New Perspectives on Alignment in Yoga to Deepen Your Practice: with Doug Keller
Session 1: Focused on lower body alignment principles
Session 2: Focused on upper body alignment principles
Join us to explore principles of alignment in yoga. Knowing how to align your body for a particular pose protects you from injuries, harmful movements, pain, and discomfort. Healthy alignment improves your awareness about your body and promotes your body's overall wellness. Alignment principles are applied most effectively when we don’t make assumptions, but instead start with awareness of what is before us.
This session will go over fundamental features of postural and movement types that are user-friendly, helpful, and insightful for knowing which aspects of the principles should be emphasized for giving more specific, individualized instructions for students when needed in class. This will include going over the principles themselves, and giving some ‘principles’ for applying the principles, based on observational skills.
The lectures will include illustrated notes for you to keep and review, as well as practical examples and applications in asana, from a perspective that takes into account the significant differences between individual students’ bodies — including the unique features of your own!
Course Curriculum
About Doug Keller
Doug Keller’s background reflects a lifelong commitment to studying, imbibing and sharing the vast field of knowledge and practice known as yoga.After receiving honors and graduate degrees in philosophy from the top Jesuit universities in the United States, Georgetown and Fordham Universities, and teaching philosophy at a college level for several years, he then pursued his ‘post-graduate’ education in the practical experience of yoga at the Siddha Meditation Ashram, Gurudev Siddha Peeth in India, for seven years. He spent a total of 14 years doing service, practicing, training in and teaching yoga in Siddha Meditation Ashrams worldwide. He received intensive training in the Iyengar system in New York City, mainly with senior certified Iyengar teacher Kevin Gardiner. He also practiced Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga in India, and became one of the first certified Anusara Yoga teachers, producing three highly respected books on asana, pranayama and yoga philosophy.
His further expansion in learning is reflected in his latest and most in-depth work, ‘Yoga as Therapy,’ which is truly one of the most comprehensive, innovative and useful treatments of the structural aspect of yoga therapy available. And for three years he was a regular columnist for Yoga+ Magazine (formerly Yoga International, published by the Himalayan Institute), writing the ‘Asana Solutions’ column that addresses specific therapeutic problems. He is at the highest level of certification with Yoga Alliance, E-RYT 500, and a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists.Doug is also a ‘distinguished professor’ on the teaching faculty at the Master’s Degree program in Yoga Therapy at the Maryland University of Integrative Health, a state-approved institution of higher learning.
Doug’s teaching is rooted in a vast and inclusive perspective of study and practice that honors the insights of the many streams of wisdom that flow into the river of yoga.
Website: www.doyoga.com