Meet the Teachers

This is week 2 of our 3 week blog series all about therapeutic yoga. Last week I told you what therapeutic yoga is and who it's good for. This week I'm introducing our therapeutics-inspired teachers and sharing an overview of their styles and specialties, and next week we'll award a $100 gift certificate to the winner of our Yoga Success Stories contest. There's still time to register for the contest - just submit the story of your yoga win via email, a comment on our blog, a comment on our Facebook page, or drop us a note at the front desk in the studio. You can submit any kind of win at all, any improvement you've experienced in your life or body since you started practicing yoga.

So let's get into this week's topic! Every teacher at The Yoga Room has had extensive training, lots of teaching experience, and is warm, welcoming, and kind, but since we're in the middle of our Blog Series on therapeutic yoga, I wanted to make sure to introduce our therapeutics-focused teachers and their areas of expertise.

Angela 

Angela has been teaching at The Yoga Room pretty much since the time we opened. She is a sweet and fun lady who loves learning and teaching about breathing and anatomy. Angela's therapeutic classes include Gentle Yoga and Chair Yoga. She teaches Gentle throughout the week and Chair Yoga on Thursdays at 10:30 a.m.  In addition, she also offers private lessons for

• Improving breathing
• Recovering from joint or back injury or surgery
• Reducing joint or back pain

Here's a video we recorded in Angela's Chair Yoga class this morning. It gives you an idea of what a Chair Yoga class looks like. The poses shown in the video are all sitting poses, but often Angela teaches standing poses that use the chair as a prop or for balance.

Chair Yoga is great for people of all ages and conditions. If you have challenges with balance, if you don't enjoy sitting down on the floor, if your energy level is low, or if your body is really tight, Chair Yoga is an excellent choice for you.

To learn more about Angela, click here.

Vanessa 

Vanessa has been teaching at The Yoga Room for a couple of years now. She is our expert on Yoga for Fibromyalgia because in addition to being trained as a yoga teacher, she has done a lot of research and used yoga to successfully manage the symptoms of her own Fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions. You can read more about Vanessa on her bio page. In addition, she offers private lessons for

• Managing chronic pain (arthritis, fibromyalgia, lupus, etc.)

In this video Vanessa and I discuss her new Yoga for Pain Management class that she offers on Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. on an on-going basis and her upcoming six-week Yoga for Fibromyalgia series that will be Mondays from 7:30 - 9:00 p.m. starting August 18th.

To learn more about Vanessa, click here.

Stacy

Stacy Like Angela, Stacy has been teaching at The Yoga Room since the beginning. Stacy is a very calm and peaceful lady and her teaching style is gentle and soothing. In addition to being a yoga teacher, Stacy is a massage therapist, doula, and herbalist. She has a great depth of knowledge when it comes to pregnancy and how to keep a woman's body healthy and easeful during the childbearing year.

Stacy teaches weekly prenatal yoga classes and has two unique workshops coming up... Birthing with Massage & Yoga is a comprehensive 3 hour training for couples who are interested in using the principles of massage and yoga for a peaceful childbirth. And Conscious Conception is a 6 week series that focuses on improving fertility with yoga. This series begins in September. In addition, she also teaches private lessons for

• Easing common discomforts of pregnancy
• Preparing for childbirth
• Recovery from childbirth
• Recovery from joint or back injury or surgery
• Reducing joint or back pain
• Yoga for Breast Cancer Recovery

In this video, Stacy and I talk about her upcoming workshops and what inspires her as a yoga teacher.

To learn more about Stacy, click here.

Kali

Kali is one of the newer additions to our teaching staff because she recently relocated to the Austin area. She left her job in Corporate America to focus on teaching yoga and wellness full time. Kali teaches therapeutic Gentle Yoga classes and Yoga for Multiple Sclerosis. In addition, she offers private lessons for

• Emotional eating issues (binging, overeating, and chronic dieting)
• Yoga for Depression & Anxiety
• Yoga for PTSD

Zelinda

My teaching style is very much influenced by the yoga lessons I received at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai, India. At the Krishnamacharya School they only offer private, therapeutic sessions, and my experience there became a huge influence in my style of teaching.

I teach mostly Gentle Yoga and Yoga for Multiple Sclerosis. I sometimes sub for Stacy and Angela in their Prenatal and Chair Yoga classes.

Our small class sizes allow me to check in with each student at the start of the class to get an update on how they're doing and what they're working with in their body. I design the practice to provide the maximum benefit for the people in attendance. I love this customized style of teaching.

I find private lessons to be an even more customized version of my classes, where I can really dial in and create a personalized practice that will provide the maximum benefit for a single person. I teach private lessons for

• Recovery from joint or back injury or surgery
• Reducing joint or back pain
• Mental health issues (ADHD, Autism), especially for children and adolescents
• Yoga for Multiple Sclerosis
• Yoga for Cancer Recovery

If you're interested in more information about me, you can find it here.

Yoga for EveryBody

My intention with this long post is to really put it out there that Yoga for EveryBody is more than just our tagline. Yoga really is for every body.

I'd like to let the people of Round Rock and the surrounding areas to know that yoga can help them with whatever is going on in their bodies. Back pain, neck pain, hip pain, and shoulder pain are especially common issues that we work with every day in our Gentle and therapeutic classes.

The Yoga Room is an incredibly welcoming and friendly environment with a lovely community of yogis and our teachers LOVE to help people feel more easeful in their bodies. I invite you to come visit us soon and often, and please tell your friends and family about us! Lots of love, Zelinda

Is Therapeutic Yoga Right For You?

When most people think of yoga, they think of thin fit people twisting their bodies into pretzels. That may be one aspect of yoga, but it’s not representative of everything yoga can be. At The Yoga Room, we offer a variety of class styles to meet the goals of a diverse group of people. But my own personal favorites are our therapeutic classes.

This week we kick off a 3 week blog series all about therapeutic yoga. This week I’ll tell you about what therapeutic yoga is and who it’s good for. Next week I’ll introduce our teachers who offer therapeutic classes, and in the third week I’ll share therapeutic Yoga Success Stories. We’ll also have a contest running throughout this blog series, and the winner will win a $100 gift certificate to the studio, so stay tuned for more on that!

What is Therapeutic Yoga?

Therapeutic yoga is typically a gentle style of yoga that is aims to help your body be healthy. Given that people can have a vast range of issues going on in their bodies, therapeutic yoga is typically offered in small or private classes so that the practice can be customized to suit the needs of the students.

On our regular weekly schedule, our Gentle classes are our most therapeutic offering. And Gentle classes are among our most popular classes, so they’re offered pretty much every morning and every evening.

(Our two studio spaces are small and each class size is typically not more than 12. That said, there is no need to RSVP or pre-register for our Gentle classes - when we see that classes become crowded, we add more classes to our schedule to create additional capacity.)

In our Gentle classes, we begin with a round of introductions so that each person can tell the teacher what is going on in their body that particular day. We teachers like to know everything about your body, even if it seems minor to you.

If you had knee surgery 5 years ago and it feels fine now, we’d like to know. If you have scoliosis, or if you broke your little toe last week, or if you’re pregnant, or if your neck and shoulders are tight, or if you have allergies, or if you had a spinal fusion, or if any other thing is going on, we’d like to know! :)

If you prefer to tell us privately, that is also perfectly fine. Just catch us before class and we can have a quick private chat.

The reason we like to know about what’s going on in your body is so that we can modify and adjust the practice to best serve your needs and goals.

How We Customize the Practice

In our Gentle classes (and even in Hatha I, to some degree), we really take into consideration everyone’s issues and customize the practice. We customize the practice in two ways:

• We focus on poses that are useful for everyone.
• We modify poses that are useful but not easily accessible for everyone. Poses can be modified for the whole group or for individual people.

For example, if the majority of the class has tightness in the neck and shoulders, throughout the class we’ll sprinkle in poses that address the neck and shoulders.

If some people have low back pain that an be remedied with hip stretches, we’ll do hip stretches. But here's where it gets a little special. Many hip stretches are done from a kneeling position, so if some people in class have knee issues and are uncomfortable kneeling, we offer modified poses that work on the hips without putting any pressure on the knees.

A very cool thing about yoga is that there are literally thousands of poses. A skilled teacher can pick and choose from those poses to create a practice that works for everyone. And the teachers at The Yoga Room are so experienced at customizing and modifying that the practice is seamless and discreet. No one needs to feel self-conscious because no one is even going to realize that the teacher’s created a special modification for you.

And anyway, everyone is so focused on their own practice that no one even notices what anyone else is doing. Besides, everyone at the studio (students and teachers alike) is so kind and warm (and loving, even) that even if someone did notice your personal modification, no one would judge you.

A Real Story From Class This Morning

In my Gentle class this morning, I went around the room asking each person what was going on in their body and what they’d like to focus on in today’s class. Each person told me what was achy or tight - their neck and shoulders, their low back, their hips, etc.

As I got around to the second and third rows of people, a few people told me they were feeling fine.

After I had heard from everybody, I realized that everyone who felt fine were people who come to yoga classes almost every day. The ones who had aches and pains are the ones who come in once a week or less frequently.

Moral of the story: If you want to resolve the aches and pains in your body, practice yoga every day!

Contest

From now through the end of June, we’d love to hear from you about your Yoga Success Story. Send us an email to tell us about what has improved in your body or life since you started practicing yoga.

Over the years we’ve heard of people getting taller, getting off their blood pressure and diabetes medication, sleeping better, and all sorts of other great things. Send us a short note and tell us about your experience to be entered in our contest.

We’ll pick the most compelling Yoga Success Story and announce the winner in our July 2nd newsletter. No matter how simple or amazing your story, we’d really love to hear from you!

Please stay tuned for next week’s newsletter. In Week 2 of our Therapeutic Yoga blog series we’ll introduce all of our teachers who offer therapeutic classes, workshops, or lessons, and learn why they chose their area of specialization.

Lots of love, Zelinda

P.S. If you know someone who might benefit from therapeutic yoga classes, please forward them this newsletter! We'd love to help them!