Optimal Yoga with Doug Keller
17. October 2025 09:00
19. October 2025 16:30
A training-intensive for yoga teachers and inquiring students
Currently only Online participation is possible. All in-person spots are taken. Every participant will receive a full workshop video in high-quality after the workshop to download. Online tuition is 220 EUR -> sign me up please!
Our bodies and minds are in a constant process of change throughout our lives, and each stage has its own challenges and opportunities. This much becomes clear as we mature. And our yoga practice evolves with us, becoming all the more insightful. A truly ‘optimal’ yoga meets us where we are in life, supporting us and addressing obstacles as they arise.
Aging is a natural process, and the downside of this process involves increasing inflammatory conditions in different forms that not only cause pain problems, but also reduce resilience and vitality. This can begin as early as one’s 30’s.
The body has natural built-in mechanisms to counter these inflammatory conditions, and they are all linked to the kinds of movement, breath, and practices of mental focus that are the essence of yoga practice.
This training is about refining these practices to derive fully from them the benefits that they offer.
The themes will be rolled out progressively over the three days,
Through the lens of practice, we’ll be exploring a range of topics, from the central role of joint health and freedom, to principles of ‘fascial fitness’ that refine our approach to ‘stretching’ and strengthening in yoga, to the deeper systems that maintain our resilience and vitality, and are supported by breath and mental practices. A new dimension of this will be to explore the role of mudra in providing support and focus in breath practices especially, refining their effectiveness and benefits.
Friday
Joint Freedom: the Key to Resilience
Although we tend to focus on muscles in yoga stretches and asanas, the key to muscle function as well as freedom from injury lies first in the joints.
A primary pain complaint that comes with age concerns joint pain — which is usually attributed to degeneration and damage to the cartilage — and often diagnosed as ‘osteoarthritis.’ Yet the pain is quite often not due to degeneration, and can be alleviated by restoring joint play (proper space for movement), regardless of whether there is damage to the cartilage or not.
Understanding the joints and joint pain should be a first principle in our approach to yoga, and is a key feature for everything that follows throughout the weekend.
Morning Session 9-12
In the morning session, we will explore the role of ‘joint play’ in yoga practice, including warm-up and ‘joint-freeing’ exercises that will improve muscle function in the major areas of the body. An asana practice that incorporates these exercises will make up a significant part of the morning session.
The principle focus in the morning will be the feet and knees, but joint play and joint freeing exercises will be a feature throughout the weekend.
Afternoon Session 13.30-16.30
The afternoon session will continue on the theme of joint play, and will focus specifically on the hips — understanding hip pain and principles for taking care of the hips. This will include not only issues of joint damage to the hips, but of maintaining bone strength and density.
We’ll see that not only flexibility in the hips, but bone strength relies on proper activation of the muscles surrounding the hips, and the afternoon practice will include the relationship between healthy actions of the muscles surrounding the knees, and healthy actions for the hips.
The afternoon will also include a practical introduction to the use of mudra in pranayama practice, which will be a feature of each day of practice.
Saturday
Fascial Fitness and the Anti-Inflammatory Role of Our Skeletal Muscles in Asana Practice: Resilience and Vitality
Our skeletal muscles, which are active in asana practice, play a vital role in our endocrine system, producing anti-inflammatory hormones that slow the aging process and reduce pain syndromes — if the muscles are worked properly. There are principles for working well with muscles to optimize their benefits in asana practice — and they include giving attention to the elasticity of tendons, which are too often neglected in yoga ‘stretches.’ Tendons are a locus of power in the dynamic actions of our muscles, but too often they are the locus of injury.
Morning Session 9-12
The morning practice will focus on principles of fascial fitness, with focus on the lower body, where our longest tendons – so vital to the ‘springiness’ of our muscles – are located. Special focus will be on our body’s ‘powerhouse’ for resilience and energy generation, the muscles of the back body (including the calves and hamstrings), upon which so much of yoga asanas are focused on(and for good reason).
This session will include principles of fascial fitness for working with the calves, hamstrings, and low back, as well as the dynamic relationship between the muscles of the front body and back body which are essential to the overall shape or posture of the body. The deterioration of this relationship is the primary reason for the ‘aging’ posture, which also impacts the breath.
Afternoon Session 13.30-16.30
The afternoon will look more closely at spinal health as well as the sacrum and sacroiliac joints. A key to bone health, proper joint play, and freedom from pain syndromes particularly in the low back is the role of yoga in restoring and maintaining our natural functional patterns of twisting.
Twisting in yoga is less about twisting the spine, and more about the benefits for the core muscles surrounding the torso that maintain bone and joint health, as well as healthy breathing patterns.
The practice will explore the vital patterns of movement in asana which maintain freedom of movement in the spine and sacrum, healthy breathing patterns supported by the core muscles involved in the ‘bandhas,’ and freedom from chronic pain patterns which otherwise stiffen the body into ‘aging’ shapes that promote inflammatory conditions.
The exploration of mudra will continue, with focus on the relationship to the ‘elements’ involved in yoga nidra practice.
Sunday
Optimal Yoga: the Big Picture
On Sunday the focus shifts to the upper body and the shoulders in particular. The practice will focus not only on principles for healthy, mobile shoulders, but also the impact of the shoulders and the shoulder blades in particular on postural shape and breath patterns.
Morning Session 9-12
The morning practice will weave in principles of the shoulders in all classes of poses that support upper body health. The health of the spine and neck, as well as breathing patterns, is greatly impacted by issues surrounding the shoulders — and these issues are relevant at any age. This session will go into detail on the fundamentals of maintaining shoulder mobility and health, especially as it impacts posture, the health of the spine, and the breath.
This will include consideration of the myofascial lines or sutras governing the shoulders, as well as the alignment and action necessary for good ‘joint play’ in the shoulders that is necessary to avoid inflammatory conditions and injuries. These provide guidance for sequencing as well as manageable shoulder routines.
Afternoon Session 13.30-16.30
The afternoon session continues on the theme of the upper body, shoulders, and arms, and looks more closely at relating these biomechanical issues to breathing patterns and the health (and space) of the rib cage. In short, the shoulders and arms can be tools for better breathing — or a great hindrance.
This brings us into deeper exploration of issues of the breath, which brings us further into the impactful role of neck alignment as guided by the subtle actions of the breath, as well as the supporting role of both mudra and drishthi. All of this is part of the theme of ‘mudra’ in hatha yoga.
Within the early texts of hatha yoga, the different practices of asana, bandha in pranayama, as well as drishthi were actually treated as different forms of mudra. ‘Mudra’ suggests a practice that draws forth what is already present but unseen: ‘Ra’ is from ‘rati,’ to ‘bring forth,’ and ‘mud’ suggests bliss, joy, delight, or enchantment.
The afternoon will include practices of pranayama, dharana and meditation, and deep relaxation within this larger context of mudra — transforming not only your understanding of mudra, but of meditation itself!
Support Materials
Some very important support materials are provided with the training to ensure that you can take in the information and work with it even when the training itself is over.
The slide presentations used in the lecture portions of the weekend will be available to you to download. You will be able to save them to your computer or tablet as high quality color documents for you to review whenever you wish.
Spots limited to 20. (waiting list)
-> please put me on the waiting list
Cancellation policy:
· Cancellation up to 17. September (30 days before the workshop): Full refund of the participation fee minus a processing fee of 45 EUR
· Cancellation 18. September – 3. October (14-29 days before the workshop): 50% refund of the participation fee.
· Cancellation 4. October – workshop start (less than 14 days before the workshop): No refund unless you find a replacement participant.
· No-show without prior cancellation: No refund.
· Cancellation by us: Full refund of the participation fee.
– fee for rebooking (from live to online): 40 EUR