Yoga for Healthy Aging Intensives for 2019

by Baxter

We are pleased to announce our upcoming Yoga for Healthy Aging Intensives for 2019! The Namaste Yoga Studio has once again invited us to lead the intensive at their wonderful studio on Berkeley, CA, in June, and we have been invited back to Kripalu Center in Massachusetts for a residential retreat experience in September. The dates and links are below. You can officially register for the June event at Namaste Berkeley now. Kripalu should have registration for the retreat available on their website early in 2019, so if our east coast location works for you, please save the dates.

June 24th-29th, 2019
Namaste Yoga Studio
Berkeley, California
More info here!

September 22nd-29th, 2019
Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health
Stonebridge, Massachusetts
Save the Dates! Registration opens in early 2019

To check for updates or changes for future trainings, see this dedicated page on my website: baxterbell.com/yoga-for-healthy-aging-intensives/.

Here more details about the trainings:

This 30-hour course will provide instructions on maintaining your physical, mental, and emotional health as you age. The main focus of the course is on preventative strategies, covering:

• Strength 
• Flexibility 
• Agility 
• Balance 
• Stress Management 
• Circulatory System and Heart Health 
• Brain Health 
• Equanimity 

Baxter and Melina present the scientific background that explains how and why yoga works to foster healthy aging, so you’ll understand which techniques to use when. We’ll also teach you the essential yoga poses, yoga sequences, and other practices that will set you up for a lifetime of practice.

This intensive is designed for relatively healthy, relatively physically able participants of all ages. Not included in workshop: 1) Instructions for seniors who cannot stand unaided and need to practice in chairs, and 2) Information about yoga as therapy for specific medical conditions.

For certified yoga teachers interested in taking the Intensive, this course will provide supplemental, specialized training in yoga for healthy aging techniques, which you can then teach to your own students. For yoga students with one or more years of experience, this course will provide you with the tools to create a personalized yoga program that meets your particular needs and concerns.

For teachers who want YHFA Certification, you will need to:

1. Attend all the sessions during the intensive.

2. Attend the extra session at the end of the intensive, where you’ll do a short teaching demonstration.

3. Pass the take-home, open-book final that Baxter and Melina provide using the book Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being.

4. Provide a copy of your basic yoga teacher certificate (minimum 200-hour training required) or resume reflecting equivalent experience.

ABOUT THE TEACHERS

Baxter Bell, MD, C-IAYT, eRYT500 is co-author with Nina Zolotow of Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being and a co-founder of and regular contributor to the Yoga for Healthy Aging blog, where he shares his knowledge of medical conditions, anatomy, and yoga with practitioners and teachers across the world. In addition to teaching classes, workshops, teacher trainings, and retreats internationally, Baxter has been a presenter at Yoga Journal Conferences and the International Association of Yoga Therapy’s Sytar Conference, and teaches online courses at YogaUOnline.

Melina Meza, eRYT500, BS Nutrition is a certified YFHA teacher and Ayurvedic health educator, who has been sharing her knowledge of yoga for over 20 years. Since 1997, Melina has been teaching at 8 Limbs Yoga Center in Seattle, where she is co-director of their teacher-training program. Meza is the author of the Art of Sequencing books and contributing photographer for Yoga for Healthy Aging blog. Currently residing in Oakland California, Melina facilitates year-round yoga workshops and retreats.

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

Follow Baxter Bell, MD on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. For upcoming workshops and retreats see Baxter's Workshops and for info on Baxter see baxterbell.com.  

Evolving Ideas about Yoga for Healthy Aging

by Baxter

The Cultivation of Ideas by Rene Magritte*

As I approach teaching my sixth Yoga for Healthy Aging Intensive this July 2018, I thought it would be useful to reflect on how my ideas about teaching Yoga for Healthy Aging have evolved since we began teaching this course.

Let me begin by saying that the core content and concepts of Yoga for Healthy Aging remain unchanged and are holding up beautifully since we started in the summer of 2015. But as I was reflecting on my perspective on the four physical skills of strength, flexibility, balance, and agility, it becomes more and more clear to me that maintaining strength is the foundational focus out of which the other three skills grow. Without at least adequate strength, it is hard to find balance and agility or take advantage of whatever flexibility you may already possess. Strength is already the first of the four physical skills we cover in the course, and I now make a point now of emphasizing this essential point right up front. I often suggest that if you are not sure where to start in your home practice in investigating the four skills, start with strength and you can’t go wrong. And I have also been intentionally discussing hyperflexibility, including cautions and approaches to working with it, during our talk on flexibility, because this affects many yoga practitioners and has been often overlooked in the past in mainstream yoga (see Are You Overly Flexibile? Hyperflexibility, Joint Hypermobility Syndrome and Generalized Joint Hypermobility).

Of course, as new information and concepts have come to light that support our ideas or advance our understanding of yoga and aging—especially from the writings of our talented blog contributors—I incorporate some of those findings into the course. For example, I now take some time to discuss the titin molecule in our muscles and how longer holds may improve flexibility in part due to changes in this structure in muscles (see Friday Q&A: How Long to Stretch). I also weave in newer information about brain health from the rich writings of Ram Rao, such as his 2017 post on meditation and the brain Meditation Techniques and Brain Structure) and his post on a new study on yoga and balance New Studies on Aging, Balance, and Yoga. And I will update our presentation on the flight-or-fight response based on Nina’s recent piece Why are we so stressed out? to reflect the most up-to-date understanding of this basic human reaction to stress. 

Because I’ve realized the limits of always doing poses the same way (you get really good at that body position, but not the vast array of other possible places to challenge yourself), and the benefits to the brain of continued new learning, I now place more emphasis on learning to vary your poses by changing them on your own. This allows you to creatively explore new body positions in your basic poses, challenging your strength, flexibility, balance, and agility in new ways, while stimulating your brain with new learning. For example, you could vary Warrior 2 pose by doing different arm variations, either to improve overall strength in your upper body or to improve brain health by engage your mind practicing new positions. (see the video Dynamic Warrior 2 with Crazy Arms  as an example  ). You can also use this creative approach to come up with new variations that help you to accommodate to your particular physical limitations and changing health status that are an inevitable part of life. 

These are just some of the ways my thoughts on teaching yoga for healthy aging have evolved so far, and as I continue learn new things myself I will continue to update the course to reflect my latest ideas. Who knows what I’ll learn between now and July! If you have not yet signed up for the July intensive in July 23rd-28th, 2018 at the Namaste Yoga Studio in Berkeley, CA, Early Bird pricing is good through June 1st. And for everyone in the San Francisco East Bay Area, Nina and I will have a book signing—open to the general public—during the intensive on Thursday, July 26th from 4:30-5:30pm. Click here to learn more about the intensive and get registered.

Subscribe to Yoga for Healthy Aging by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook and Twitter ° To order Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being, go to Amazon, Shambhala, Indie Bound or your local bookstore.

Follow Baxter Bell, MD on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. For upcoming workshops and retreats see Baxter's Workshops and for info on Baxter see baxterbell.com.