Yoga can reduce frailty in older people, Brigham and Women's Hospital study finds
Yoga may help prevent frailty in older adults, according to local researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. For 76-year-old Patricia Walden, yoga is a way life.
Stories of Resilience: Down Under Yoga
Stories of Resilience is a series focused on profiling local businesses in the city and sharing their success and challenges in dealing with the COVID Pandemic of the last 2 years. This entry we talked to Down Under Yoga.
COVID-19 and the Future of Yoga
Down Under’s team pivoted nimbly with speed, strategy, and faculty-focused care, transforming their entire schedule of 3 studios hosting 40 classes a day to a virtual school. Transparency was key – writing weekly to staff and students, the owner told our community candidly that we’d need help to survive. The result was beautiful: students showed up grate-fully to class supporting their teachers; faculty allowed their pay to be capped so as not to lose managers. Not a single soul was fired or furloughed in the process. In fact, Down Under went global, reaching communities around the world who longed for the opportunity to study with their renowned teachers.
Products and Services That Are Making Remote Life Easier
After closing its doors in Brookline, Newton and Cambridge, Down Under Yoga will now offer online classes through Zoom. The studio has an online streaming schedule with classes held throughout the day, and customers can pay to sign up for any number of classes.
Boston Fitness Studios Find Deeper Connection with Community Online
Down Under School of Yoga is offering over 20 live-streamed classes a day at a variety of times throughout the day and evening, with one location near campus in Brookline.
These Boston Fitness Studios Are Streaming Virtual Workout Classes
For members of Down Under Yoga and newbies alike, visit the Boston-area yoga studio’s “Down Under @ Home” page. If you have passes already, you can use them for the online offerings. There are also packages you can purchase ranging from $18 for one class and $80 for its monthly “Yogi Pass.”
Who's Responsible: Student or Teacher? with Bec Conant
In this episode of Yoga | Birth | Babies, host Deb Flashenberg speaks with longtime colleague and Director of Down Under’s Prenatal & Children’s School Bec Conant. In their lively and a bit geeky conversation, Deb and Bec both draw from personal and professional experience about finding the balance between offering the student autonomy of their body and when to support the student with appropriate pose alternatives. They also both talk about the difficulty of not being ego driven in one’s practice.
Down Under Unites: Kickstart Your April with Down Under Yoga’s Weekend-Long Yoga Festival
A new month is a clean slate to kickstart healthy habits, scope out new hobbies, and dive into the next 30-something days on a high note. What better way to spend your first April weekend than partaking in a two-day, all-access yoga festival?
Down Under School of Yoga, the no-frills and community-oriented multi-location yoga studio, is bringing back their annual Down Under Unites Yoga Festival for its third year. Hosted at their Cambridge studio, the weekend-long event will take place April 6-7, and include a variety of workshops and classes. For $30, you’ll receive a wristband granting you unlimited access to the weekend’s festivities.
The Ultimate Guide to Yoga Studios in Boston
Down Under School of Yoga forgoes the frills of designer apparel and Instagrammable poses for a practice rooted in the traditions of the discipline. Dedicated to fostering community and educating both newcomers and patron yogis, this old-school studio promises to deliver quality yoga training in a down-to-earth environment.
Can Yoga Treat Depression?
Kacey DeGuardia only 15 years old when her mother died. The teenager sunk into a deep depression and became suicidal. "I was in a pretty dark place," says DeGuardia, now a 24-year-old in Philadelphia. "I was on several medications and had gone to multiple doctors to try to find the right 'cocktail' of pharmaceuticals that would fix me."
None seemed to help. But then a friend invited her to a yoga class, which she decided to try in part because she remembered her mom practicing yoga. "I had no idea what I was getting into," she says. But within a year of consistent yoga practice, she felt happy and disciplined enough to go off of her medication entirely. "The physical strength yoga offered ran parallel with my mental strength," she says.
Barbara Benagh - "Boston Legend, Slow Flow Master"
Barbara Benagh, legendary indy yoga teacher, joins J to trace the history and evolution of yoga from the 70’s until the present day. They discuss her early adoption of Iyengar yoga, her progression into a more somatic approach, the teachers and influences that have inspired her along the way, her relationship to and feeling about the ascendance of yoga as big business and the celebrity of yoga teachers, and how she ended up going against the grain and setting a precedence of cultivating her own sensibilities and charting her own course.
The Future of Yoga: 41 Teachers, Only 1 Way to Go
Just because one is on a yoga mat does not mean one is actually practicing yoga. In an increasingly frantic world, my hope for the future is that as a community we nurture ways of practicing that remind us of our calmer selves.
Yoga and Mental Health: Answering the phone call from your body
This morning I sat on Justine Cohen’s bright yellow Victorian couch, my shoes off and laptop in hand. She’s the founder of Down Under School of Yoga in Boston and as she sits in front of me, I’m thinking we are worlds apart. She’s a former lawyer, owner of one of the most popular yoga studios in the city, and her parents taught English to monks in Tibet. But when she begins to speak about her experience with panic attacks, we are instantly connected.
Down Under Yoga: Many Traditions, One Essential Practice
Studio director Justine Wiltshire Cohen is equally passionate about giving Down Under students a well-rounded, authentic yoga education. “We wanted to bring together some of America’s best yoga teachers to ensure not only different generations of students, but different traditions and generations of teachers,” she says. “After I teach my class, I get on the mat and learn from the teachers who trained me. It also means that students who know how to ‘flow’ but who know nothing about alignment, anatomy, stillness or breath have the opportunity to deepen their practice.”
What happened to yoga?
What happened to yoga in the last 30 years?
“It’s recombined with dominant forms of the culture; it’s very malleable that way,’’ said Syman. There is yoga for every taste, energy level, and aspirant — hip-hop yoga, hot yoga, rock pop yoga, weight loss yoga, Christian yoga, even “Yoga Booty Ballet,’’ which bills itself as a dynamic fusion of yoga, booty sculpting, and cardio-dance. If there is any doubt that yoga has left the ashram and joined the mainstream, consider that yoga was part of this year’s Easter Egg Roll festivities on the White House lawn.