate side bend + a variati

What do you get when a plate side bend + a variation of a single leg deadlift + a single leg farmer carry balance have a banded baby?
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BANDED FARMER CARRY FLOW that’s what!
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Notice I’m using a silver Theraband. 😅
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Theraband has a wide array of bands. I bring red (light) to my group classes because I don’t know everyone there. Red is a good starting point for most. I have lighter and heavier options as back up, too.
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However, unlike teaching other people, here I’m sharing my personal practice. And I DO know MY threshold. I know that red doesn’t get me there if my goal is STRENGTH. 🚦
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I’ve been working with bands for several years (and lifting weights). Now heavier bands like silver are my go to in certain exercises. In this one, about 3-4 reps in and I’m 😅 Currently with silver, I try to do 8 on each side. 🔥
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Real quick: strength is defined as the ability to exert maximum force on a load. The only way to exert maximal force is to progressively challenge your ability to exert a lot of muscle force. This requires increasing MAGNITUDE of resistance. If the resistance is too low, no doubt you’re working on something worthwhile, but it’s not strength.
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There are so very many reasons (apart from strength) to use bands which range from skill-building, increased sensory feedback, mobility, enhanced interoception. But if it’s STRENGTH you’re after, the magnitude of the load matters.
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Volume (number of reps) matters, too. For more about that, I recommend you check out @adammeakins latest post about how magnitude and reps interact for the purpose of building strength. He also talks about how many are confused about what building strength actually means.
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He includes a super helpful chart to gauge how challenging something should feel to a beginner, intermediate, or advanced individual (in strength training). The magnitude and rep combos differ. What everyone needs is totally dose-dependent to each individual. It depends!
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In short, don’t get stuck on red if you’ve been there a long time and your aim is building strength. Go green or higher. 🚦
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#yogawithresistancebands #getstronger #resistancebandsworkout #resistancetraining

Sometimes the solution to TIGHTNESS is TENSION, or

Sometimes the solution to TIGHTNESS is TENSION, or, better joint control.

Passive stretching might not be the best solution to hip flexor tightness. Not that it’s bad. We don’t have to make something wrong to make something else right. That’s called dogma. Dogma is terrible for tightness. It makes your brain tight.

Passive stretching has a lot of good uses. Don’t throw it out.

But it’s PASSIVE! And sometimes the nervous system limits range of motion (and makes you feel tight) because of a lack of joint control.

To improve joint control, we gotta train range of motion actively.

Here’s a way!

Come find me in one of these locations to learn more ways!
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Feb 10 | NYC @yogaunionnyc | Pelvic Floor, Core, and More
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Mar 7-8 | Charlestown, MA @asanacharlestown | Yoga Balls and Bands
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March 21 | Queens, NY @bambooyoga.us | “New School” Approach to Shoulders and Neck
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May 16-17 | Helena, MT @thelotushelena | Yoga Balls, Bands, and Bliss
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July 5-7 | Dublin, IRL @hotyogadublin | Yoga with Resistance Bands Teacher Training
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Oct. 3-4 | Mill Creek, WA @yogainthecenter | Yoga Balls, Bands, and Bliss
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All links in my bio 👆or go to my events page - https://laurelbeversdorf.com/learn-in-person/
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#timeundertension #yogaballsbandsbliss #yogawithresistancebands #goagainsttheflow #bandaid #bandwagon

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