http://www.samamkayabackcare.com/

Samamkaya Yoga Back Care & Scoliosis Collective, 119 W 23rd Street, Ste 406, New York, NY (2025)

11/21/2025

This series will cover the basic skills you need to participate in the Back Care and Back Care Basics classes. With other new beginners to Back Care Classes at Samamkaya Yoga Back Care & Scoliosis Collective, instructor Ede Thurrell will teach you many of the basic actions, help you find your alignment and learn prop adjustments appropriate for your scoliosis, herniated disc(s), kyphosis, lordosis, spondylolisthesis, lumbar or neck pain… or any other back problem. Learning these skills through a series will help you make a commitment to your yoga practice and help you integrate smoothly into the Back Care classes.

Ede Thurrell was first introduced to yoga as a teenager by a dance teacher. Her first training was with Cyndi Lee at Om Yoga, and years later with Alison West at Yoga Union. In between, she has learned from and taught for Baby Om, Unnata Aerial Yoga, MELT method, and currently from her teacher Deborah Wolk regarding Yoga for Back Care & Scoliosis. With a background as a professional dancer, she has been honored to share her fascination with the inherent wisdom of the body for over 15 years with all kinds of people—from dancers and athletes to older people to parents with small children. Ede hopes to offer her classes as tools for healing and self knowledge that meet the student where they are.

11/18/2025

This weekend! Register now on our website for the full weekend or individual workshop days.

11/14/2025

Restorative and Pranayama for Yoga for Scoliosis for Experienced Practitioners

Saturday - 9am – 12:30pm, 2-4:30 pm
Sunday - 9:30 am - 12:30 pm
Full Workshop: $225*
Saturday All Day: $165*
Saturday Morning Only: $105*
Saturday Afternoon Only: $75*
Sunday Morning Only: $90*
*Get 10% off by using the code EARLYBIRD by November 17

Elise will guide you in this workshop to bring breath consciousness with poses to lengthen the spine and to find strength in the limbs to free the spine to more symmetry. Emphasis then will be on finding symmetry and balance with inversions and supportive restorative and renewing poses followed by lying down and seated pranayama to bring more breath balance to your practice and in your life. This practice will promote well-being by lowering stress and quieting the nervous system, improving lung function and lowering heart rate.

For continuing students and teachers with a foundation of a yoga practice for scoliosis. A six-month yoga practice is recommended.

Elise Browning Miller, M.A. in Therapeutic Recreation from UNC-CH, is a Certified Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher who has been teaching yoga throughout the US and internationally for over 30 years. A founding director of California Yoga Center in Mountain View, CA, Elise has successfully used yoga to minimize the effects of her own scoliosis. She has published numerous articles on scoliosis and other yoga related subjects in Yoga Journal and other national magazines.
Elise has studied on numerous occasions with the Iyengars in India and specializes in Scoliosis, lower/upper back problems and sports related injuries. She recently launched her new book “Yoga for Scoliosis – A Path for Students & Teachers”, and has produced her own DVD and booklets, “Yoga for Scoliosis”, “Yoga for Back Care” and her “Yoga: Anytime, Anywhere book”. Her joyous personality and ease of communication endear her to students with a teaching style that is down-to-earth, precise and nurturing.

11/13/2025

Lower Back Therapeutics with Liz Owen
In-Studio and Online

November 22-23
Saturday 2:30-4:30pm
Sunday 2-4pm
Full Weekend: $95*
One Workshop: $55*

Saturday: LOWER BACK THERAPEUTICS – CARE FOR YOUR SACRUM

This session will combine some of the work from our previous workshops while also exploring new therapeutic movements for your sacrum. Its aim is to provide you with a toolbox of techniques to relieve your lower back pain due to sacroiliac joint and sacral band issues. Students of any skill level – including beginners – will benefit, attendance in prior workshops is not required.
During our time together you will learn:
Gentle, safe movements to soothe, balance and strengthen your sacroiliac joints and sacral band, while respecting your body’s particular conditions and limitations.
How to explore the messages that your sacroiliac joints present to you, in order to gain understanding of how to create sacral spine health.
Techniques to change your emotional responses to sacral pain.

Sunday: LOWER BACK THERAPEUTICS – CARE FOR YOUR LUMBAR SPINE

This session will combine some of the work from previous workshops while also exploring new therapeutic movements for your lumbar spine. Its aim is to provide you with a toolbox of techniques to relieve your lower back pain due to lumbar musculature issues, trauma, and vertebra and disk conditions. Students of any skill level – including beginners – will benefit, attendance in prior workshops is not required.

11/07/2025

Join Martha for an informative and embodied experience exploring your scoliosis and fusion through the lens of Hanna Somatics developed by philosopher and movement theorist, Thomas Hanna. Similar but different from yoga, the workshop will begin with sitting and moving in a chair with a focus on sensing and breathing into imbalances from the inside out.
The second part of the class will be laying on the floor to allow for new awareness of movement patterns to release tension, improve alignment, find strength and connection and in general, develop more ease in your mobility. The workshop will start and end with a short Q&A. Somatics exercises are easy to enjoy for all levels and abilities.

Martha Carter: From Vancouver Island, Canada, Martha Carter is the Director of the Twisted Outreach Project (TOPS). Certified in Yoga (YTT200), Yoga for Scoliosis (Elise Browning Miller) and Essential Somatics (ES), she also holds a BA in Music, and an MFA in Dance. Combining these techniques with her own experience living with a fused spine, Martha offers a unique and creative way to specifically address spinal fusion and how it affects the whole body, mind and soul.

09/24/2025

For those of us with spinal imbalances, back issues, and injuries, stability can be elusive. What is it about yoga that brings us to a place where we find more steadiness in practice?

In Iyengar Yoga, the teacher’s verbal instructions and demonstrations, the student’s response, and the ensuing musculoskeletal action are what set this method apart from other systems of yoga. Over time, these musculoskeletal actions create a more coherent integrity in the entire system, affecting the nervous system, blood and lymph flow, and mind- and emotional-state of the whole body. When we practice regularly by connecting our consciousness with these actions, we find our imbalances and struggles in the practice lessen, our mind is engaged, and our body is more integrated and organized.

We are once again proud to host Jaki Nett, who will share her wisdom from her numerous extended visits to study with the Iyengar family since 1986. She has deeply practiced and embodied the actions and instructions from her teachers BKS and Geeta Iyengar, and is able to clearly transmit these learnings to her students. Few other teachers can boast this amount of experience and clarity. Please join us for another special workshop with Jaki!

Jaki Nett has taught yoga since 1976 and Iyengar yoga since 1982. She holds an Intermediate Senior 1 Teaching Certificate, the highest certification of any African American woman in the United States. Jaki has an MA in Humanistic Psychology, and weaves her research in functional anatomy into her teaching. Jaki is the published author of, A Crack in the Mask: The Felt Sense Method® – A Humanistic Approach to Managing Incontinence. Her bright, focused energy and straight-forward teaching style inspires and guides students through the challenges and rewards of a committed practice. Jaki conducts yoga workshops in the Bay Area, around the United States, and in Italy, Germany, England, Poland, Switzerland, and South Africa. Jaki lives in the Napa Valley with her husband, and she is the mother of an adult son.

09/22/2025

“To the yogi, the body is a laboratory for life, a field of experimentation and perpetual research”. B.K.S. Iyengar

Asana is the entry point for most of us into the yoga experience in our western culture. Then we find out Patanjali has more to say about that in his 196 sutras, that there are another 7 limbs to include. And those “terse aphorisms” called sutras open the door to an entire “cosmology” or world view that is interwoven into everything about yoga. More information, more details, the more that keeps on giving.

Samamkaya is offering a 4-part hybrid/collaboration of topical lecture by Bobbie Fultz in Santa Fe, NM and asana practicum with Deborah Wolk and Jon Musgrave in NYC. The four parts will each focus on one aspect of the larger interwoven fabric of the yogic philosophy that can inform and enrich our practice of this ancient topic in our contemporary life. Each session includes what that specific topic has to do with an asana approach and the scoliosis body.

October 5: 3 Gunas - Qualities of nature
November 2: 7 Kosas - Subtle sheaths of physical bodies
December 14: 5 Prana Vayus - Energy Pathways
January 11: 5 Elements - Physical body, sense perception

09/16/2025

Wednesday, October 15
6-8pm $55*
*Get 10% Off Using the Code EARLYBIRD by October 6
Hyperextension of the elbows and knees is quite common among yoga students at all levels, and certain asanas can exacerbate the condition if repeatedly done incorrectly. Fortunately, you can learn to practice in a way that both aligns and protects your elbows and knees, and makes them stronger and healthier.

Eve Holbrook has been practicing yoga since 1994. Initially drawn to it for relief from chronic back pain following a childhood horseback riding injury, she has grown to view yoga as an exploration of the nature of life and what it is to be a human being. She strives to communicate the possibility of being effortful without aggression, of embodying the depth of ourselves without strain.
Eve is a graduate of the two-year teacher-training program at the Iyengar Institute of New York (2005). She now lives in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she leads classes, international yoga retreats and workshops via her studio, Eve’s Yoga Space. Eve also teaches online for the Iyengar Institute of New York, where she is a faculty member. She became a certified Iyengar Yoga teacher in 2006, and currently teaches at the Junior Intermediate Two level. Eve is on the faculty of Samamkaya Yoga Back Care & Scoliosis Collective, a studio dedicated exclusively to yoga for back care and scoliosis. She is founder of The Nerve of Expression, a community project offering yoga to artists with multiple sclerosis.
In June of 2006, Eve first traveled to Pune, India to study with BKS Iyengar, his daughter Geeta, and son Prashant. Since then, she has returned three times for extended periods to develop her practice and assist in the medical classes there. In New York, Eve studied extensively with with Mary Dunn, Kevin Gardiner, James Murphy, Bobby Clennell and Lucienne Vidah. Currently, she continues her studies with Glenn Ceresoli. She assisted for many years in the Specific Needs class at the Iyengar Institute of New York.

09/02/2025

Saturday, September 27
9:30am-12pm $65*
*Get 10% Off Using the Code EARLYBIRD by September 15
For the third time we are honored to present a workshop with Helen Margaret Giovanello, visiting us from France.

To practice asana is to choose to be consciously present — to meet one’s body and mind with care. This presence allows each of us to find a space to meet life with greater compassion for ourselves and others.

In this workshop, Helen will explore asana from a global and integrative perspective — not as something to perform, but as movements to be embodied with awareness and depth. This way of practicing invites a state of quiet observation that helps one sense the real effects of each posture or movement on the body’s deeper layers. Students will learn to recognize and release unnecessary tension, and explore breathing techniques that support spinal extension and freedom of movement. Helen will also share her basic routine that requires little support and can be adapted to daily life. Helen aims that everybody will leave the practice happier, energized, and in an overall peaceful state.

Helen Margaret Giovanello teaches yoga in the Iyengar tradition with additional specialization in Yoga for Scoliosis, earned through Elise Browning Miller’s training program. She also had the privilege of learning directly from Geeta Iyengar on the subject of scoliosis during her repeated visits to the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, India.
Helen’s practice has been shaped by her own scoliosis—every learning experience is processed through the lens of her own body. As her primary teacher, Zubin Zarthostimanesh, often says: “You cannot bypass the body.” At sixty, her 25 years of yoga practice have been deepened by a wide range of life experiences — both joyful and challenging. These experiences inform her teaching, which is centered around cultivating a profound sense of well-being.

08/25/2025

“Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured” -Iyengar

Yoga asanas and pranayama bring ample opportunity to receive profound positive effects on the body, mind, emotions, and breath. A greater ability to notice is both a benefit received from practice and a crucial variable for practicing safely and effectively. This noticing reveals the borderline between healing and pushing too far towards inquiry.

Throughout the weekend workshop, we will invite observation, experience, action, and reflection to deepen your practice as we apply the concepts of sthira sukham asanam (steadiness and ease).

Saturday Morning Session (9:30am-12pm): Sthira (steadiness)
Saturday Afternoon Session (2:30-4:30pm): Sukham (ease)
Sunday Morning Session (10-12pm): Sthira Sukham (integration)

Asanas will be modified for those with back issues, scoliosis, and spinal fusions.
All levels are welcome!

Kelly Moore, M.A. CIYT, C-IAYT, CMT, integrates 34 years of mind/body/spirit practices, assimilating studies and professional work in the areas of yoga, meditation, bodywork, psychology, philosophy, and social work. Kelly is a level 3 Certified Iyengar Yoga instructor and has studied yoga therapeutics with Stephanie Quirk and yoga for back care and scoliosis with Elise Miller, Bobbie Fultz, and Deborah Wolk.
Kelly studied with the Iyengar family in Pune, India, and has studied with many senior Iyengar teachers. Kelly teaches at her studio, Living Yoga in Denver, CO, and continues with her neuromuscular therapy practice of 28 years. Instructing and mentoring in these disciplines continues to be a delight and an ongoing source of learning. A lifelong learner, Kelly recently graduated from an MA program in Consciousness, Psychology, and Transformation.
In her personal time, hiking, skate-skiing, and touring on her motorcycle are activities she and her husband enjoy together.

08/25/2025

“Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured” -Iyengar

Yoga asanas and pranayama bring ample opportunity to receive profound positive effects on the body, mind, emotions, and breath. A greater ability to notice is both a benefit received from practice and a crucial variable for practicing safely and effectively. This noticing reveals the borderline between healing and pushing too far towards inquiry.

Throughout the weekend workshop, we will invite observation, experience, action, and reflection to deepen your practice as we apply the concepts of sthira sukham asanam (steadiness and ease).

Saturday Morning Session (9:30am-12pm): Sthira (steadiness)
Saturday Afternoon Session (2:30-4:30pm): Sukham (ease)
Sunday Morning Session (10-12pm): Sthira Sukham (integration)

Asanas will be modified for those with back issues, scoliosis, and spinal fusions.
All levels are welcome!

Kelly Moore, M.A. CIYT, C-IAYT, CMT, integrates 34 years of mind/body/spirit practices, assimilating studies and professional work in the areas of yoga, meditation, bodywork, psychology, philosophy, and social work. Kelly is a level 3 Certified Iyengar Yoga instructor and has studied yoga therapeutics with Stephanie Quirk and yoga for back care and scoliosis with Elise Miller, Bobbie Fultz, and Deborah Wolk.
Kelly studied with the Iyengar family in Pune, India, and has studied with many senior Iyengar teachers. Kelly teaches at her studio, Living Yoga in Denver, CO, and continues with her neuromuscular therapy practice of 28 years. Instructing and mentoring in these disciplines continues to be a delight and an ongoing source of learning. A lifelong learner, Kelly recently graduated from an MA program in Consciousness, Psychology, and Transformation.
In her personal time, hiking, skate-skiing, and touring on her motorcycle are activities she and her husband enjoy together #

08/08/2025

August 9-10
Saturday 9:30am-12pm & 2:30-4:30pm
Sunday 9:30am-12pm
Full Workshop: $165
Saturday All Day: $110
Saturday or Sunday Morning Only: $65
Saturday Afternoon Only: $50

Click Here to Sign up for the IN-STUDIO Sessions
Click Here to Sign up for the ONLINE Sessions

Joint structure, surrounding ligaments, connective tissues, and fluids allow us to move with flow and grace. But compensatory patterns, wear and tear from age and life events cause uneven weight bearing, injury, arthritis, and/or pain. In this workshop, Deborah will lead you in an exploration of the anatomy of the shoulders, hips, and knees, their relationship to the spine and the asana practices to help you avoid and heal these types of misalignments and injuries, recovering your fluidity, strength and “equipoise” in movement.

Saturday Morning: Upper Limbs

Saturday Afternoon: Lower Limbs

Sunday Morning: Integrating the work holistically

6 months yoga asana experience is recommended for this workshop

Deborah Wolk, C-IAYT, has been teaching and working with students with back issues, scoliosis, and other injuries for over two decades. Her yoga practice working with her own scoliosis informs the work she does to help others.
Deborah’s teachings are based in the principles of Iyengar style yoga and Body Mind Centering (BMC) techniques. She is warm and funny and her teachings are subtle yet explained at a level everyone can understand. Deborah teaches workshops, retreats, and teacher trainings on Back Care & Scoliosis and related topics in New York City, across the US, and around the world, and has a thriving private practice. Deborah is the Founder and Program Director of Samamkaya Yoga Back Care & Scoliosis Collective. To learn more about Deborah please visit www.dwolkyoga.com.

Samamkaya Yoga Back Care & Scoliosis Collective

11/21/2025

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