What Is Abilities Yoga?
Abilities Yoga is a new and innovative class presented by Yoga Downtown. This class is for women with intellectual disabilities and their (women) friends. As taught by Laura Edna Lacey, it is an Iyengar-style class that will be tailored to students’ needs. The class will begin with very simple poses and gentle stretches, designed to awaken students’ body awareness and energy while building strength, flexibility, and confidence. Class sequencing and poses will increase gently in complexity as students seem ready to take on new challenges without feeling overwhelmed. There may be more repetition of sequences and asanas than is typical in an Iyengar-style yoga class.
Laura wants students to feel comfortable and confident in their practice, and repetition may prove important to their attaining that. Laura will continuously pay close attention to students’ responses to her teaching, applying the Iyengar principle of “working from where you are” to meeting her students’ intellectual and physical abilities. This will enable her students to feel safe and joyous in their learning.
We would like each intellectually challenged student to have the support of a typically- abled “buddy” in the class. Students and buddies can sign up in pairs, or ask to be matched by us. These buddies will practice yoga with us, while also helping their friend. Some kinds of help a buddy might give include clarifying an instruction, giving reminders, modeling a movement, and general cheerleading!
Laura will also provide handouts with simple illustrations of many of the poses, to aid her students’ home practice.
Laura works with Saskatchewan Alternative Initiatives (SAI), as a home support worker for adults with intellectual disabilities. She goes to the homes of people with intellectual disabilities and assists them with all the tasks and challenges of daily life, from washing dishes to dealing with emotional difficulties. The idea for Abilities Yoga was born in a conversation with the mother of a challenged woman whom Laura had met through her work. Laura’s experience with people with intellectual disabilities, and the Gentle Teaching philosophy she has learned in SAI, will contribute greatly to her teaching this class.
Gentle Teaching (Gentle Teaching International –www.gentleteaching.com) is an innovative philosophy which involves using the tools of gentle touch, eyes, voice, and presence to help people feel safe and loved. When people feel safe and loved, the theory says, they then feel loving and are able engage in a loving way with others and their world. The application of Gentle Teaching’s theories and tools has proven transformative in the lives of countless people around the globe, and in Laura’s work and personal life.
In teaching yoga, Laura aims to help all her students feel safe and loved in her class and in their asanas. From this foundation, they will learn to become more loving towards themselves and their yoga practice, and engage more fully in both their yoga and their world. From developing stronger, more positive and loving relationships with their bodies, Laura believes her students will learn to develop stronger, more positive and loving relationships with themselves and others. This is a lot of what yoga has given Laura, and she is excited to share!
Patricia Dewar has been Laura’s principal instructor. Please see ‘Patricia’s Approach’ for more information about the yoga style Laura teaches.
This first Abilities Yoga class is for women only. Yoga Downtown may in the future decide to run co-ed or men-only Abilities Yoga classes.
photo credits Randy Morin
