Drop into a class—in person or online!

Livestream a class wherever you are, or drop in to Chagrin Yoga to take one in person!

Therapeutic Yoga and Pilates

Tuesdays 9:45am and Thursdays 10:45am

Gentle to moderate. Injury prevention and core strengthening from Pilates combined with therapeutic postures, breath, and relaxation from yoga. Options for all.

Power Pilates & Strength

Tuesdays 5:00pm

Vigorous Pilates core work, strength training for major muscle groups, and targeted movements from ballet and modern dance that isolate and stabilize. Sprinkled throughout are preparations for yoga arm balances and a few faster-paced sections and short intervals of cardio. It's a total body and mind experience! Upbeat playlist. Options for newer students and lots of challenges for experienced ones.

Register at the Chagrin Yoga website or in the MindBody app. (Purchase a single class, a multiple-class pass, or a membership.)

In-person classes at Chagrin Yoga have doors open, exhaust fans, UV HVAC filters. Online livestream classes let you turn your video off (for a private practice) or on (letting me see your alignment) PLUS you get take longer savasana whenever you want!

Yoga for Responders

Class is free every Thursday at 4:15pm at Chagrin Yoga for fire, EMS, police, educators, and support staff of Chagrin Falls and our surrounding areas. This class focuses on improving sleep, releasing stress responses, improving breath capacity, and maintaining mobility. To show up in person, arrive 5 minutes early at the studio to register the first time. If you want an online livestream link, email me at yoga@elizabethsilas.com, tell me where you work, and we'll set you up!

You may be wondering—if this is all new to you—what are these ways of moving and breathing?

What Are These Ways of Moving and Breathing?

What Is yoga?

Yoga in America combines specific positions and movements with steady, lengthened breaths. Awareness or meditation instruction may be included. In my classes, we:

• strengthen and stretch muscles

• stabilize and actively align joints

• improve balance

• gradually expand breathing capacity and cardiovascular endurance

• develop mental focus and an attentiveness to how things are

• cultivate a sense of physical and mental well-being

A steady, continuous flow of these postures and breathing is often called vinyasa yoga or power yoga. Vinyasa yoga can be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, making you sweat more than you ever have before. But it does not have to be! A slow, gentle sequence can have all the qualities of vinyasa, allowing you to focus on your breath and the postures. Find the style and pace that works for you.

Therapeutic yoga or yoga therapy begins with the intention to use the techniques of yoga to promote health and well-being. One-on-one or small-group sessions are helpful so that each individual's needs, inquiries, limitations, and habits can be addressed, particularly when the student is dealing with specific illnesses, injuries, or conditions. However, nothing need be "wrong" in order to take the therapeutic approach. We all benefit from examining how we think, breathe, and move in subtle and obvious ways and then expanding from there into other options and ways of being.

Keep in mind, yoga has more branches than just the physical one we tend to focus on in America. For instance, you can also practice karma yoga (service), bhakti yoga (devotion), jnana yoga (self-knowledge and meditation).

What is Pilates?

Pilates [pih-lah-teez] is a set of exercises that increases core strength. A strong core is key for good posture and spinal health. It helps you stand taller and can keep your back, hips, and shoulders pain-free. The deep core area includes:

• on top: the respiratory diaphragm

• on bottom: the muscles and connective tissue of the pelvic bowl

• in between, a cylinder of four layers of abdominal muscles (transversus, internal obliques, external obliques, rectus) and many back muscles (multifidi, erectors, and more!)

The core really extends beyond those deep central areas—the glute max, other hip muscles, and many upper back and neck muscles contribute. I call that the extended core, and it includes the whole trunk—everything from pelvis to ribcage to head!

Pilates isolates each area, in turn, to develop body awareness, strength, and mobility. My classes combine the classical Pilates mat exercises with creative innovations that target the precise areas where we tend to lose strength over time.

What is Power Pilates & Strength?

Power Pilates & Strength is a fusion class, combining movement traditions. It includes mat Pilates, full-body strength training, and a few targeted movements from dance. We use dumbbells, resistance bands, unstable surfaces like rollers and balls, and bodyweight resistance to build strength from the deep core outward to each muscle group.

Moves from strength training, ballet, jazz, and modern dance are brought in to isolate and strengthen areas that yoga often stretches (such as hamstrings and glutes), so it’s a great complement to a regular yoga practice. Foam rollers and balls are used as unstable surfaces to challenge balance and core stability. We often prep for and play with arm balances, such as side plank variations and handstands at the wall. Building confidence in our own bodies, along with awareness of how to safely move and deeply breathe, are the key elements.

How Should I Begin?

For many people, the best way to begin moving with the breath is in classes or workshops designed for beginners or in private sessions. Look for “Intro,” “Basics,” or “Level 1.” These sessions will group you with other new beginners and offer you the fundamental actions of each posture, transition, breathing practice, and concentration technique, step by step.

Just be sure that some of your classes emphasize HOW and WHY things are done, not just WHAT is done. If you only take classes that flow from beginning to end, you may never learn to work safely and avoid injury by learning the deeper and more subtle actions that align the body’s bones and muscles. Be sure to set yourself up for a lifetime of injury-free, joyous movement!

My number one suggestion to brand-new beginners: Take many classes with different teachers, in different schools, in different styles. You will not believe the variety—in the pace of the breath, in the speed of the movement, in what teachers emphasize, in how they explain things, in whether or not they demonstrate, in music that’s played, in whether or not they assist you physically, in which movements they teach and the order they teach them—and each student responds differently to these factors.

Observe how you feel before, during, and after the practice. Look for sessions that bring out the best in you and make you feel like you can give that back and pay it forward as you walk off your mat.