For Beginners

**No Foundations series currently scheduled**

I teach Yoga Foundations in six week series, usually about four times a year, at The Peoples Yoga in NE Portland, Oregon.

My goal is to introduce you to a method of engaging with your body that is safe, accepting, and self-aware, whether you’re dropping in to a class you’ve never tried, following along with a video at home, or stretching your back between long sessions at the computer. If you’ve never taken a yoga class but your doctor/friend/sister recommended it; if you drop-in but wonder if you’re doing it right; if you’ve been practicing for years but want to go deeper … Foundations is for you.

We will use the framework of a basic drop-in class, slowed down and opened up, to gain direct experience of the present moment through sensations of breath, weight, balance, stretch, resistance, and ease. All of us have access to these sensations. Learning to stay with them long enough to guide them is how we engage the practice of yoga.

I’ve taught Foundations for years and in every series we build strength through carefully graduated exercises that allow for challenge and healthy form at once. We discover flowing articulation from breath to spine and back again; we find support in the floor and explore ways to draw that energy all the way through the body; we break down all the major standing postures, learning the practice of yoga from the poses themselves.

Each series is also different, because it is always my goal to bring the foundational poses to the bodies in the room, instead of trying to push anybody toward someone else’s ‘perfect’ shape.

A typical Foundations 1 progression:

• Week 1: The Breath: Anatomy and Acceptance
• Week 2: Dynamism: Reaching From Within
• Week 3: Going in: Ethics from the Inside Out
• Week 4: Feeling Yourself: Proprioception and Safety
• Week 5: Keep Breathing: You Are Already Here
• Week 6: Letting Go: The Practice of Self-Trust

A typical Foundations 2 progression:

• Week 1: Downward Dog, Forward Folds, and yield in back-body fascia
• Week 2: Downward Dog, Plank, and bearing weight in the arms and hands
• Week 3: Cobra and Bridge pose, support along the spine
• Week 4: Asymmetrical standing postures: balancing weight in the feet and hips
• Week 5: Different ways to Twist: stability in the limbs for mobility in the spine
• Week 6: Closing practice: safe inversions and the mystery of Savasana