Demystifying the Chakras: A Free Event with Doug Keller - June 1 11:00am-12:00pm PDT
The chakras can seem mystifying for many yoga students and teachers. In this conversation, Doug Keller will share with us the significance of the chakras and practical application for both on the mat and in our daily lives. We will hear about practices to access the chakras and their healing power.
This Free Event will be an introduction to Doug’s Upcoming Workshop (see below)
June 15 2:00-4:30pm: Chakras: The Practical Value of Bringing Them into Your Teaching
Looking for practical tools to deepen your yoga teaching and practice?
Inclusion of the chakras can tie together breath, asana, and meditation to resolve stress and self-regulate our emotional states.
But teachers often find it difficult to incorporate these tools into their teaching in a straightforward, accessible way, especially for student unfamiliar with them.
The secret of effective teaching lies in having students connect with the movements of the sacrum and spine. Our light and undulating spine is the doorway to the chakras, and asana and breath provide the key.
This online session will include an asana practice focused on simple sacral and spinal movements which strengthen your low back and tone your pelvic floor, while introducing the root chakra or ‘Muladhara,’ which establishes a foundation of stability, confidence, and safety in asana.
From asana, the focus shifts to breath practice and the heart chakra or ‘Anahata,’ connecting the imagery of the heart chakra with the fundamental movements of the breath, finding balance and resolution — particularly of emotional stress — in the space of the heart.
This culminates in focus via the ‘Ajna’ chakra in meditation, bringing centeredness and clarity in even short and simple meditations.
This practical focus on the three principle chakras will bring you understanding of the power and value of the tools for practice offered by the chakras, and how to incorporate them into your teaching and practice.
You’ll have a firm foundation for exploring the symbology and experience of these three chakras, as well as the confidence to explore the other chakras — transforming your practice and teaching by adding new dimensions of awareness!
It won’t be a sustained yoga asana practice, but rather an exploration of the undulating movements of the spine linked to the breath in asana, which open the doors to inner focus and breath work.
This will lead into practice of forms of pranayama linked to focus on the chakras, and forms of meditation linked to unfolding states of awareness and insight represented by the chakras.
The inner map of the ‘yoga body’ provided by the chakras offers practical tools for an open-ended process of growth, evolution, and expansion of consciousness as understood in the tantric tradition. This webinar will be an exploration of that experience.
When: Saturday June 1, 2024 11:00am-12:00pm California Time. (PDT)
Recording: will be sent automatically to all registered so please, feel free to register if you cannot join the livestream but want the video. The recording will be available for 2 months.
Price: FREE
Technology: Zoom will be used. You will receive the zoom link in the confirmation email.
Reminder emails: will be sent 2 days, 30 min and 10min before the event.
About Doug: Doug Keller’s background reflects a lifelong commitment to studying, imbibing and sharing the vast field of knowledge and practice known as yoga.After receiving honors and graduate degrees in philosophy from the top Jesuit universities in the United States, Georgetown and Fordham Universities, and teaching philosophy at a college level for several years, he then pursued his ‘post-graduate’ education in the practical experience of yoga at the Siddha Meditation Ashram, Gurudev Siddha Peeth in India, for seven years. He spent a total of 14 years doing service, practicing, training in and teaching yoga in Siddha Meditation Ashrams worldwide. He received intensive training in the Iyengar system in New York City, mainly with senior certified Iyengar teacher Kevin Gardiner. He also practiced Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga in India, and became one of the first certified Anusara Yoga teachers, producing three highly respected books on asana, pranayama and yoga philosophy.
His further expansion in learning is reflected in his latest and most in-depth work, ‘Yoga as Therapy,’ which is truly one of the most comprehensive, innovative and useful treatments of the structural aspect of yoga therapy available. And for three years he was a regular columnist for Yoga+ Magazine (formerly Yoga International, published by the Himalayan Institute), writing the ‘Asana Solutions’ column that addresses specific therapeutic problems. He is at the highest level of certification with Yoga Alliance, E-RYT 500, and a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists.Doug is also a ‘distinguished professor’ on the teaching faculty at the Master’s Degree program in Yoga Therapy at the Maryland University of Integrative Health, a state-approved institution of higher learning.
Doug’s teaching is rooted in a vast and inclusive perspective of study and practice that honors the insights of the many streams of wisdom that flow into the river of yoga.Website: www.doyoga.com