Lance Schuler is a qualified Iyengar yoga teacher and now travels the world teaching his own style, which is a blend of Vinyasa and Iyengar.

Originally from New Zealand Lance has been teaching for 30 years and now runs one of Australia's premier yoga academies www.inspyayoga.com

Lance believes that practicing yoga is a means to create a greater understanding of ourselves and our fellow beings, opening one's heart and calming the mind.

Lance conducts his classes according to the students' response. He views the class through the eyes of the students ensuring that regardless of the level of individuals -all will get the greatest benefit from the teaching.

Lance's workshop at Svaha will work through postures designed to improve body balance, upper body strength, and energy levels while working also on an emotional and spiritual level.

Experience twists, backbends and inversions in a new light. Improve your balance and standing postures while taking your practice to another level.

These postures strengthen and tone the back, chest, neck, shoulders, arms and wrists, toning the organs of the upper body, especially the lungs and the heart. They help develop a sense of balance and improve nervous control throughout the body and mind. These postures also improve mental power and concentration, greatly enhancing personal confidence and determination: allowing the students to gain a sense of natural presence within them and creating strength in their communication with the outer world.

Upper body postures are dependent on muscular strength and flexibility to bear the weight of the body rather than on bones and joints. Inflexibility, pain and weakness in the shoulders, arms and forearms may prevent many students from performing these postures. Correct programming to enhance the strength is required in any yoga sequence or class format. This class will cover a supportive program introducing techniques to create mobility and strength in the upper body. Direction will be focused also to those areas of foundation essential to initiate these poses (i.e., hands, wrists, forearms and shoulders)
In terms of strength and flexibility.

Developing strength and flexibility:
Females:
Women generally face two challenges when practicing these poses: poor upper body strength and an imbalance of weight distribution as greater proportion of their weight being is in their hips and thighs.
To manage and balance this weight, women need to develop more strength in their upper extremities, back and abdomen.

Males:
For men, the most common challenge is poor hip flexibility which makes lifting up into these postures
difficult, even though their upper bodies may be strong. Here, men need to develop increased hip flexibility and both male and female can offset their respective limitations by developing more strength in their shoulders and torso.

Taking your body and mind to all four corners of the earth, this practice will reveal every side of your physical personality.

Inversions are the elixir of youth as they reverse the effects on the body. Inverted poses improve overall health, balance the endocrine system, regulate the body's metabolism and vital functions, and increase energy levels. Similarly, on an emotional and spiritual level, inversions turn everything up side down, throwing a new light on old patterns of behaviour. They reduce anxiety and stress and increase self confidence.

Back bending postures. These poses create tremendous flexibility, suppleness, elasticity and strength. We lengthen the muscles in the abdomen, tone and massage the abdominal and pelvic organs and strengthen the muscles supporting the spine. The muscles in the shoulders, legs and arms are also strengthened. Backbends require the greatest mental and physical stamina of any class of postures.

Back bending opens the upper back, chest, shoulders and front groins, releasing stored emotions, bringing about the sense of freedom and happiness, lightening our thoughts and relieving depression. When one initially undertakes backbends there is an element of fear; emotionally and physically. To counter this we warm and open the body with preparatory postures such as shoulder openers, spinal extensions and hip openers.

The action of a twist is powerfully transformative for connective tissue, internal organs, glands and the circulatory system. When a twisting action completed and the organs are returned to their original positions, fresh blood surges into the organs flushing out wastes and purifying them. Twists are also an important series of asana for counter-posing and providing spinal health, helping to alleviate neck and back ache. On an emotional and spiritual level twisting brings consciousness to the knotted areas in life.

Seated Forward bends. This series of postures are excellent for nurturing the core strength that the body requires for true power. These poses use gravity to help release tension and discomfort within the body. They bring new energy to the whole system stimulating the organs of the torso, encouraging strength and flexibility, elongating the spine and releasing the hips and groin.

On an emotional and spiritual level, the contracting nature of forward bends helps to tun our awareness inwards, to feel the stillness of our centre.

For more information or to sign up for the workshop please e-mail:
info@svahayoga.com.

Click here to go back to the events overview page.