TBY Yoga Retreat in Spain!

September 22-29, 2024

Join Julia Jonson and Andrew Gurvey for 8 days on the Mediterranean coast in Costa Brava, between Barcelona and France.

JOIN US FOR THIS ONCE IN A LIFETIME YOGA RETREAT AND SPANISH VACATION! 

2025 Weekday Yoga Teacher Training (YTT)

January 2025 - May 2025
Mostly Tuesdays & Thursday

More info coming soon! To express interest, complete the Interest Form below.
 

Resilience and Vulnerability: A Weekend Yoga Workshop with Desiree Rumbaugh (4-Part Session)

Friday, April 19, 2024 • 6:00pm-8:30pm • Session 1
Saturday, April 20, 2024 • 10:00am-12:30pm • Session 2
Saturday, April 20, 2024 • 2:00pm-4:30pm • Session 3
Sunday, April 21, 2024 • 10:00am-12:30pm • Session 4

@ THE YOGA EFFECT: 1134 E WASHINGTON STREET, GRAYSLAKE, IL 60030

Resilience is effectively facing key moments in our lives—challenge, change, and complexity—and allowing those experiences to enhance us rather than diminish us. Vulnerability is an important and foundational practice of resilience because it allows people to see, know, and understand the adversity we’re facing, along with giving them an opportunity to support us. The physical practice of yoga can help us to cultivate inner strength if we know how to incorporate it in every pose.

What better way to explore these two concepts than a weekend workshop among like-minded people. We hope you will take the time to join us for this spring urban retreat. 

TBY Yoga & The Yoga Effect are happy to welcome Desirée back to the area for this very special visit to our community. She brings 36 years of experience teaching yoga that is also informed by Physical Therapy and Functional Movement Training. If you have ever attended a workshop with her, you know to expect a safe, challenging, welcoming, and playful experience. If this will be your first time, you are in for a treat.

Session 1: Inner Strength, Outer Softness: Standing and seated poses

The focus of this session will be the utilization of deep core strength along with an abundance of breath work. Additionally, the practice will center on hip openers, standing poses, and seated poses to help get people more into their bodies so students can get a visceral understanding of what is being taught.

Session 2:  Flexible and Adaptable: Healthy back and shoulders

This session will teach students how to weave deep core strength into the extension of the spine through the practice of backbends.  Additionally, students will learn to feel and incorporate the upper back strength that comes with both loosening and strengthening around the shoulder blades.

Session 3: Back Body Awareness: Twists and forward bends

This practice will be a deeper exploration into the world of forward bends and twists. Deep core strength will be employed in all of the twists.

Session 4: Full Spectrum Practice:  Neck, Shoulders, and a journey into finding the right side up in the world of upside down

This session focuses primarily on neck and shoulder work.  Additionally, there will be opportunities to remedially explore inversions and arm balances.  Please note that this is a very low-pressure environment. Any inversion or arm balance poses offered will ALWAYS have modifications and adjustments to accommodate everyone who is practicing. Desiree is a master at giving people the opportunity to explore their own potential in a safe and fun way!

You are encouraged to sign up for the entire weekend as the learning is a cumulative experience.

$60 a la carte / $220 entire weekend

Move Into Meditation with Anitha Bellary, E-RYT 500

Saturday May 11, 2024
Sunday May 19, 2024

11:00AM - 1:00PM @ TBY YOGA, 1590 S. MILWAUKEE AVE, STE. 223, LIBERTYVILLE, IL 60048

Meditation practice is an art and discipline centered around focusing on a chosen object or higher ideal for a designated time.  Through practice, we learn to observe our minds and the thoughts that arise, including distractions, daydreams, and bodily sensations. By observing the mind itself, the contents of the mind are revealed. When we know what’s there, we can redirect our mind and perhaps make it calmer. 

Anitha will delve into various tools drawn from spiritual traditions to aid in meditation. We explore simple asana (posture) practices to bring comfort to the body, utilize breathwork to turn our awareness inward, employ chants to hone our attention to a single point, and finally, we’ll rest in the stillness of the mind. 

This framework provides an accessible pathway for gradually entering into a state of natural tranquility and connecting with our true selves (which is the goal of yoga!). 

$45 one session / $85 both sessions

The Reflexive Nervous System as it Relates to Yoga with Rich Logan 

Sunday May 26, 2024

11PM-2PM @ TBY YOGA: 1590 S MILWAUKEE AVE, STE 223, LIBERTYVILLE, IL 60048

What happens when our reflexive habits become too strong? Are my hamstrings tight, or are the impulses from my nervous system overcompensating? Yoga helps us find the balance between too much of a good thing (hyperactivity) and a deadened nervous system. And the parallels between the physical manifestation and spiritual reality can be astounding. Not to say that a tight hip will bar your way to heaven, but it’s easier to move toward your spiritual goals when the body is more willing to let go.

This class will be designed as a lecture and experience of different ways the reflexive nervous system works and ways we can understand, if not override, how it can hold us back unnecessarily.

Long before you feel the heat of flame burning your hand, your body takes note of sensations at a base level. The body reacts before the brain has time to think, "Ouch." We are hard-wired to protect ourselves at a primal level. Ancient neural connections keep us safe through reflexive actions. Maintaining balance as you walk down the street requires an acute set of reflexes that monitor the feedback from muscles and tendons long before the signals reach our brains. The time it would take an electrical impulse from the big toe to reach the brain and back again would leave us at a crippling pace to meet the pavement without stumbling forward and backward. That’s why we learn over time, through a series of checks and balances in the neuromuscular system, how to ambulate (so the brain can think of more important things like where can I get a good mocha latte). 

Weekend Yoga Intensive with Rich Logan (4-Part Session)

Saturday June 29, 2024 • 11am-2pm • Session 1
Saturday June 29, 2024 • 3pm-6pm • Session 2
Sunday June 30, 2024 • 11am-2pm • Session 3
Sunday June 30, 2024 • 3pm-6pm • Session 4

@ TBY YOGA: 1590 S MILWAUKEE AVE, STE 223, LIBERTYVILLE, IL 60048

Session 1: Inversions - Get Your Perspective Turned Upside Down

Join us for a 3-hour intensive designed to get you upside down safely. Inversions provide many benefits but can be harmful if our alignment is compromised. Join Rich Logan for an afternoon of exploring your body, breath, and mind from a different point of view.  We will have a brief lecture and then learn to safely explore “The Inward Postures” using props and techniques that will give you more time to explore the effects these poses create for us. We will warm up with alignment-based asana, and sun salutes to understand our unique tensions and habits in the Body and Mind and to balance those reactions, as they tend to worsen when upside down. Then, we will bring that new awareness into a world that seems completely upside down.

Session 2:  Backbends - Backbending Towards Bliss

Backbends help us open the front body as the perfect counter poses to a life that can sometimes silence our hearts to the back row. Most of us guard our hearts as we amble through the day-to-day. Our ribcages collapse as we commute in our cars or sit in front of our computer screens. Suffice it to say our heads drop forward, our low backs round, the breathing mechanism shut down, and our glandular systems work ineffectively, the postural equivalent of depression. Our spine fixates in a compromised manner, restricting movement in all directions at all joints. Back bending gives us the chance to meet life full on. It allows for expansive breath in the ribcage. When done appropriately, energy levels increase, blood flow increases in the endocrine system, the spinal cord gets a massage, and the internal organs stretch, allowing for better blood and lymphatic flow when the back bend is released. In this workshop, we will discuss some anatomical implications and explore safe back bending, learning to bring the bend out of the lower back and into the thoracic spine. We will do both supported work with props, safe partner work, and invigorating solo flights in various poses. Feel blissful with a unique blend of mindful vinyasa and static poses.

Session 3: Twists - Let's Get Twisted

Twists help us to be emotionally flexible and allow us to cleanse. Twists provide a massage-like action to the internal organs that, in turn, flush out stagnation and invite new essential flow to refresh us.  The emotional implications follow as we make our gut more resilient and mobile in the face of stress.  Spinal twists are essential for maintaining the vertebrae, corresponding disc, and spinal column. Most people don’t realize that the upper body does most of the twisting, as it should. The lower back compensates for this lack of mobility as we lose flexibility in the ribcage and thoracic spine. This can lead to myriad low back and sacroiliac dysfunctions. This workshop will explore safe twisting and target the areas where we need to create greater stability to allow our twists to move up the spine.  This 3-hour workshop will include some practical lectures before we hit the mat.  So get twisted with a unique blend of mindful vinyasa and static poses.

Session 4: Restorative

This class will aim to deeply reset the nervous system by holding poses for at least 2 to 5 minutes.  A liberal use of props will support all poses.  We will employ active techniques to engage the physical body and passive work to allow for deep relaxation of chronic holding patterns.  All of this will be performed under the auspices of a deep spiritual practice.  All levels and experience are welcome.  We will briefly discuss how and why our bodies respond to this work.  So, we can intelligently activate our bodies to create a more profound release, not only muscularly but inviting the nervous system to release its hold on us when it has become overprotective.  And the spiritual implications are, well... infinite.

$55 a la carte / $200 entire weekend