Doug Keller Yoga Teacher Training & Yoga Retreat Weekend
April 2015 at Dragonfly Yoga
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Watch as Dragonfly Yoga owner, Laura Tyree, explains Doug’s April Yoga Teacher Training workshops and Yoga Teacher Retreats:
Doug Keller trains yoga teachers world-wide, setting forth a new paradigm for training, particularly in the area of therapeutics and healing. Doug offers solid teaching and insight into the anatomy and workings of the human body in relation to yoga, and into the possibilities for healing through yoga. Dragonfly Yoga Studio in Fort Walton Beach is honored to host him for Yoga Teacher Training and Weekend Retreat.
Doug Keller Advanced Therapeutic Yoga Teacher Training & Retreat
April 14 – 16, 2015 :: *For Yoga Teachers
Tuesday – Thursday
12n – 5p
Open to all styles of yoga teaching and teacher training
- A Therapeutic Eye in Yoga Teaching and Practice
In teaching — or taking — yoga classes, it’s not always easy to see why some asanas are difficult or even painful for students to do, or don’t deliver the benefits they promise, or even lead to injury for some and yet pose no problem to others.Because of the way we’re built, and the lives we live (even as yoga practitioners with favored styles), we all face challenges individual in our life and practice, often with chronic pain. Our own structure and patterns of movement often lead us directly into these problems, unless we recognize and change them. Even those of us who exercise regularly or have a regular practice do allow some muscles to dominate, leaving others weak and unused. This can eventually lead to pain and injury, even for the experienced practitioner. - This training will focus on understanding basic categories of body structure and movement patterns, and the kinds of ‘movement impairment’ associated with these patterns that can bring pain. By clearly laying these categories out, while including asana challenges to verify if they apply, we can better understand our own body and deepen our practice — and also see quickly what is going on with our students, and where they need to work.
Doug Keller Yoga Weekend
April 17 – 19, 2015 :: Open to all Yoga Students
- April 17 :: Friday Evening Pranayama – 2.5 hours
Meditation and Philosophy:
7p – 9:30p - April 18 :: Saturday Morning Practice — 3 hours
The Four Corners and the ‘Core’
10:45a – 1:45p - April 18 :: Saturday Afternoon Asana Practice – 2.5 Hours
The Key to the Shoulders: the Collar Bone and the Subtleties of the Neck and Shoulders in Asana and Breath
3p – 5:30pApril 19 :: Sunday Morning Asana Practice — 3hours
Movement ‘Styles’ and Syndromes, and the Challenges of Forward Bends and Twists
10a – 1p - Modern Yoga is a practice of health in movement: in its therapeutic applications, asana and pranayama become the tools by which we address patterns of movement, breath and being that are at the root of chronic pain, limitation and even disease.Because of the way we’re built, and the lives we live (even as yoga practitioners), we all face challenges individual in our life and practice, often with chronic pain. Our own structure and patterns of movement often lead us directly into these problems, unless we recognize and change them. Even when we exercise regularly or have a regular practice, we allow some muscles to dominate, leaving others weak and unused. This can eventually lead to pain and injury, even for the experienced practitioner.We’ll be practicing a wide range of asanas with attention to our own ‘movement styles’ — how we might adjust our approach to asana with greater integration and benefit from the practice, while increasing our abilities and enjoyment of the practice.
Doug will be returning November 6-8 for another teacher training event at Dragonfly where he will discuss philosophy.
TO SIGN UP:
Those interested in attending can sign up for the full teacher training, the full weekend, or individual sessions for the weekend.
Click Here > To Sign Up
Doug Keller Bio:
Doug Keller, ERYT500
Education:
I came to teach hatha yoga by way of the yoga of meditation and years of academic study of philosophy, both eastern and western. In my studies of philosophy at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown and in my graduate work at Fordham University, I gravitated toward the senior Jesuit scholars whose excellence, openminded intellectual zeal, spiritual fervor and personal integrity inspired me to dig deeply into my own studies, particularly of the classical philosophers and Christian mystics, and treat them as a personal journey of discovery.
As I completed my coursework for my PhD and taught at several colleges, I was increasingly aware that I was looking for more than philosophical ideas and systems — I was looking for the experience itself that the mystics were talking about.
At the time I was finishing my coursework, I met the meditation master Swami Muktananda during his last tour of the west, and he gave me the connection, the practice, the awakening and the understanding I was seeking. With that, it was up to me to step through the door he had opened, not through concepts and theories, but through yoga.
I halted my academic career just short of writing my thesis, and went to India in 1986 to practice yoga at his ashram and to offer my service. I spent a total of 7 years in the Ganeshpuri ashram, Gurudev Siddha Peeth, and 14 years of service overall in Siddha Yoga ashrams in the US and abroad, studying and practicing yoga, working in the kitchen and gardens, and teaching hatha yoga.
It was during my time in Ganeshpuri that I met John Friend while he was yet an Iyengar teacher who had come to study in Pune. We struck up a friendship and I was able to practice with him when I came back to the states, study further with him, and assist in his classes, workshops and trainings for the next few years.
Yoga:
The time of my growth in the practice of hatha yoga was divided between individual practice at the ashram in India, and opportunities to study with teachers and expand during time spent at the ashram in New York state. There I was able to study with other teachers and in a number of styles — but principally with Kevin Gardiner, who is a certified senior level Iyengar teacher.
Kevin was the most influential to me in my growth, because of his deep insight into anatomy and physiology, his facility with precise instruction and demonstration, and the integrity with which he stays true to his chosen tradition, exploring its depth while exercising his own very individual and discriminating intellect, manifesting the heart of a yogi in his practice and teaching.
Yet because my own path was more closely tied to Siddha Yoga at the time, I was more deeply involved in the development of the Anusara system. John Friend shared with me the evolution of his thinking based principally upon the alignment teachings of the Iyengar system, and his synthesis of those teachings eventually manifested as the Anusara style of yoga he founded in 1997.
I was one of the first teachers certified as an Anusara teacher by John Friend, and taught in the Anusara style for over 7 years. At his suggestion, early on I wrote Anusara Yoga: Hatha Yoga in the Anusara Style, and continued to develop that book until Mr. Friend chose to consolidate his authority over the system and discouraged its further use among teachers seeking certification in his style.
Eventually I was forced to give up my certification in that style, which freed me to further deepen my study and understanding of the therapeutic aspects of yoga as well as well as explore the yoga tradition as a whole outside of the confines of the Anusara system.
Vision:
In addition to teaching the postural practice of hatha yoga as well as pranayama and meditation, I have chosen as my focus the realm of Yoga as Therapy, which is an evolving field that promises to be a vital part of the future of yoga.
The expansion of yoga beyond the practices taught in more ancient times is, to me, an expression of the freedom at the heart of yoga and of consciousness itself. This freedom was described in tantric philosophy as not simply ‘liberation’ or ‘moksha,’ but ‘Swatantrya’ — the freedom of Consciousness to expand and create through its own inspiration. Yoga as an expression of this is not bound to antiquity, but inherently contains the inspiration to evolve for the sake of the good.
I found the essence of this inspiration to be expressed by Swami Muktananda, who first initiated my journey into yoga: ‘God dwells within you, as you, for you. See God in yourself and in each other.’ All knowledge and experience is illuminated by that presence and source of inspiration.
I choose the word ‘Swatantrya,’ the yoga of one’s own inner expansion and awakening, not to establish yet another ‘style’ of yoga, but to express the essence and character of what yoga promises to be.
Yoga concerns our own relationship to the Self from whom we came. It is deeply personal, experiential, and ultimately unmediated by any system of conceptual thought. The teachings of yoga simply provide us with the introduction to our own Self.
Philosophy provides the contemplation and focus that help us to aim more deeply into the experience.
In the end, the ‘breakthrough’ we experience is what the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart described as the breakthrough into our own heart, where the Divine most fully dwells. This is the teaching I want to share, along with the practices and means offered by yoga to support that inward journey.
I travel nationally and internationally offering workshops and teacher trainings. I’ve traveled from one end of the United States to the other, and my international travels have included teacher trainings in Europe as well as Asia. My home base is at the Health Advantage Yoga Center in Herndon, Virginia, near Dulles outside of Washington D.C., where I teach upper level classes.