In this excerpt from Shira's Yoga Teacher's class, a journey through the five elements, the basis of Ayurvedic principles, and the Koshas, a pillar of Yoga therapy, she explains the functions of the mind and which major contributor causes mental health imbalance.

We look at how the left and right brain hemispheres, respectively Ida and Pingala nadi, each has needs, strengths, weaknesses and opportunities which we can affect through the 8 limbs of yoga.

Learn why it's so important to check our input and understand how we affect output effectively with a comprhensive practice using mudra, mantra, movement, Pranayama, Pratyahara, mindfulness concentration and meditation.

Join the next Yoga Teachers class starting in January

Montserrat G. Mukherjee, C-IAYT yoga therapist and founder of The Yoga Therapy Institute share with Shira, how an injury in a yoga class started her road to yoga therapy.

We discuss the importance of the client's story and how we need to adapt and change the practices to evolve our choices according to the person and present reality, how the state of our world reflects our hormonal state, and that following our evolution we will find the solutions.

Montserrat shares the wonderful work she, her amazing team and students, do through the Yoga Therapy Institute, and the results of completely adaptive work; if one way doesn't work then we find another way. Leading to life transformative changes, sometimes.

The essence of yoga therapy is the person and finding they way for the individual, never giving up, including the environment, and all relationships; food, family, money, work, sleep, and is often the path of the desperado. 

Montserrat eludes to an often overlooked link between health and dis-ease as our social connection; love, physical touch and the emotions relationships invite regulating hormonal homeostasis as an important aspect of healing.

We talk about the incredible importance of stories and how they connect connect us, the importance of critical thinking when a student to prevent power dynamics.

Study with Montserrat Mukherjee at the Yoga Therapy Institute

Work with Shira Cohen

Uma Dinsmore-Tuli's amazing book - Yoni Shakti

Dr. Vasant Lad's book The Yoga of Herbs

Blue Zones, Live Longer, Better

Berenice Miles is a certified yoga teacher and therapist, shares her story of, and passion for, yoga, and how helped her overcome PTSD and her eating disorder and sent her on her Yoga therapy quest, with Shira. 

Bernice explains meditation is a big part of the healing from eating disorders because living our minds most of the time, we realise we are not our thoughts. How yoga enables a new relationships with others and ourselves; through self-compassion and coming home in the body.

We talk about writing books and self-publishing, Berenice's book about busting yoga myths for the beginner so people feel more confident coming to a class.

Enabling clients to deal with stress with simple tools and teaching them how to regulate their autonomic nervous system, Berenice, like any good Yoga therapist, empowers the individual.

Shifting mind states, self-confidence and esteem, emotions and accepting the good the bad and the ugly of self and life, through specific yoga practices.

Work with Shira 

FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ShiraCohenYoga      YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKSzPo-SCftKExzMp6g0n_w

Heather Mason at The Minded Institute

Montserret Mukherjee at the Yoga Therapy Institute

Yoga Campus

Manuela Heider de Jahnsen at Society of Friends