Let Your Yoga Dance

Three SP Training’s being held in 2012:

March 16-21 at Discovery Yoga, St. Augustine, FL
July 29-Aug 3 at Kripalu Center, Stockbridge, MA
Aug 17-21 in Toronto, Canada

As a person with special needs, you may be seeking ways to enhance your body’s ability to be strong, flexible, and balanced. You may be looking for friends who understand what you are going through. Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations, a unique combination of yoga, breath, dance and music, brings inspiration and celebration to heart and mind. The result: healing through joy.

Dallas Hull: “As a person with Parkinson’s, I lke to say,’Park in the sun with a smile’.”

Parkinsons Disease is a challenging phenomenon but there are opportunities to live with it in a healthy way. Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations is a delightful form of physical fitness and support for people with Parkinsons and their loved ones.

Here are 9 Reasons why People with Parkinsons Benefit from Yoga Dance:

1. Let Your Yoga Dance® breaks the isolation of being alone with a progressive disease. People with PD and their caregivers come together in a safe, easy environment to learn to dance their yoga.

2. Let Your Yoga Dance® increases flexibility and strength, helping people with PD to safely practice repetitive movements while sitting in a chair, standing, and moving.

3. Let Your Yoga Dance® stimulates not only the mind by engaging in simple and challenging movements throughout the body, but also the emotional body, bringing endorphins to the brain and joy to the spirit.

4. Let Your Yoga Dance® activates all the senses through deep breathing simple movements and postures.

5. Let Your Yoga Dance® increases body awareness and the ability to live more consciously inside it, resulting in more confidence in walking, moving, and dancing.

6. Let Your Yoga Dance® plays with all kinds of musical rhythms which are stimulating to the brain.

7. Let Your Yoga Dance® includes constant focus on the breath. In the time-honored practice of yoga, breathing exercises naturally activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the relaxation response in the body. Deep breathing fosters deep relaxation which is essential for someone with PD.

8. Let Your Yoga Dance® is an express route to joy! This practice brings a natural merging of yoga, dance, and movement, along with the use of wonderful music from around the world.

9. Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations is FUN and healing at the same time.

Articles and You-Tube online for more on Let Your Yoga Dance® and Parkinsons:
See Berkshire Eagle article by Michelle Gillette about Let Your Yoga Dance® for Parkinsons class: Nov.27, 2008.
Google: “Getting their Groove Back”: Aug. 25, 2007, New York Times, Mark Morris Dance Group.
Google: “The Ed Rudman Story”
Google: “A Cautious Investor wants to find a Cure for Parkinsons”
YouTube: LetYourYogaDance for Parkinsons

Classes for Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations:
Massachusetts, Berkshire Region
Richmond Congregational Church
Richmond, MA
Tuesdays from 10:00-11:30 a.m.
Contact: megha@letyouryogadance.com
Massachusetts, Boston Region
Naomi Goodman, a graduate of Kripalu Yoga Dance Training, teaches Yoga Dance for Parkinsons in the greater Boston-Waltham area.
NewYork, New York
Contact Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn at www.markmorrisdancegroup.org or
www.danceforparkinsons.org

A Brief History of the Origins of Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations:
Megha’s interest in offering Let Your Yoga Dance® for people with Parkinsons began four years ago when she met Ed Rudman, from Berkshire County and Boston, MA. He has had Parkinsons for 12 years but you would never know it. He is spry and active. To keep himself healthy and happy he has found the panacea:  daily Kripalu Yoga Dance classes at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. “It helps lessen my symptoms,” he says, “and best of all, it makes me smile and laugh. People with Parkinsons don’t smile very much.”

Megha and Ed had some private yoga sessions together. One day Ed forgot to bring his medication. He was concerned because he knew his gait in two hours would be uneven without medication. Megha thought, “let’s see what happens with the yoga.” She made sure that they did a lot of yogic breathing, and she put Ed into an inverted pose with his legs up the wall so that blood, energy, breath would flow right to his brain. At the end of the session he remarked, “I can’t believe it! I feel I could run a marathon!” We have heard many anecdotes like this since. Combining, yoga, movement, and breath is a powerful healing tool for everyone, and particularly important for people with PD.

If you would like to learn more about Let Your Yoga Dance®for Special Populations, please select the play button on the YouTube featured below.

For SPECIAL POPULATIONS TEACHERS DIRECTORY CLICK HERE

Finding Balance

by Debbie Flamini

Less is more, is more or less

What my body needs, to not feel stress

No body stress leads to Cinderella Days

How do I get there? Let’s count the ways!

Consider less is more in everything you do

From yard work to excercise, even laundry too

Stop competing with the body you owned before

Your current one still works, right down to the core

Your yoga practice is beautiful, body and soul

And isn’t self-acceptance a very admirable goal?

So what has PD given me, that’s positive and good?

A yoga practice more meaningful, one that’s understood.

What People are Saying about Let Your Yoga Dance for Special Populations:

“Thank goodness (and Megha and her team!) for having completed the training for Special Populations! Last night was the first class of a 9 week session at a local community centre and I showed up with a torn knee tendon! Being able to lead the class while respecting my own injury was incredibly powerful. I incorporated several chair dances, which the class LOVED! They simply viewed the chairs as props, and I will continue to introduce chair dances throughout the session. I was also able to participate more fully in the class from a seated position. I would highly recommend the training, even if you have no intentions of working with “special” populations, as it opens up a whole range of creative dance awareness and options. And anyway, aren’t we all “special”? Thanks again Team Megha”

Fern W, Yoga Dance Teacher, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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