Yoga for Bone Health w/ Linda

This is an opportunity to start your day with movement, mindfulness, and a dose of calm as you deepen your connection to mind, body, and spirit AND build your bones. We'll tune-in with a few moments of stillness; then start with gentle warm-ups to awaken the body and mind. We'll hold standing and balancing postures for up to one minute to activate bone building activity at the cellular level. We'll end each class with time for your own favorite poses followed by a few minutes of savasana, the pose of relaxation and integration.

As with all yoga classes, the invitation is ALWAYS to tune into your body's needs in the moment. You are encouraged to hold postures longer, release sooner, or move into a completely different pose depending on how you are feeling. Yoga is an opportunity to deepen your relationship with your body by listening to, attending to, and caring deeply for your physical form.

Although this class is filled with information and instructions for alignment, activation, and focused energy, it is not exercise (in the sense of telling your body what to do from a place of lack or a need for improvement). You are whole and perfect exactly as you are AND it feels really good to leave class awake, fully alive, and refreshed.

Linda Castronovo is a retired Amherst public school teacher, an exercise physiologist, and long-time Kripalu yoga teacher. In addition to this work, Linda has been a personal trainer, a wellness/fitness director, a high school science teacher, and field hockey and lacrosse coach. For the past ten years, she has organized free, donation-based daily yoga through Yoga Outside at Andrews Greenhouse. She now devotes her time to Everyday Wellbeing, a nonprofit committed to making vibrant wellbeing accessible to all by providing donation-based classes, workshops, and events that empower people to live their healthiest lives.

Yoga arrived in Linda's life via Runner's World magazine in 1978 while she was still in high school. The article promised improved strength, flexibility, and injury prevention. She tried only a handful of postures: warrior, triangle, cobra, downward dog, and child pose, but immediately felt calmer, more centered, and more alive. Certified as a Kripalu Yoga Instructor in 1991, she continues her study with many teachers, including Patty Townsend and Onatah Stoll. Her personal practice has evolved over the years and now includes daily meditation, pranayama, and asana. She values every opportunity to practice yoga in community and is committed to sharing the benefits of yoga and other health-enhancing practices with others.