Yoga Actions Study Guides

Deepen & Expand

Your Yoga Practice

Our Yoga Actions Study Guides take you beyond the shape of a yoga pose into your inner body-mind experience while developing healthy habits that get you moving again.

3 Steps to Deepen & Expand Your Practice

1. Awareness

Becoming familiar with the sensations in your body and mind that signal ease as well as discomfort and dissatisfaction.

2. Discovery

Applying yoga actions to your areas of pain, suffering, confusion and paralysis in order to reveal new understanding and direction.

3. Practice

Adopting those yoga actions that bring your whole being (mind-body-spirit) into alignment.

Most yoga practitioners reach a point where they want deeper understanding.

Are you struggling to...

Introducing Yoga Actions

Yoga Actions are internal isolated movements — muscular, skeletal, breath, organic and energetic — for stabilizing, energizing and creating space, ease and well-being. With time and practice, you refine your inner awareness of the yoga action until you feel its reverberation throughout your entire being.

From the creative ingenuity of our own teachers as well as our own practice experience, we gathered together hundreds of yoga actions and passed along our favourites to our students.

How do Yoga Actions increase the value of your practice?

Not unlike the actions described above, the 118 Yoga Actions illustrated in the study guides develop your single-pointed focus. In essence, improving your ability to concentrate in the present moment vastly improves your capacity to create space for greater stability, energy and ease in your life and your yoga practice. Concentrating on one thing in isolation defines Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses from the outer world) and Dharana (concentration), which are two of the eight limbs of yoga necessary for deep meditation (Dhyana).

In practical terms, as a yoga teacher, I could demonstrate Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Dog) and then ask you to take the pose. This is a classical teaching method. However, it typically leads you to focusing on trying to get your body into the shape I demonstrated. And, as we can see in the world around us, body shape is almost as unique as thumb prints. Very few are the same. Your body’s version of AMS will not be the same as mine.

So, in order to take this uniqueness into consideration, as a teacher I can demonstrate in AMS, “finding the four corners of my/your hands and feet”. This focus on the action leads you to grounding these “ sixteen foundations” of the pose into the earth. The resulting greater stability, alignment and ease throughout your entire body emerges from the union of focused awareness and action. Finding the four corners of your hands and feet is one of the many yoga actions you will find explicitly described, demonstrated and illustrated in the study guides.

• 6 Study guides

• 118 Yoga Actions

• Over 600 images

Each Yoga Action consists of:

The Benefits of using Yoga Actions on your personal yoga journey

for Beginners

for Intermediate Practitioners

for Teachers

for Beginners

for Intermediate Practitioners

for Teachers

Getting started with Yoga Actions

As a starting point, we suggest you read the yoga action and apply it using the Pre Pose. You may not immediately feel the action in your body, but continue using it for the sequence provided (Peak Poses and Plus Poses). In our own personal experience of practising with yoga actions, it could take two or three poses or a full practice before awakening the area of emphasis. Gaining patience and personal commitment are two significant rewards emerging from the many wonders of a yoga practice.

Five ways to use Yoga Actions in your own practice

Follow

Follow the study guides from beginning to end for a whole body practice starting with Feet and Ankles and working your way up—Legs and Knees, Pelvis and Psoas, Torso and Spine, Shoulders and Arms, Glossary.

Identify

Identify a specific problem you are having (soreness in your shoulders) and choose the Shoulders & Arms study guide for yoga actions specific to your physical symptoms.

Utilize

Utilize already designed sequences for strength and flexibility, balance and alignment or spiritual awakening that take your current practice to the next level.

Ask

Ask yourself what you require in the present moment, and allow your intuition to choose an appropriate yoga action and sequence.

Study

Study each yoga action to deepen your knowledge and understanding of the true purpose of asana — to quiet the mind and still the body in preparation for meditation.

What people say

Candace and Helen have combined their talents to produce a book that is both challenging and methodical — a rare treat.

Once I spent time interacting with Yoga Actions, I discovered the depth of detail layered into this gem of a practice guide.

Yoga Actions is a terrific tool for my own practice and is bursting with actions and themes I can bring to my students.

About the Authors

Seven years ago, Yoga Actions began as a creative collaboration between two friends and yoginis, Helen Maupin and Candace Propp. Our original intent was to write one book in an attempt to capture even a small portion of the knowledge and wisdom we gained from practising yoga over the past 20 years. That modest intention mushroomed into —

six yoga actions books focusing on specific areas of the body,
two teacher training programs (200- and 500-hour) complete with facilitator manuals and student handbooks,
a bi-monthly yoga column in the Winnipeg Free Press,
a 12-week online program to be launched soon, and most importantly,
a deeply-rewarding sisterhood filled with peace, love and joy.

As always, journeys of discovery and creation, whether on or off the yoga mat, take us beyond the scope of our imagination into the Universe’s intentions and gifts.

Helen is passionate about transforming fear into love — from her, for her, for all. She expresses her commitment to transformation through writing poetry, self-awareness and yoga books, co-designing organizations into adaptive enterprises and deepening her daily meditation and yoga practices.

Helen maintains her daily yoga practice and her Yoga Actions Teacher Training programs deeply enrich her transformational journey and provide a much-loved spiritual community.

For a listing of Helen’s weekly Right to Joy blogs, Free Press articles, awareness and writing programs or other books, visit www.righttojoy.com.

Candace loves to create, be it in the art studio or the asana room. As an artist, Candace’s passion for all that yoga offers her is creatively depicted in her art. Conversely, as a yoga instructor, her ability to see the many possibilities held within our bodies gets translated into her imaginative yoga lessons and sequences enabling her students to also enjoy yoga’s gifts.

As a dedicated yoga practitioner and teacher, Candace has accrued over 500 hours of primary and advanced accredited teacher training through Yoga Centre Winnipeg and other sources.

To view Candace’s artwork visit: www.natureofcontentment.ca.

Buy all 6 Yoga Actions Study Guides in one convenient package

Yoga Actions for Feet & Ankles

Yoga Actions for Legs & Knees

Yoga Actions for Pelvis & Psoas

Yoga Actions for Feet Torso & Spine

Yoga Actions for Shoulders & Arms

Yoga Actions – Asana Glossary

All Six Yoga Actions Study Guides – Paperback, Delivered to your door.