Yoga for Bone Health & Osteoporosis training

Over the age of 50, at least half your female students have low bone density. Most of them are unaware of this, and with your help, they could remain unaffected by this disease for their whole lives! But without safe practices, they are more prone to fracture and the complications which can seriously and directly affect longevity and quality of life.

Yoga can help, and yoga can harm. Yoga may be the only way they are caring for their physical wellbeing, even though yoga cannot have all the answers.

But when you teach in a way that is protective, and adds the kinds of challenge that enhance bone health in many ways, you make yoga more relevant to your students as they age than it might ordinarily be.

Addressing some myths that have become widespread about yoga’s ability to improve bone density, this course is about more than the question of reversing osteoporosis or building bone. It addresses bone health in many ways regarding avoidance of compression fractures in class & in life, avoidance of fractures from falls (in class & in life), helping your students regain confidence in movement after a diagnosis, increasing the likelihood of better repair after fracture, reducing compression fracture risk (even without increasing bone density), and creating more positive stress on muscle & bone than traditional asana can.

In 15 hours, you could have all the tools you need to better protect your valued student’s bones, confidence, safety and movement through life.

Alongside my Yoga Alliance Professionals certified 40 hour Certificate in Teaching Yoga for Menopause and Beyond,  Yoga for Bone Health training is valid for Yoga Alliance and Canadian Yoga Alliance Continuing Education, giving you 15 CPD points.

My work with the human body began with explorations in the Alexander Technique in the mid-1990s.

I have trained in Hatha Yoga, and studied and/or practiced most of the variations of Yoga from its most traditional roots in India, to new approaches and hybrids.

I continue to study: including with Donna Farhi, renowned Clinical Anatomist and fascia expert John Sharkey, Integral Anatomist Gil Hedley, Sarah Lo, Marlene ffrench-Mullen, Rebekah Rotstein and Lisa Petersen.

Primarily through Yoga in its most recognisable forms, and influenced by 5 rhythms dancing, somatic movement, mindfulness and anatomy, I have sought to tempt people away from dictatorial top-down regimes. So I have created methods to encourage self-agency and true embodiment, allowing the free expression of our nervous system through the physical and emotional body.

In addition to Yoga trainings, I also train Pilates and Fitness professionals, psychotherapists and counsellors via my CPD courses in Menopause Awareness & Strategies, and teach women and some men in classes, one-to-one and on retreats.

It was launching my Yoga for Menopause protocol that got me passionate about osteoporosis, and when I was diagnosed myself at the age of 52, it became very clear to me, a long term practitioner, that Yoga was not enough to prevent it. So I studied the research many teachers use to claim that Yoga increases bone density, and I am sad to say that we have some myths to bust about yoga’s ability to do that.

In the course I will help you see how some well-known protocols may not be all they seem.

The good news is there are some aspects of yoga custom made to support people with osteoporosis. There are also ways yoga is risky and less effective than I feel it could become. Certainly, yoga could be focused and added to to support bone health much more effectively.