What is LifeForce Yoga?
LifeForce Yoga is intentionally designed to work with and manage mood. The practices support students and clients in self-regulation, and many of the yoga techniques can be done in a chair, in bed, and do not require a yoga mat. Most practices are evidence-based and have been adapted for clinical settings. Developed by Amy Weintraub, the practices are rooted in traditional active meditation and self-inquiry that embraces the polarities in our lives. LifeForce Yoga interweaves the power of an ancient discipline with current scientific findings to help you release what’s no longer serving you—without a story attached!
Practices include:
- Pranayama and kriya breathing techniques that regulate the emotions
- Meditations that lift the mood
- Creating Affirmation (sankalpa)
- LifeForce Yoga Bhavana (Imagery)
- LifeForce Yoga Chakra Clearing Meditation
- LifeForce Yoga Nidra
- Tones that regulate the emotions (mantras)
- Yoga asanas suitable for multilevel practitioners
- Nondual Self-Inquiry through writing and Dyad Sharing
In LifeForce Yoga, we welcome practitioners from all traditions. We recognize that the many styles of Yoga practice that are flowering in the West are like doorways. Eventually, each door opens the practitioner to a deeper connection to Self, an awakening to the felt sense that we are not separate. Yoga, no matter what lineage you have trained in or “style” you practice, begins as you practice regularly, to unite the polarities within and without. LifeForce Yoga has developed protocols that can be woven into whatever style of yoga you currently practice. The strength of our practices is that they adapt to individual needs, beliefs and values and are therefore used in health care settings worldwide.
Among the many doorways to Yoga or union that exist in the West, some focus on fitness and strength, which is the literal meaning of “Hatha”—physical force. Others focus on structural therapeutics. Other doorways take as their mission to raise the Kundalini energy, or to reach Nirvana or union with the Divine. But reaching implies absence. LifeForce Yoga understands that there is no separation from the Divine, that we are intimately, eternally connected. LifeForce Yoga is practiced as the first yogis practiced, resting on the fundamental belief that all that we need is already within us; that beneath the current mood, the roles we play and the masks we wear, we are the wholeness we seek.
To make it simple, LifeForce Yoga is a practice of compassion that creates a big enough container to embrace and accept all the dualities of mood. The practice is adapted to the student, so each individual can move into a more balanced (sattvic) and positive emotional, mental, and physical state of equanimity and self-awareness. This means we move slowly, assessing with the student/client each practice and its effect. When working with groups or individuals, we teach strategies that clear the temporary obstructions and that empower the student to access his or her own true nature. We encourage the student in the understanding that he or she has within the tools to heal and to sustain that healing with regular practice.
No matter your lineage or the yoga “style” in which you practice, LifeForce Yoga can offer you strategies to enhance your mood without changing your basic practice. The daily practice of LifeForce Yoga will diminish your sense of separation, which is the literal source of depression. The connection you feel to that which is most authentic within you and your connection to others will be enhanced.
Download the LifeForce Yoga Mood Handout
