Let Your Yoga Dance
Teacher Training for
Special Populations
Learn to teach Let Your Yoga Dance in and out of chairs for people with special needs.
Let Your Yoga Dance for Special Populations is a unique combination of yoga, qigong, breath, embodied positive psychology, dance, and music which brings inspiration and celebration to heart and mind. The result: Healing through Joy.
Learn to teach Let Your Yoga Dance in and out of chairs for people with special needs: People with Parkinsons, MS, the elderly, people with arthritis, people suffering from depression, people healing from cancer and/ or undergoing chemotherapy can receive many benefits from taking special populations classes.
Dallas Hull, Megha's first Special Populations student, said: “As a person with Parkinson’s, I like to say, 'Park in the sun with a smile. Let Your Yoga Dance brings back my smile.’"
Let Your Yoga Dance Teacher Training for Special Populations will teach you to:
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Serve people who need and want to move their bodies but are hindered due to illness, pain, lack of mobility
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Study, practice, and teach appropriate pranayama-breathing techniques for this population
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Discover creative ways to dance your yoga in chairs and to teach it to your students
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Heighten your sensitivity to the emotional and mental needs of special populations
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Understand the power that Music has upon the Brain
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Practice-teach and mentor fellow participants in the dance of yoga
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Practice-teach with visiting special needs students
What People Are Saying
Our Story
A Brief History of the Origins of Let Your Yoga Dance for Special Populations
Megha’s interest in offering Let Your Yoga Dance for Special Populations began in 2007 while teaching her regular Let Your Yoga Dance classes. People with Parkinson’s Disease began to come to her classes, so many in fact, that she realized she should offer classes targeting this population. One of her students wanted to see more Let Your Yoga Dance for Parkinson’s classes because he was using the practice to keep himself healthy and happy. “Let Your Yoga Dance helps lessen my symptoms,” he said, “and best of all, it makes me smile and laugh. People with Parkinson’s don’t smile very much.”
In 2007, Megha began to teach Let Your Yoga Dance classes for people with Parkinson’s. In 2010, she realized that there were other people who could benefit from these techniques and orientation. Both the special populations training and Let Your Yoga Dance Gentle Style in and around Chairs were born at that time.
15 years later, medical research is demonstrating consistently that dance, yoga, qigong, breath, tango, cycling, spirituality offers important benefits for every population desiring to maintain physical health, brain health, heart health, and soul health. Let Your Yoga Dance Gentle Style offers all these elements – and more. The teacher training gives you a great opportunity to bring this healthful practice to those needing it most. Now there are special populations instructors around the USA, Canada, and abroad.
The Benefits
7 Reasons why People with Parkinsons and Other Special Needs Benefit from Let Your Yoga Dance:
Let Your Yoga Dance for Special Populations:
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Breaks the isolation of being alone with a progressive disease. People in need of extra care come together in a safe, gentle space to dance their yoga.
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Increases flexibility and strength so students can safely practice repetitive movements while sitting in a chair, standing, and moving.
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Stimulates not only the mind by engaging in simple and challenging movements throughout the body, but also the emotional body, bringing endorphins to the brain and joy to the spirit.
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Activates all the senses through deep breathing and simple movements.
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Increases body awareness and the ability to move more consciously resulting in more confidence in walking, moving, and dancing.
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Plays with all kinds of musical rhythms which are stimulating to the brain and joyful to the heart.
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Is an express route to joy: it's fun and healing at the same time!
Live Trainings
Live trainings are taught as a 5-day program at venues such as Megha's home studio in the Berkshires of Western MA, Kripalu Center in Stockbridge, MA or in Sarasota, FL.
Next Live Training: TBD
Online Trainings
Great news! Trainings are Zoom are delightful, excellent, rigorous, and fun! For any Zoom deniar, take a breath and come join us. Since COVID, we have had nine Zoom trainings and there are wonderful new teachers who receive an excellent training—and it feels like it's live! Don't believe us? Check it out then!
The online trainings are in a 2 weekend format. After the first weekend, trainees practice a Let Your Yoga Dance class which they will then teach for a small group online for when they return the next week. In order to receive a certificate and become a certified Let Your Yoga Dance for Special Populations instructor, both weekends must be taken.
Along with receiving a manual, included in this training is 1 special Zoom Q&A session after the training ends.
Next Online Training: TBD
Questions?
"Megha works with people with Parkinson's, as well as people with other movement disorders. I have been her student in her Parkinson's class for sever years, live and on Zoom. She encourages us to be the best we can be, constantly reminding us to let OUR yoga dance. She constantly reminds us to do what we can. We are all dancers!"
Louise Dankner
Student with Parkinson's