Neuromuscular Yoga
Erasing Pain and Limitation in Down Dog
Yoga teachers, therapists and practitioners! Discover the neuromuscular knowledge elite yoga professionals are using to eliminate pain and movement limitations in themselves and students,
and with which they are turbocharging their classes, private sessions and businesses!
ENROLL NOW
12+ Years in clinical practice
300+ Private clients helped
Thousands of students taught
This is really great, Doug! I’m very much enjoying what you have put together to further yoga education and revolutionize the way we work with pain in asana!
It’s very timely as so many seasoned yoga teachers are now having this very conversation and especially around “yoga injuries“.
Julianne Hutchcraft - RN, BSN, CIAYT, Yoga Therapist, E-RYT500, YACEP, AYS
Yoga Alliance CEs
This 4 hour online video course provides Yoga Alliance continuing education credits contact hours: 2 AP, 2 TTP.
Yoga teachers, are you tired of not understanding why your students struggle with shoulder pain, movement limitations and alignment in Down Dog?
- Do you find yourself at a loss when students in class or in private sessions struggle with pain or in following your alignment cues?
- What do you do when your adjustment or modification suggestion doesn’t help?
- Do you just give them an asana variation that takes them off their barrier or tell them to just sit this one out (“throw in the towel”)?
Your student suffers, your business suffers, your confidence suffers. Discover the true neuromuscular sources of pain and how to coach your students in restoring pain-free movement with proven methods so you can help your students and your business thrive.
Learn to make adjustments that make a difference!
Video Example
This video clip from the course shows a real private yoga session in real time, in which Doug deduces the source of the client's pain at the top of the shoulder. Applying vibration during movement to the low trapezius (upper back) resolves the pain in seconds.
Note: The vibration was not applied to where the client felt pain, but to the interscapular muscle (low trap) referring the pain.
If you know the source, you know where to apply the intervention.
3 Myths in Sports Medicine and Yoga Asana
Myth #1
Pain is the result of injury or some mysterious "local inflammation".
Nope. Although acute trauma, like a fall or collision, can damage tissues and cause pain, most pain is actually from trigger points in muscles. This has been proven by studies at pain clinics, research at the NIH and in our own clinical experience.
Trigger points are small areas of stagnation in muscle tissue that develop in response to chronic or acute stresses on muscles. Trigger points aren’t injuries, and they commonly send pain to other areas (pain referral) in a way that can very much feel like an injury. This fools everyone - doctors, PTs, yoga anatomy experts.
Described in physiological terms, trigger points are areas of metabolic stagnation. Described in yogic/ayurvedic subtle energy terms, trigger points are blocks to the flow of prana!
Myth #2
Painful, impaired muscles are “weak” and need to be strengthened.
Nope. You can’t strengthen yourself out of pain. That’s why traditional physical therapy often fails or even makes pain worse.
There is a common misunderstanding of how and why a muscle becomes “weak”. Weakness is often the result of trigger points in muscle fibers. These fibers cannot contract on demand of the nervous system -- they are in a stuck contraction known as a contracture. Putting compromised muscles with trigger points under load, stretch or shortening often leads to a larger pain response from the nervous system, and more trigger point fiber development, exacerbating the problem.
In our methods, the trigger point fibers are first reduced, and pain-free movement restored, before any strengthening work. Restoring the ability of muscle fibers to contract on demand brings them back “online” to the nervous system. The muscle regains strength immediately and then can be further conditioned with incremental strengthening via specific yoga asana.
Myth #3
Pain means muscles are tight and need to be stretched.
Nope. Although stretching can feel great, it can also light up pain issues. And for chronic, recurring pain or movement limitation, stretching is borderline useless, unless you understand where the pain is coming from in the first place (and it's usually not where you might think).
The issue comes down again to most medical, fitness and yoga professionals not understanding muscle trigger point physiology. When trigger point fibers are stretched without first being treated, the nociceptors in the muscle will send danger signals to the nervous system which will then engage the muscle and shut down the stretch to protect the body from perceived danger.
In our methods, we use knowledge of pain referral and functional relationships to understand the true sources of pain. We then use muscle energy techniques and neurological distraction to resolve trigger points in muscles to gain strength, length and pain-free range of motion.
The result is fast, dramatic change--sometimes within minutes.
Have You Ever Experienced Any of This?
You have students that struggle with shoulder pain or limitation in Down Dog and other poses, but can only suggest modifications that take them off their barriers, and they struggle for months or never improve?
- You’ve taken workshops on yoga anatomy, therapeutic uses of asana, and accumulated a lot of modifications and variations, but still can’t help clients with pain and don’t understand the true pain sources for specific movement impairments?
- Your students keep coming back to every class or private session with the same problem, or keep “re-injuring” the same area?
- You’re tired of wasting time and money on workshops and courses from “experts” that sound great, but offer no specific solutions to specific problems?
- You feel like you’re just imitating other teachers? Or like you are just throwing ideas and modifications at a wall to see if they stick? Or like you are on a hamster wheel, round and round, without going anywhere?
- You lose students when you have to refer them to other practitioners, and they don’t come back to work with you?
If you answered yes to any of the above, solving these problems is what I have been doing every day in my practice, for my clients and students, for 12 years. Learn how, in this course.
Transform Your Practice From a Luxury Into a Necessity
There may be a looming recession on the horizon. Inflation has recently been at historic highs and people’s budgets are being squeezed. Pain and stress are at an all-time high. People need the mind, body and soul benefits from practicing yoga and connecting with a heart-centered community.
But if you can't help people with specific pain and limitation, that gives them one more reason to look elsewhere for solutions. Your income and clientele suffers. You experience the frustration that comes from not being able to truly help your people with their biggest challenges, pain-free movement. You blend in to the masses of yoga teachers out there instead of being in the top 1% of your field.
But you can transform your practice from a luxury into a necessity by learning to help people with pain. And in our society, there are so many people that need this help.
Yoga professionals that can provide unique coaching and solve pain issues will thrive in any economic environment, and make a real difference in people’s lives.
Hi, I'm Doug Ringwald
I was in your shoes 12 years ago. I was a yoga teacher struggling to help my students (and myself!) with pain and movement limitations.
I personally experienced bouts of low back pain that were crippling, even though I was a conditioned soccer player and yoga practitioner. I got into yoga because I had heard it helped with low back pain and I really loved the practice
I was frustrated. I did not understand functional anatomy and pain well enough to help myself or my yoga students like I felt in my heart had to be possible. And I and many of my students had been failed by a long stream of therapists, chiropractors, doctors and surgeries.
I turned over every rock. I bought every book on yoga anatomy. I took yoga workshop after yoga workshop on anatomy and asana. I studied Ayurveda. I studied corrective exercise. I read books on physical therapy, anatomy, biomechanics, neuroscience, pain…so called ”alternative” modalities like Chinese medicine, Feldenkrais, Alexander Method…and came to the shocking conclusion none of the “experts” actually understood pain and movement in anything more than a general and ambiguous way. No one had specific solutions to specific problems.
Then I found Chuck Duff, founder of Coaching The Body Institute. A man that could solve pain problems in minutes with clients and students, because he had discovered the faulty assumptions underpinning the medical pain paradigm and came to understand the true muscular sources of pain. And not just theoretically, but through 20 years of clinical bodywork and movement retraining with clients, to find what works most efficiently.
I had found my mentor and spent the next 12 years apprenticing, building my clinical practice, refining and teaching Coaching The Body® methods, and integrating those methods into yoga and corrective exercise.
As well as becoming a CTB Master Practitioner-Instructor, along the path I also picked up training and certifications in: trigger point therapy, Thai bodywork, personal training, corrective exercise, Ayurveda, Jyotish, Reiki, sound healing, and universal shamanism.
Those 12 years of exploration and experience resolving pain with hundreds of clients, teaching the CTB methods to thousands of students, integrating and refining those methods in yoga asana through my own practice and that of my students, have now been distilled into this course.
This is the knowledge I wish I had 12 years ago, as a struggling yoga teacher. It took me 12 years to accumulate it and integrate it into yoga. May you take it and help yourself, your students and all those you can.
The application of the methodology has been purposefully limited and focused to Down Dog, as it is a ubiquitous pose, yet generally misunderstood (especially shoulders and shoulder pain!). This focus keeps the course length manageable, but the concepts presented in this course are applicable to all yoga asana.
Heyam-Dukham-Anagatam. Pain which is yet to come is to be avoided. Patanjali Yoga Sutra 2.16
Om shanti,
Doug
How Would It Feel If...
- You understood the muscular sources of pain and could confidently guide your private clients to health and movement freedom in a few sessions?
- Every class and private session enhanced your reputation and referrals?
- You could create unique yoga sequences based on neuromuscular principles that were immediately impactful for shoulder impairments and alignment problems in Down Dog and other poses?
- You could make adjustments in Down Dog (hands-on or verbally cued) that had immediate and lasting results in decreasing discomfort and increasing ROM, instead of just taking students off their barriers.
Introducing the online video course...
Erasing Pain and Limitation in Down Dog
Help Your Students, Now
Many yoga students struggle with Down Dog. Learn the true sources of dysfunction and how to address them effectively. Keep your students moving, improving and happy!
Grow Your Practice
Make yourself indispensable and your classes sought after. As your reputation for resolving pain and movement impairments "sky rockets", so will your referrals and business.
Solve Movement Limitations
Learn in-depth neuromuscular anatomy and how pain is referred from distant muscles. You will solve problems that baffle other professionals and therapists.
What Exactly Do You Get in the Course?
This course offers practical techniques and a revolutionary understanding of pain and movement limitation, based on functional anatomy, trigger point therapy and neuroscience.
Module 1 - Alignment and Cueing Intro
- Down Dog alignment principles
- Verbal cues
- Common limitations and their true causes
Module 2 - Reference: Anatomy Terms of Location & Movement
This is a reference module that explains anatomical terms used throughout the course and how to breakdown complex movements by joint actions. It enables you to truly understand and communicate complex movement.
- Terms of location
- Planes of movement
- Hip and knee movement
- Shoulder/arm movement
- Spine movements
- Foot/ankle movement
Module 3 - Neuroscience: Understanding Pain & Trigger Points
This module goes in-depth on the neuroscience of pain and trigger point physiology that completely upends the current medical industry's "injury-centric" paradigm. This module provides the foundation of the true neuromuscular sources of most pain and movement impairment (82% from clinical studies) upon which the analysis and solutions rest.
- Pain explained through neuroscience
- Trigger point physiology
- How pain is referred to distant locations
- Macro effects of trigger points besides pain
- Muscle weakness
- Loss of balance, ratchety movement
- Contraction on passive shortening
- Reduced movement through muscular splinting
Module 4 - Neuroscience: Pain Interventions
This module gives an overview of the types of adjustments and interventions that can be applied or coached in asana, and explains how they work neuromuscularly.
- Post isometric relaxation (contract-relax streching)
- Muscle feedback with compression and vibration
- Full and partial intervention cycles in asana (adjustments)
Module 5 - Shoulders in Down Dog
This comprehensive module details how most shoulder/arm pain and limited ROM in Down Dog is due to trigger points in the scapular stabilizing muscles, how to assess this, and adjustments, interventions and counter poses to remedy the problems efficiently.
- Principles of shoulder alignment
- Assessing scapulohumeral rhythm
- Understanding the sources of pain in Down Dog through satellite referral patterns:
- Anterior shoulder
- Posterior shoulder
- Top of shoulder
- Interscapular
- Wrist pain
- Neck pain and headaches
- Effective Down Dog counter poses using contract/relax, compression and vibration
- Coaching clients in comprehensive self treatment for shoulder dysfunction with compression or vibration
Module 6 - Back and Lower Body in Down Dog
This module covers alignment principles for the back and lower body in Down Dog. It details common pain and limitation issues, their sources and how to solve them with adjustments, coaching and counter poses.
- Verbal cueing neutral spine and pelvis
- Identifying the source of misalignment
- Adjustments, interventions and counterposes to address:
- Front of ankle pain/limitation
- Calf pain/limitation
- Posterior leg pain/limitation
Erasing Pain and Limitation in Down Dog
Special Course Pre-Launch Offer!
(40% Off - Limited Time Offer)
Choose the online course, or the online course plus a 1:1 coaching session (45 min.) with the course creator, Doug Ringwald, both at 40% off the regular price.
The coaching session can help you with any aspect of yoga or resolving pain and movement limitations.
Uplevel your yoga practice and teaching, turn your class sequences and private sessions into therapeutic powerhouses with the unique knowledge in this course!
Note: Payment can be split into 4 monthly amounts at checkout, using Afterpay.
100% Money Back Guarantee
We stand by our training and products 100%! If you are unhappy with your purchase for any reason, you may return it within 30 days of the purchase date for a full refund.
Continuing Education Credits
This 4 hour online video course provides Yoga Alliance continuing education credits contact hours: 2 AP, 2 TTP.
