Chronic Pain + Yoga: Teaching Tips and Practice with Astrid van Rens

Many people experience chronic pain and illness and yoga can be a supportive pain management tool. As a yoga teacher, there will be people who come to your classes with chronic pain or illness and but do you know what to do? How can you offer a practice that acknowledges their needs in a loving and supportive way?

In this episode, you'll gain tools and insights for how to integrate accessible practices into your classes to support all bodies. 

I talk with yoga teacher, Astrid van Rens who teaches those with chronic pain and has a lived experience of chronic pain and fatigue. From her personal and professional experiences, she has a wealth of knowledge to share with yoga teacher and those with chronic pain to build supportive yoga practices into your classes.

About Astrid van Rens:

Astrid lives in the Netherlands and has been teaching yoga for over a decade. She teaches and practices yoga from a lived experience of chronic pain and fatigue.

In the first years of teaching she began to experience more and more physical symptoms and fatigue. She even wondered if teaching would still be possible. She also saw that there were many people who stopped taking classes because it didn't match their physical abilities. Over the years she found ways and tools to adapt yoga practices to her personal needs and the needs of people who came to her classes. 

Since 2013 Astrid has been offering classes to people living with illness, chronic pain and fatigue. In 2016 she started one of the first online yoga schools in Holland with online (live) classes. Offering mindful movement in a sustainable, accessible and gentle way.

Follow Astrid on Instagram: @deonlineyogaschool

Website

Many people experience chronic pain and illness and yoga can be supportive and a pain management tool. As a yoga teacher, there will be people who come to your classes with chronic pain or illness and but do you know what to do? How can you offer a practice that acknowledges their needs in a loving and supportive way?

In this episode, you'll gain tools and insights for how to integrate accessible practices into your classes to support all bodies. 

I talk with yoga teacher, Astrid van Rens who teaches those with chronic pain and has a lived experience of chronic pain and fatigue. From her personal and professional experiences, she has a wealth of knowledge to share with yoga teacher and those with chronic pain to build supportive yoga practices into your classes.

About Astrid van Rens:

Astrid lives in the Netherlands and has been teaching yoga for over a decade. She teaches and practices yoga from a lived experience of chronic pain and fatigue.

In the first years of teaching she began to experience more and more physical symptoms and fatigue. She even wondered if teaching would still be possible. She also saw that there were many people who stopped taking classes because it didn't match their physical abilities. Over the years she found ways and tools to adapt yoga practices to her personal needs and the needs of people who came to her classes. 

Since 2013 Astrid has been offering classes to people living with illness, chronic pain and fatigue. In 2016 she started one of the first online yoga schools in Holland with online (live) classes. Offering mindful movement in a sustainable, accessible and gentle way.

Follow Astrid on Instagram: @deonlineyogaschool

Website

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How accessible yoga benefits everybody

You might think that teaching accessible yoga means teaching people in chairs or those with injuries. But when you teach with the intention to create classes that everyone can feel good in then you're teaching accessible yoga.

And yet, the cues you use, if you use props or not, and the language in your classes might not actually work for everyone that attends. So what really is "accessible" yoga and how do we incorporate that mindset into our classes?

In this powerful and insightful episode, Kristine Sofiedal shares her experience as a yoga teacher and practitioner in a larger body. Her story and journey will inspire you deeply and help you see how you teach yoga in a whole new light. A must listen!

About Kristine Sofiedal

Most of my life I have had a strained relationship with my body, until I found yoga. Yoga was my
gateway into body acceptance, body positivity and self-love. It was where I found others that looked like
me, that moved with joy and looked confident in their bodies. It sparked something in me, and I found
myself becoming more and more accepting of myself and my body. I started to move in ways that felt
good to me, making the poses fit me and my body where I was and not feeling I had to hide. But the
people I found so inspiring were only available on social media. I was the only one that looked like me in
yoga classes and I had to research and find my own way to make a lot of poses more accessible to me.

As a teacher, I want others to see bodies like theirs and I want to teach other yoga teachers how
to make poses more accessible to more bodies. EveryBODY can do yoga, but not everyBODY can do
all yoga. In Formfull Yoga classes, workshops and trainings (coming in 2022) props play a leading role. They are NOT used because we can't do something but used to create better access to our bodies and to create more space for moving with loving-kindness within our bodies.

Website

Instagram: @formfull_yoga

Heart + Bones Yoga

Curious about the Modern Yoga Teacher Training? Read all about it here

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Strong Niche, Clear Teaching: Dynamic Aging with Carol Robbins

When you know who you teach and how you can help them, it makes your teaching so much easier. We talk to Carol Robbins, a yoga and Pilates teacher who has found success through her clear niche as a teacher. Carol focuses mainly on healthy and dynamic aging and we talk all about how to find your niche, how that provides a clearer roadmap for your sequencing of classes and easier marketing.

Not only do we talk about the importance of niches for yoga and movement teachers, but Carol also shares a ton of interesting information about healthy aging and how that knowledge sets the people in our classes up for success, no matter what age they are. 

Is yoga for everybody? Disrupting the yoga industry with Aisha Nash

As yoga teachers, are we reinforcing unhealthy ideals without realizing it? Can yoga be not just for everybody, but every body? How do we make yoga more inclusive and offer ways for people (including you as a teacher!) to show up as themselves? 

We dive into this and so much more with London-based yoga teacher, Aisha Nash. Aisha teaches an anti-diet approach to yoga which not only looks at how harmful the diet and wellness industries can be but also how it shows up in mainstream yoga classes. You'll get so many new ideas and perspectives from this conversation that you'll be able to immediately apply to your classes and lots more ideas to think about and unpack... in the best possible way. 

Aisha is an alumni of our Heart + Bones, Modern Yoga Teacher Training course. Season 2 of the podcast is all about sharing and highlighting our global community of teachers who have specific niches and are changing the paradigm of teaching yoga in our modern world. 

About Aisha Nash:

All her life, Aisha Nash has been fascinated by the human body, anatomy and what it means to be well - she takes this curiosity into every Yoga class she teaches. At the age of 19, she studied for her degree in Biology, and then trained to be a pastry chef - you would've had to be there to connect the dots.

After a few years of the high stress environment that is London-based Michelin-starred kitchens, Aisha burnt out, and left. Her body was physically wrecked and still carries whispers of the pain that was so bad she left her dream job.

Knowing about Yoga her entire life, she went back to its ancient wisdom, and rehabilitated not just her body, but also her mind, using the physical practise to provide gentle movement for her body and the philosophy to restart her life.

This then led her down the rabbit hole that Yoga teacher training tends to be. She took her first one in March 2016, and has completed a further 10 since, specialising in Trauma informed Yoga, Restorative Yoga and Mindfulness.

Now coming up to being a teacher for 5 years, she teaches a Yoga approach that is loosely based on the framework of Intuitive Movement, that focuses primarily on the philosophical tenets of Yoga, and is free from any influence of Diet Culture.

You can follow Aisha on Instagram at: 

@theaishanash

Support her work on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/aishanash

Visit her website:

www.aishanash.com

When do you stop learning as a teacher?

Is there a time where you feel like you know enough to take your teaching to the next level? Is there a next level? Or does the learning ever end as a yoga teacher? If you are a new or experienced teacher, you'll breathe more than one sigh of relief as you listen to our honest discussions all about how to show up as a teacher when you don't feel confident, or when the imposter syndrome knocks on your door. We normalize the fears and worries that most teachers feel but is rarely talked about in the yoga-world. 

Brea Johnson is joined on this episode by Monique Fryer and Isis Cooper, experienced yoga teachers and yoga teacher mentors. They are two of the mentors in the Heart + Bones, Modern Yoga Teacher Training course and you'll love listening to their light-hearted and real-life wisdom of how to show up as yourself as a teacher and embrace the never-ending learning and growth that yoga and teaching yoga offers us!

Monique Fryer:

Monique is an experienced yoga teacher and teacher’s mentor, based in Nottingham, UK. She mentors groups and 1:1 programmes, online and in-person, on creating sustainable yoga careers that feel fulfilling on your terms. Her articles on dealing with imposter syndrome, comparison, and confidence have been published in Spectrum, the BWY magazine. Follow @moniquefryeryoga on Instagram  and find her at: moniquefryeryoga.com

Isis Cooper:

A movement teacher that doesn‘t teach people to move. Interview with Jenny McGrath

What does it mean to be a "movement teacher that doesn't teach people to move?" 

This episode explores how to invite freedom, exploration and permission in our yoga classes to help people find autonomy, healing and a deeper sense of self. This approach offers an accessible way to bring trauma-informed practices into your teaching. 

Season 2 of the podcast is all about sharing and highlighting our global community of teachers who have specific niches and are changing the paradigm of teaching yoga in our modern world. Jenny McGrath has a curious, compassionate way of talking about big subjects and making them easily applied into our life and perspectives around yoga. We are happy to have her as a Heart + Bones trained teacher!

About Jenny: 

Jenny McGrath is a licensed mental health counselor and somatic researcher and educator. She has spent over a decade researching the ways in which movement can be used therapeutically to heal trauma. Jenny has a private practice and teaches movement classes that enable individuals to deconstruct dance and movement in order to heal trauma. She specializes in working with adult survivors of complex and sexual trauma. She recently released her first online course called The Embodied Story Course that offers somatic-psychoeducational teachings, healing exercises, and an educational workbook to help students grow in greater appreciation of and connection to their unique bodies and stories.

Jenny's Website

Follow Jenny on Instagram at: @indwell_movement

Curious about the Modern Yoga Teacher Training? Read all about it here

Want daily tips and inspiration? Follow us:

Instagram: @heartandbonesyoga

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www.heartandbonesyoga.com

Heart + Bones Online Yoga Studio

Join our global community moving with love in our Heart + Bones online yoga studio and online courses. Classes that integrate applied anatomy, mobility, playfulness, accessibility... yoga that your body loves. 

Try your first month for $1 with this promocode: PODCASTLOVE

www.heartandbonesyoga.com

When the panic hits in the middle of a class

Have you ever completely forgotten what you were going to teach while in the middle of a class? Or made a mistake and it threw you off your game? It happens, it's normal and this episode is going to give you some tried and true tips for how to manage inevitable mistakes in your teaching. We also take a look at another way to reframe our mistakes and how to be "professionally unprofessional" as a yoga teacher.

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Heart + Bones Online Yoga Studio

Join our global community moving with love in our Heart + Bones online yoga studio and online courses. Classes that integrate applied anatomy, mobility, playfulness, accessibility... yoga that your body loves. 

Try your first month for $1 with this promocode: PODCASTLOVE

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What to do when someone doesn‘t like your class?

Have you ever had a feeling that someone didn't like your class? Or even have someone walk out in the middle of your teaching? This episode will dive into some bigger picture perspectives about being ok with not being the teacher for everyone and some helpful ways to be more confident in finding your voice as a teacher.

Want daily tips and inspiration? Follow us:

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Heart + Bones Online Yoga Studio

Join our global community moving with love in our Heart + Bones online yoga studio and online courses. Classes that integrate applied anatomy, mobility, playfulness, accessibility... yoga that your body loves. 

Try your first month for $1 with this promocode: PODCASTLOVE

www.heartandbonesyoga.com

Don‘t reinvent the wheel in your teaching

Do you feel like you always need to be adding new and exciting things into your classes? Do you feel pressure when you create sequences to make them just right? This episode explores when we should be adding new stuff to classes and when repetition is needed. And most importantly, we talk about how to trust the practice and yourself as a teacher.

Want daily tips and inspiration? Follow us:

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Heart + Bones Online Yoga Studio

Join our global community moving with love in our Heart + Bones online yoga studio and online courses. Classes that integrate applied anatomy, mobility, playfulness, accessibility... yoga that your body loves. 

Try your first month for $1 with this promocode: PODCASTLOVE

www.heartandbonesyoga.com

You doubt because you care

If you've ever had doubts about your teaching and classes (because who hasn't?!) it might not be such a bad thing. This episode offers a reframe for how we view our doubts, how we can see them in a new light and use them to become a better yoga teacher. 

Want daily tips and inspiration? Follow us:

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Heart + Bones Online Yoga Studio

Join our global community moving with love in our Heart + Bones online yoga studio and online courses. Classes that integrate applied anatomy, mobility, playfulness, accessibility... yoga that your body loves. 

Try your first month for $1 with this promocode: PODCASTLOVE

www.heartandbonesyoga.com