There are thousands of people who yearn to move their bodies, dance, and do yoga. The elderly, people with Parkinson's, MS, breast cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer's, and others with special needs may be prevented from moving as freely as they would like. Let Your Yoga Dance® in a chair is a fabulous workout, a delightful experience, tempered for each students needs, that provides therapeutic benefits on all levels: physical, mental emotional, and spiritual.

• Work with special populations
• Create movement sequences from a chair
• Provide a rich, complete and powerful YogaDance class for someone who needs to stay seated
• Use the chakras as the foundation for each participant

To Become a Certified Let Your Yoga Dance® Teacher

If you are not a certified Let Your Yoga Dance®  Teacher, this may inspire you to join our very special group of teachers. This training is for teachers and practitioners of many backgrounds. To learn more about how to bring Let Your Yoga Dance® to people with special needs click here and you will be redirected to the letyouryogadace.com Special Populations Program page. Hit the "Back" button to return to the Let Your Yoga Dance® Teacher Association site.

Important

This section is for Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations graduates and is intended to supplement their training. Only Special Populations graduates are able to access restricted Special Populations resource pages.

Let Your Yoga Dance® Teachers: If you have graduated from Let Your Yoga Dance® Teacher Training this does not make you a Special Populations Teacher.

Special Populations Teachers: If you have not yet taken Module 1 & Module 2 and graduated from Let Your Yoga Dance® Teacher Training, you are considered a Let Your Yoga Dance® Teacher. Your title is Let Your Yoga Dance® Special Populations Teacher.

Only taking all three modules will make you trained in both modalities.

Testimonials

Andrea Cashman, Milford, CT

My first experience with Let Your Yoga Dance® blew me away. The joyous release and camaraderie developed in  just one short hour with a group of relative strangers astounded me. I knew I had to become a certified Teacher  of Let Your Yoga Dance®, and Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations so I could share this work with all my students, including people who  may find physical activity a challenge, to help them find their inner dancer.

In classes for Special Populations the energy of the music and movement of the dancers flow from gentle warm  up to a vibrant rhythm, then back to a soothing cool down and meditative moment. Beginning in a chair, lifting the heart to deepen the breath, then stretching each part of the body, allowing the music to guide the movement. We stand if the student is able; the support of a chair or walker is always a welcome dance partner & use our voices in a sing-along during the closing number.

During my training at Kripalu, I received the most from the octogenarians who came to share their insight with us. They danced and sang as the years melted away. In this joyful movement they reached beyond their physical limitations, discovered a new way to love their bodies, and allowed the spirit to awaken to its inner rhythm. In teaching Let Your Yoga Dance® I am honoring my parents, and all the generations that have come before by Healing through Joy.

Barbara Arnett, Front Royal, VA    

On the day I taught my first Let Your Yoga Dance® for Special Populations class, I entered the building certified, but terrified. Yet in spite of several surprises during that first class I left the building with my heart aglow. And I can count on my heart lighting up every time I dance with my special folks. The theme of love is evocative & pleasurable to my wheelchair bound dancers, and it is old love songs especially that bring memories to the Alzheimer's group.

The heart for me is most important focus for Special Population dancers especially in a residential setting. Many of them feel abandoned, many have lost so many loved ones, & stressed staff members don't always have the time or the emotional energy to give the kind of loving attention that their charges are craving. Both groups were uncomfortable and resistant the first time I asked them to spread their heart's love all around the room, directing it to each of their fellow dancers. But now, after just a few classes, they smile and reach out, meeting one another's eyes very willingly. I am always awed by the response to a gentle touch to their shoulders at the end of class as they listen to something lovely and inspiring. They smile, they soften, they sometimes reach up to pat my hand or say "Thank You". Everybody waits patiently, eagerly perhaps, for that moment of contact. Heart to Heart. ♥