This summer Maria French has been busy not only teaching yoga but also continuing to learn more about how to teach yoga! For six weeks in July and August, Maria participated via Zoom in a training with Joe Taft from Asheville Yoga Center in Asheville, North Carolina.
Each of the six weekly installments of Low Back 101 lasted 1.5 hours, resulting in Maria earning 9 continuing education hours from Yoga Alliance. The first five sessions each highlighted one or two key areas to support students with low back pain, and the final class integrated all of these lessons. As Maria notes, “Low back pain is an issue many [of us will] experience at some point in life. This training is one more example of the many ways yoga can help to heal the body.”
Maria found the structure of the training to be very useful. She says, “breaking it down in this way was helpful in understanding areas to troubleshoot with students depending on their individual needs (i.e., underdeveloped glutes/abs or improper alignment).”
In terms of takeaways, these are Maria’s most substantial ones: “This training has given me more insights to address a key issue both students and myself frequently experience. It has helped me to refine my alignment in my own practice and has given me additional language to help with cueing.”
Because we know many members of our community are also managing low back pain, here are the training’s key lessons:
- Practice appropriate breath work (pranayama)
- Strengthen glutes
- Strengthen abdominal muscles
- Minimize rib thrusting
- Stretch hip flexors
- Draw the femur heads back during forward folds.
To learn more about how to apply these lessons to your yoga practice, join Maria for a Basics, Flow, Restorative, or Yin class at 4yoga!
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