Yoga to Cultivate Resilience: Balancing Practices for Everyday Living

Resilience is not something we are born with, and it requires self-awareness to know and understand how we are responding to a situation so that we can change our behavior. Research has shown that just like building muscle to improve our physical strength, there are things we can do to build our capacity to strengthen our resilience. Some of the most powerful things we can do build our resilience and support our nervous system is breathe, move, and rest.

Through this course led by Yoga4Caregivers Co-Director Ellen MacKay, you will learn a variety of techniques to help you discover your own unique capacity to bounce back and recover from the daily stress and chaos that we all experience in our daily lives.

Throughout the 8 self-paced modules you will have the opportunity to discover different styles of movement, breath and meditation practices designed to encourage balance and promote physical, mental, and emotional resilience for everyday living. Each 45-minute session consists of a short introduction to our topic, a gentle accessible movement practice and guidance on how to integrate these practices into your daily routine.

Course Modules:

✨ Breath to Calm the Nervous System

The yogic science of breathing, known as pranayama, can help to calm and reset your nervous system. Our breath serves a key role in our body’s stress response. Deep breathing can help us relax our sympathetic nervous system when we are feeling stressed and anxious. Focused breathing is a powerful tool that can improve our health and well-being. In this class, you will learn techniques to help regulate your breathing and activate your parasympathetic nervous system for rest and relaxation.

✨ Mindful Moments: Meditation for Real Life

Mindfulness is about living in the present moment and being intentional. Resilience is defined as bouncing back from adverse life events or recovering quickly from difficulties. Mindfulness and resilience often go hand and hand. This course will offer several types of mindfulness for you to experience in order for you to discover the style that most resonates with you and your lifestyle.

✨ Shake it off: Movement for Stress Relief

Stress is a natural reaction to something our body deems a threat. However, chronic or intense stress can have several negative effects on the body. This is why stress management is crucial to overall well-being. Shaking can be a great management technique. This session involves shaking the body to release tension and trauma, helping to regulate the nervous system. The shaking or vibrating helps to release muscular tension, burn excess adrenaline, and calm the nervous system to its neutral state, thereby managing stress levels in the body. Shake it off and see how you feel!

✨ Finding Your Center: Balance and Breath Work

We are often feeling pulled in several directions and may feel exhausted from all the back and forth. This session will not only help you find balance in your physical body with a variety of standing postures and balancing play but also help you find your emotional center of groundedness and peace.

✨ Introduction to The Healing Power of Sleep

Sleep is essential to our overall health and well-being. If you are struggling with winding down from the day and falling asleep with ease, you are not alone. According to recent research, 7 in 10 Americans aren’t getting restorative sleep. Just one hour less per night of sleep can be a risk factor for serious health conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and depression. In this class, you will discover the healing power of yoga for improved sleep and learn techniques to help you

✨ Mantras & Mudras: Accessible Practices to Support Your Mental Health

A mantra is a repeated word, phrase or sound to help with concentration during meditation. The word Mudra in Sanskrit means “gesture”, “mark”, or “seal”. A hasta mudra is a gesture or a hand position meant to channel and direct energy in the body by encouraging the free flow of energy. Mudras have been used for thousands of years to help ease the mind and body, providing relief from a number of different conditions including dealing with common anxiety issues. This session includes easily accessible mantras and mudras to use anytime, anywhere.

✨ Practices to Strengthen Your Immune System

Your lymphatic system, part of your immune system, has many functions including protecting your body from illness-causing invaders. Unlike the circulatory system, which is driven by the pump of the heart, the lymphatic system depends on gravity as well as on tissues contracting to squeeze fluid through its vessels. This makes yoga poses like twists, forward folds, side bends, and inversions the perfect tools to boost lymph flow. This session is a simple, accessible way to support your lymphatics as well as decreases stress and it’s negative effects on the immune system.

✨ Strong & Steady: Strength & Stability Practices for a Strong Body

One of the main purposes of yoga is to build strength, awareness, and harmony in both the mind and body. This physical practice can also be a teaching tool in learning how to calmly breath and relax during a challenging situation. These opportunities to find calm in the challenge are great exercises for building resilience.

👉BONUS You will also receive a special bonus session: An Introduction to Brain Health for Longevity!🧠