Let Your Yoga Dance^® Teacher Training for Special Populations

• Serve people who need and want to move their bodies but are hindered due to illness, pain,lack of mobility
• Study, practice, and teach appropriate pranayama-breathing techniques for this population
• Discover creative ways to dance your yoga in chairs and to teach it to your students
• Heighten your sensitivity to the emotional and mental needs of special populations
• Understand the power that Music has upon the Brain
• Practice-teach and mentor fellow participants in the dance of yoga
• Practice-teach with visiting special needs students

About Certification

1. To become a Let Your Yoga Dance instructor, you must take Module 1 and 2 consecutively.
2. To become a special populations instructor, you must take the special populations certification as well as Module 1. Of course, Module 2 is highly recommended.
3. When you take all three modules, you will be a certified Let Your Yoga Dance instructor and a certified Let Your Yoga Dance for Special Populations instructor.

Here are 9 Reasons why People with Parkinsons and Special Needs Benefit from Let Your Yoga Dance®:

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

2. Let Your Yoga Dance® increases flexibility and strength, helping people with special needs 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 anyone with special needs.

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.

A Brief History of the Origins of Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations:

Megha’s interest in offering Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations began many years ago while teaching her regular Let Your Yoga Dance® classes. People with Parkinson’s Disease began to come to her classes, so many in fact, that she realized she should offer classes targeting this population. Her most vital student with Parkinson’s, Ed Rudman, lived in Richmond, MA and Sarasota, Florida. He wanted to see more Let Your Yoga Dance® for Parkinson’s classes because he was using the practice to keep himself healthy and happy. “Let Your Yoga Dance helps lessen my symptoms,” he said, “and best of all, it makes me smile and laugh. People with Parkinson’s don’t smile very much.”

 

 

Megha taught Let Your Yoga Dance® classes for people with Parkinson’s for a number of years, then realized that there were other people who could benefit from these techniques and orientation. Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations was born.

 

Six years later, medical research is demonstrating consistently that dance, yoga, breath, tango, cycling, spirituality offers important benefits for every population desiring to maintain physical health, brain health, heart health, and soul health.   Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations offers all these elements – and more.