Class Library: Active

Active, Energizing, and Strengthening

Active, Energizing, and Strengthening classes will get you moving with more purposeful effort. You’ll build strength, skill, confidence, and awareness with these practices.

Quick Shoulder Refresher - 27 mins

This shorter practice will help you release nagging upper body tension and bring more awareness to your postural habits. You’ll move and stretch the shoulders from all different angles, giving them a well-rounded “refresher.”

Mindful Movement with Resistance Bands, Class 1 - 54 mins

Let’s explore what resistance bands have to offer in terms of strength, support, creativity, and enhanced proprioceptive awareness through the sense of touch, bringing new insights to familiar shapes! (FULL SERIES BELOW)

Dynamic Steadiness, Class 1: Foundations of Balance - 56 mins

This is the first class in a series focused on balance. This session starts with the foundations of the feet, and incorporates Mindfulness, Yoga postures, and exercises from a research-backed Tai Chi balance program. (FULL SERIES BELOW)

Quick Hip Refresher - 21 mins

Got stiff hips? This quick 20-minute practice will help you loosen up, wake up, and refresh your hips and legs. You’ll enhance circulation in the lower body, get your breath moving, and release some stress and tension.

Floor-Based Stretch & Strengthen - 59 mins

This is a fun all-around yoga practice that’s done entirely on the floor! Each pose is done lying on your back, on your side, or on your front, so you’ll enjoy a complete practice without ever having to get up. It is also a “no props required” class, so it’s very practical for enjoying at home!

Floor-Based Stretch & Strengthen 2 - 39 mins

The entire practice is done on the floor (lying down or seated), so it’s easy on the wrist and knee joints. It’s a great all-around session, with some relaxed stretches, some core strengthening, and some attention to the hips, hamstrings, shoulders, and upper back, too.

Hamstring Helpers - 62 mins

Do you feel like you have tight hamstrings? This practice is a well-rounded approach to the hamstrings, including some active work, some relaxed stretching, and even some self-massage!

Hips, Twists, and Side Bends - 57 mins

This Stretch & Strengthen class starts with a mindful warm-up, then progresses up to standing and balancing poses before winding back down again. You’ll stretch and move your hips from all angles, and the twists and side body work will help with low back stiffness and restricted breathing.

Neck and Low Back (Stretch & Strengthen) - 59 mins

This class starts with a few gentle Somatic exercises to soothe the low back and neck, and reduce stiffness. Then, as we progress into the more active poses, we’ll work with extra awareness of the upper body and back body, finding some interesting variations of lunges, Warrior poses, and more.

Hips, IT Band, Core, and More - 60 mins

This class emphasizes the IT Band (a sheet of connective tissue that runs alongside the outer hips and down the side of the leg). We’ll work on stretching and strengthening the hips and legs, along with some complementary core strengthening (and more) in this class.

Dynamic Steadiness: Mindful Movement for Balance – 10-Class Series

This 10-week class series (recorded in Spring 2024) focused on balance. Physical balance is an essential movement skill that we use daily throughout our lives. It’s important to develop and maintain steadiness and confidence by working consistently on foot agility, hip and leg strength, proprioception, and visual awareness.

Adding mindfulness into the balance equation not only helps us to achieve steadier postures, but it also helps us observe how our mental activity contributes to balance or imbalance. When we are lost in thought, or internally criticizing our balance pose, that distracted focus will be reflected in the quality of our movements!

We will include classic yoga balance poses (think: Tree, Warrior 3, Half Moon, etc.), as well as Walking Meditation (on the mat), and Qigong forms that ask us to find steadiness while moving. This series also incorporates selected exercises from the Tai Ji Quan Moving for Better Balance program. This research-based protocol was specifically designed for fall prevention, and it teaches “reactive balance” skills that will make you more confident in your ability to balance dynamically.

Class 1: Foundations of Balance - 56 mins

Class 2: Taking a Step Back - 59 mins

Class 3: Hip Support - 60 mins

Class 4: Proprioception and Seeing - 59 mins

Class 5: Lower Body and Breath Awareness - 61 mins

Class 6: Steady Mind, Steady Body - 59 mins

Class 7: Hamstrings Supporting Balance - 58 mins

Class 8: Equanimity and Warrior 3 - 58 mins

Class 9: Shifting Gazes & Walking Meditation - 56 mins

Class 10: Core Centering for Balance - 54 mins

Mindful Movement with Resistance Bands – 8-Class Series

In this series (recorded in Fall 2023), we experimented with resistance bands, incorporating them into some of our movements and poses. When you think about resistance bands, you think “strength,” right? We certainly embrace the strengthening quality this prop can add to our mindful movements, but we’ll also explore what it has to offer in terms of support, creativity/curiosity, and enhanced proprioceptive awareness through the sense of touch. Using a resistance band will bring new insights to familiar shapes and help you embody them in a different way

Props: For this series, you will need a resistance band! I prefer the flat kind (rather than the tube-shaped kind or circular kind). A light or medium weight band that’s about 3.5 to 5 feet long (when not stretched) would be best. If you don’t already have a similar resistance band at home, look for something like this.

Class 1: What can a resistance band teach us? - 55 mins

Class 2: Exploring Perception with a Band - 60 mins

Class 3: Practicing Wise Effort - 58 mins

Class 4: Clarity of Intention - 59 mins

Class 5: Aligning from the Inside Out - 60 mins

Class 6: Regulating the Nervous System in a Challenging Moment - 58 mins

Class 7: Propriocepting with the Bands - 57 mins

Class 8: Balancing with the Bands - 61 mins

Mindful Mobility: Hips & Shoulders – 8-Class Series

This is series of mindful, therapeutic sessions focused on the hips and shoulders (filmed in Fall 2022). The hips and shoulders are some of the largest and most complex joints in the body, requiring both mobility and stability in order to move us well. These are also some of the most common areas where we tend to notice stress, tension, and discomfort.

During this eight weeks, we fine tune our awareness of the upper and lower body muscles and joints, and engage in a wealth of practices that can shift how we feel in the neck, shoulders, upper back, hips, glutes, and legs. We use a combination of mindful inquiry, yoga postures, breathing techniques, and somatic exercises to release patterns of tension, get stronger, and find new movement possibilities.

Class 1: Connection and Play - 60 mins

Class 2: Sensing Support - 59 mins

Class 3: Mostly Hips - 59 mins

Class 4: Mostly Shoulders - 64 mins

Class 5: Bridges & Eagle Explorations - 60 mins

Class 6: Hip Flexor Focus - 59 mins

Class 7: Unstick the Upper Back & Shoulders - 57 mins

Class 8: Around the Clocks - 58 mins

Hips & Hamstrings in the Here & Now – 8-Class Series

This series of classes focused on the the hips and hamstrings was recorded in Spring 2022. The title “Hips & Hamstrings in the Here & Now” is a slightly tongue-in-cheek way of saying that we’re also going to practice acceptance of the body exactly as it is, and prioritize presence over “progress.”

Each class will help you get to know and embody different areas of the hips, pelvis, legs, and low back, so that you can more clearly hear their messages and move with greater ease. If you feel tight or off balance in your hamstrings, hip flexors, IT bands, outer hips, and/or low body in general, this series will help you identify patterns of tension, find new movement possibilities, and feel better overall.