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Dates
Friday 10/03/2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Pricing
$35.00 Master Class — It’s in the Joints: The Feet are the Keys to the Hips
Before we can even talk on a practical level about muscles in asana, our first principle must be ‘Joint Play.’
If there is not proper freedom of movement in the joints, the natural reflexes of the body attempt to stabilize the joints by reducing both flexibility and strength in the muscles that are attempting to move the joints.
Understanding this reflex is the key to gaining strength and mobility in asana practice, as well as avoiding inflammation of tendons and injury from forcing the poses.
This principle is also closely connected to understanding myofascial ‘lines,’ which are fascial connections between muscles that extend through related joints. If a muscle is tight, weak, or ‘stuck’ due to lack of joint play in one area of the body, that is communicated to the muscles surrounding other related joints. And so weak arches become a knee problem. Or hip pain. Or even a shoulder or neck problem.
This session will explore this experience by focusing on the feet as the keys to the hips (and knees) via these very tangible connections and provide the beginnings of a ‘map’ of these connections for understanding asana. This will be taken into asana practice, with a special focus on the feet and hips.
The session will also include pranayama, introducing some simple yet powerful principles of mudra that will deepen your experience of the key pranayamas introduced in this session before relaxation.
Our exploration of mudra will also reinforce this sense of connection between actions of body, breath, and mind. It will be a distinctive experience of ‘Vyana Vayu,’ the expansive experience of sensation and feeling of space in the body that is the heart of the asana experience.
Doug Keller
Doug Keller has been teaching workshops and trainings internationally in the therapeutic applications of yoga for 20 years, and is known not only for his effectiveness in communicating this ever-evolving approach in these trainings, but also for his extensive writing on the topic in magazines, journals and his two-volume work on ‘Yoga As Therapy.’ He has also served, in addition to his traveling and teaching, as a Distinguished Professor at the Maryland University of Integrative Health in their Master’s Degree program in Yoga Therapy.
His background reflects a lifelong commitment to studying, imbibing and sharing the vast field of knowledge and practice known as yoga. After receiving honors and graduate degrees in philosophy from the top Jesuit universities in the United States, Georgetown and Fordham Universities, and teaching philosophy at a college level for several years, he then pursued his ‘post-graduate’ education in the practical experience of yoga at the Siddha Meditation Ashram, Gurudev Siddha Peeth in India, for seven years. He spent a total of 14 years doing service, practicing, training in and teaching yoga in Siddha Meditation Ashrams worldwide. He received intensive training in the Iyengar system in New York City, mainly with senior certified Iyengar teacher Kevin Gardiner. He also practiced Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga in India, and became one of the first certified Anusara Yoga teachers, producing three highly respected books on asana, pranayama and yoga philosophy.
