In Yoga, one shoe doesn’t fit all—all bodies, all levels of experience, all moods. Learn how to assess the mood—yours and your students, and design a menu of practices to meet you where you are. LifeForce Yoga interweaves the power of an ancient discipline with current scientific findings. In a safe and accepting environment, you'll learn yogic strategies that can help you maintain your optimum mental health and methods to safely release chronically held tension and repressed emotion in the physical and emotional body.
 
We’ll practice:
• Pranayama and kriya breathing techniques that regulate the emotions
• Meditations that lift the mood
• Creating Affirmation (sankalpa)
• Guided Visualizations (bhavana)
• Tones that regulate the emotions (mantras)
• Hand gestures that affect different areas of the chakra system and the body (mudras)
• Yoga asanas suitable for all levels

You’ll leave feeling refreshed and renewed, with ancient strategies to revitalize your practice and manage your mood. Psychotherapists, health professionals, and yoga teachers will learn techniques they can use to help their clients focus, relax, and have greater access to their feelings. Yoga Alliance CEU’s.

Suggested Reading: Yoga for Depression: A Compassionate Guide to Relieve Suffering Through Yoga (Broadway Books), LifeForce Yoga to Beat the Blues – level 1 (DVD) Breathe to Beat the Blues (CD).
 

Friday: LifeForce Yoga - Assessing the Mood
Friday evening session will introduce fundamental relationships between mood, your brain, and the breath. You'll learn assessment tools for yourself and others and simple yogic strategies that combine the breath with sound and visualization to meet and manage your mood. The emphasis will be on pranayama breathing and Nada (sound).
Please do not eat two hours prior to the workshop.

Saturday: LifeForce Yoga - Meeting the Tamasic (depressed) Mood
In this workshop, we will explore ways in which we can work with lethargy and depression. We will explore a yogic method of deep inquiry to help you strip away whatever is blocking the free flow of your energy and your gifts to the world.  You’ll uncover your vision (bhavana) and the sankalpa (intention) to live it. We’ll begin with restorative practices, simple breathing and visualization. Then we’ll build to a stronger, more dynamic practice, energizing the body mind and spirit. We’ll end with a restorative practice of Yoga Nidra. You will leave this workshop feeling refreshed, renewed, and excited about returning to your at-home or teaching practice with new tools to bring balance to the emotional and physical body.
Please do not eat two hours prior to the workshop.
Poses will accessible for all levels, including beginners.

Sunday: LifeForce Yoga - Meeting the Rajasic (anxious) Mood
80% of depression is accompanied by anxiety. In this workshop, we will meet anxiety based depression and other anxiety disorders with a more vigorous practice of asana, pranayama, kriya, sound, and visualization, burning away the anxious mood. We’ll then slow down with calming (langhana) practices and Yoga Nidra.
We will practice the LifeForce Yoga Chakra Clearing Meditation, a meditation technique that incorporates mantra, mudra and breath to clear the central energy channel of the body. We’ll follow with a gentle asana practice that incorporates kriya breathing, mantra, bhavana (visualization), and yoga nidra.
Some Yoga experience required, although modifications will be suggested for beginners.

The discounted cost of the workshop for the entire weekend …………………. $215
It will be held at the Chicago Yoga Center. Class size is limited, please sign up early.

Whether you’re a yoga student, a yoga teacher or a mental health professional, Amy’s workshops offer you powerful yoga tools and strategies to help you manage moods.

"YOGA FOR DEPRESSION is a godsend: beautifully written, medically accurate, and very practical. I highly recommend it!" -- Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause

Amy Weintraub, MFA, E-RYT (500), author of Yoga for Depression (Broadway Books) and founding director of the LifeForce Yoga Healing Institute, leads professional certification trainings in LifeForce Yoga for Depression and Anxiety for mental health professionals and Yoga teachers internationally. She is also a senior Kripalu teacher and Mentor. Amy is featured on the CD, Breathe to Beat the Blues and the first DVD home Yoga practice series for mood management, the award-winning LifeForce Yoga to Beat the Blues. Her bi-monthly newsletter includes current research, news and media reviews on Yoga and mental health. Subscribe to www.yogafordepression.com.

Amy has done many Yoga trainings in the United States and in India, including at the Kripalu Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, with the Desikar family in the U.S., at the Lakulish Institute in Gujarat, India, Vivekanandra Kendra in Bangalore, India and the Narayana Gurukala in Tamil Nadu, India. Richard Miller, Ph.D., is her mentor.