SCIENCE + NATURE + YOGA
What if the very thing you trust to free and heal your body...
is surprisingly, slowly harming it?
Standard grid-based alignment ~the foundation of most modern movement teaching~ fights against your body's natural, intelligent, spiral design.
We've been following an overly mechanical map that takes us away from health~ creating pain where there should be freedom, restriction where there should be flow.
The result?
A hidden epidemic of movement-related injuries that no one's talking about.
It's time for a revolution in how we move, teach, and heal.
Maximize benefit. Minimize harm.
Align from the inside out.
Move with wonder, inspiration, fluidity and joy. Move for longevity.
Embodied Resilience: Liberating Alignment is a paradigm-shift for modern, mindful embodied practice.
This training bridges perspectives of biotensegrity & joint integrity with modern evidence-based understandings of the mechanisms of bodymind connection, applied to embodied practice of various styles - with a particular focus on modern postural yoga.
Honor the body's spiraling, interconnected design understood from the overlap of science and wisdom teachings. Support personal & collective health, vitality, adaptability & resilience. You'll learn how & why to frame and guide movement in ways that aren't taught in other trainings.
The world needs this right now. The world needs evolutionary embodiment teachers to help build bodymind resilience, one person at a time.
Embodiment is a powerful tool of being human.
It's how we're wired to digest life experience, self-regulate & self-resource.
Unfortunately, many, (if not most) forms of modern, mindful, embodied practice are taught with outdated maps of alignment that neglect our body's design.
We tend to get ourselves stuck in common ideas of linear alignment - easier for our mind, but limiting (& sometimes harmful) for our living, breathing spiral design. This slowly dis-integrates our physical architecture as well as our nervous system communication pathways.
The solution is simple ~ to align with our body's design. To understand & prioritize biotensegrity & the spiraling, interconnected nature of our joints, tissues & movement.
This shift to aligning from the inside->out (rather than with an imaginary outer grid) cultivates healthier movement patterning, injury prevention, greater accessibility, more adaptability in the body+mind (physical, mental, emotional & nervous system), increased wellbeing and overall longevity.
Most trainings teach the same standard approach to alignment.
Embodied Resilience: Liberating Alignment teaches you how to adapt embodied practices (those that are mindful about alignment and form) to teach optimal, balanced & functional movement while cultivating greater body+mind+nervous system resilience.
In this training, you'll learn to embody integrity within your biotensegrity - aligned from within our design. You'll investigate movement at each of the main motion centers: hips & pelvis, shoulder girdle, spine & head, hands & feet. You'll explore & embody adaptations needed to align from within & free your body+mind from rigid, linear paradigms of moving, thinking & being.
Embodied Resilience: Liberating Alignment bridges modern research & ancient teachings woven into many forms of modern mindful movement, a powerful tool for us all.
3 PILLARS OF EMBODIED RESILIENCE
Patterns of Modern Life
Do we get the movement nutrition needed for strength, vitality, adaptability & resilience?
How can embodied practice best balance patterns of modern life?
Resilience & Anti-Fragility
Adaptability physically, mentally, emotionally. How we handle stress & how we can grow stronger from it. Inside-out self-care for demands of today's world.
Living Yoga as Integration
Yoga as a Living Tradition of Connection: with self, others, the world, Life itself & something greater. Living in flow with Nature & the flow of life.
The problem with standard grid alignment:
we're part of the spiral nature of the universe
Maximize benefit + Minimize harm
Ancient yogic wisdom + Modern scientific understanding
This course is for you if:
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You've experienced the power of mindful embodied practice & are looking to refresh awe, wonder & creativity in your practice
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You want a sustainable embodied practice & to move well in all the ways you choose in your life
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You've ever felt stuck in a rut with embodied practice- doing the same old thing
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You've ever felt stuck in a pose, with few options to get out of the pose
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You've ever felt that you pushed your body into over-stretching or overdoing
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You've experienced joint pain or muscle tightness that doesn't seem to go away
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You want to know why & how embodied practices work to get strategic & personalize
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You're a yoga or movement teacher who wants to stand out & make a bigger difference, by applying new paradigms of bodymind understanding to teach movement that cultivates healthy & resilient patterns for real life
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You're a yoga teacher aware of growing rates of injury in yoga and want to teach safely for all, while honoring the roots of yoga
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You want to help build a more resilient world, one person at a time
What you get:
Tier 1
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On-demand training accessible on your schedule
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Lifetime access to all content
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Extensive educational materials:
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Digital training manual
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Educational lectures
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Embodied explorations
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CEUs for YA, I-AYT, & other professional organizations.
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Access to all Kutilaa Collections for 1 year
Tier 2
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Everything in Tier 1 plus:
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1 year membership in Embodied Resilience Mentorship Group ~ 2x monthly live practice & discussion $480 value
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1 - 60minute 1-on-1 session with Michelle $150 value
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1 year access to the Embodied Resilience Training 25-hour somatic training focused on qualities of movement and embodied awareness—valued at $1,300. Included here to help you integrate the anatomy into felt experience.
Tier 3
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Everything in Tier 1 + 2 plus:
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6 additional 60minute 1-on-1 sessions with Michelle for a total of 7
You'll have forever:
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A new way of understanding & teaching movement as meditation aligned with our body's design, modern body+mind+nervous system science & timeless yogic teachings
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Mini-sequences that combine movement + mindfulness + breath + relaxation + functional movement coordinations + embodied balance for modern day movement diets
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A deeper understanding of the mechanisms of body+mind oneness, including: yoga nidra, restorative movement & somatics, polyvagal theory, science of breath & more.
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Evolving language & ways to cue to the inherent individuality of prioritizing moving within biotensegrity & a living, breathing soma.
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Greater purpose & potency to make a positive difference in your students & clients
Investment: Tier 1 $1150 / Tier 2 $1750 / Tier 3 $2650
Scholarships, pay-it-forward, creative payment plans & alternative exchanges are always possible.
Embodied Resilience: Liberating Alignment
Training for Embodiment Guides & Dedicated Practitioners
Share ancient wisdom + modern scientific understanding
Evolve embodied practice with spiral alignment + biotensegrity
Guide accessible + safe + creative sessions for body+mind+nervous system
ER:LA merges ancient+modern & science+spirit to expand your wonder+creativity, spark your passion+motivation & give you practical ways to apply embodied practice for a more balanced & vital life, and to share as a teacher if that's your path... to be able to help clients feel better than ever.
It's a journey where we take the time to investigate and digest the latest research in bodymind, nervous system and movement science so that we truly embody our physical, mental and emotional alignment, and can share a positive ripple effect in our lives, our work and the world.
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I truly don't know of any other training like it.
Here's what graduates of the past, live cohorts have to say:
Michelle Van Straaten
director of Many Moons Yoga
South Africa & Europe.
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"I took took the leap of faith and I signed up for the Embodied Resilience Atelier and I am so glad that I did. It has completely and utterly changed my entire practice and the way I teach. Not even just yoga asana movement, but also weight training and different movement categories. The training itself is wonderfully spaced over many months, so that gives a lot of time for integration.
My practice has now become fully embodied because I've been really trying to listen deeply as to what's going in, on within my own awareness in my own body. Cultivating this deep, deep, deep listening, to be able to feel feel the articulation of how the body naturally wants to move is huge.
There's many, many, many more things that I could share. But I would say if you have an intuition or a desire to do this training, don't even second guess it. Michelle is the most amazing guide, she shares resources that are over and above what I expected. There's so much richness, and there is so much selflessness in her teaching and beyond what she shares - even that in itself is a gift. I'm so grateful that I did the training. It was life changing for me." ~ Michelle VanStraaten
Shadow Soleil
Paralysis survivor &
embodiment thriver, California
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"I've gained a more in-depth and intimate understanding of how we are truly designed to be in and collaborate with our bodies as we move through this world. I have been on a terrifically long journey of regeneration after a surgery to remove a brain tumor almost 28 years ago left me completely paralyzed on the right half of my face and body and with extreme balance and coordination challenges.
I've explored many movement approaches and practices over the years and I can honestly and sincerely say that this eight month Atelier has offered movement concepts, movement qualities and movement patterns that have finally enabled me to unhook from habitual compensatory ways of holding and moving my body that were imbalanced, unhealthy and created excessive constriction contraction, stress and strain was shallow.
Michelle Nayeli has introduced us to ways of moving that promote resilience and vitality and that can facilitate neurogenesis and establish new neural pathways. I have already experienced an acceleration of my neuro muscular regeneration and have been feeling how my my muscles and nervous system remember how to self organize and coordinate and re-integrate.
It has dramatically expanded my movement options, movement, vocabulary, movement possibilities, and it has unlocked a grace and intuity a more fluid and even distribution of effort and energy and a more resounding continuity of flow." ~ Shadow Soleil
TRAINING TOPICS
Building Resilience - Definitions & practices in the body, mind, nervous system
BodyMind Meshwork - Neuromyofascia & current fascia research
Biotensegrity - A new model of biomechanics that liberates ideas of alignment
Historical Context - history of anatomy, origins & evolution of embodied yoga
Joint Centration - How to find, feel & apply to common movement patterns
Pelvis & Hip Joint Coherence
Shoulder Girdle Coherence
Spinal Coherence
Paws: Hands & Feet
Whole Body Patterns of Coherence
Somatic Restoration & Floor Play
Tier 2 & 3 ~ Integration, Innovation, & Mentorship
COMMON QUESTIONS
Why is embodied practice important?
We are primarily living bodies, animals still... tracking the world around us for signs of safety or danger. Through our senses, perceptions, thoughts and experiences we make meaning of the world. Embodied presence has the power to ground us amidst chaos, to help us tune into our needs, our intuition, and our ability to return to a sense of center when life gets rocky. Modern science is also showing that embodied practices can train greater empathy, compassion, trust and wonder.
Why not keep practicing alignment as usual?
Unfortunately, we're seeing an uptick in related injuries. These are often aches & pains or injuries outside of embodied practice that occur as a result of the patterns set up by devoted, repetitive, linear-focused physical practice. This training aims to alleviate avoidable suffering & help shift embodied practice to center on biotensegrity & the individual, somatic experience.
For the yoga practitioners: Is it still yoga if we adapt asanas?
Yoga is a state of being/seeing/living. Yoga refers to all the practices that touch this state of connection with more of ourselves, life and with something greater. Yoga itself has evolved and changed over time. In fact, the origins of physical yoga practices were in spontaneous, fluid movement in the Tantrik daily ritual. Yoga is a Living Tradition, meant to serve life as it is. All instructors in the Kutilaa school are steeped in the roots and rivers of yoga with deep respect for the healing power in our own lives.
Meet Your Instructor
Michelle Nayeli Bouvier
Michelle Bouvier, B.S., E-RYT, C-IAYT is an interdisciplinary movement educator, Prana Vinyasa® yoga teacher trainer, certified yoga therapist & GYROTONIC® trainer devoted to the art and science of embodied practice as a resource for personal & collective resilience & (r)evolution. Loved for her inviting spirit, passion for continued learning & meticulous instruction, Michelle guides students to reconnect with & self-resource their bodymind & expand the root purpose of yoga to serve our lives from the inside-out. Michelle specializes in the merging of ancient teachings with modern science to re-pattern the bodymind towards integration & balance.
