With countless yoga classes being offered daily in studios and public spaces around Asheville and Western North Carolina, creative local yoga teachers are diversifying.
Xpress talked with six yoga teachers who have infused their yoga classes with complementary healing or movement practices to create a unique yogic experience. Becca Odom teaches a class where students are treated with acupuncture needles during restorative yoga poses.
Becca Odom — acupuncture and yoga
Xpress: How do you bring acupuncture into your yoga classes?
Odom: Chris Jacobs and I offer this workshop twice a year, close to the equinox. Acupuncture and restorative yoga both work on the meridians, which are energy pathways that run throughout the body. We utilize restorative postures to help open these meridians and acupuncture to help remove any energy that has gotten blocked along these pathways. We incorporate meridians of the current season, and in this upcoming workshop, we will be working on the gallbladder and liver meridians. We will focus on heart and hip openers in the yoga practice and utilize acupuncture points that support opening these parts of the body as well.
Why do you think acupuncture and yoga work well together?
These two modalities enhance each other. … I think of yoga as a moving acupuncture. Yoga brings up the energy, and acupuncture pushes the energy out of the system.
Odom teaches weekly classes at Asheville Community Yoga and Asheville Yoga Center. In addition to teaching yoga, Odom is a licensed clinical therapist and co-founded the Yoga For Trauma program. Chris Jacobs sees private clients for acupuncture at Mission Health Hospital.
Acupuncture Toronto is an ancient form of Chinese medicine involving the insertion of solid filiform acupuncture needles into the skin at specific points on the body to achieve a therapeutic effect. No drug is injected. The needles alone create the beneficial effects of acupuncture