Would you spend $100 for a 60-minute private coaching session on how yoga can help improve your running, prevent injury and improve your biomechanics so you can run longer and with less effort? As a yoga teacher and avid runner, I have been self-coaching myself for years, using my learnings from my yoga practice to improve my running and using my love of yoga and meditation to fuel me as I run. As a Certified Baptiste yoga teacher, and a 200 HR Experienced Registered Yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance, I have been teaching runners and other athletes for years. In my personal running practice, I’ve run dozens of road races and in 2008, ran my first marathon, the Bay State Marathon, in 4 hours and 16 minutes (my goal was 4 hours – those last 3 miles were killer!) I use yoga regularly before and after a run, and coach myself along my runs with meditations and inspirations that come from my yoga practice. Along with my yoga background, I have an undergraduate degree from Boston University in Rehabilitation Counseling with a 2-year initial concentration in Physical Therapy. I am regularly bringing into my yoga teaching the anatomy and physiology I learned many years ago, and use it to educate myself and my students as to how the postures are an expression of not only biomechanics, but by learning how everything works on a physical level, we open up to greater physical potential both on the mat and on the road.

I’ve started working with people individually, combining what used to be just a private yoga session with a run. This kind of session is great for those that are runners who never thought they were flexible enough for yoga or yogis that would love to enjoy running but don’t think they have the stamina for it. It’s for the competitive runner who wants an edge over his or her competition, both mentally and physically. It’s for the runner who is plagued with ongoing overuse injuries or injuries where the origin is poor biomechanics. I have worked with athletes for as long as I have been teaching this style of yoga, as it’s a powerful, athletic combination of poses that are linear in nature and do not require extensive flexibility to do. You will gain flexibility with consistent practice and you will get stronger as well. You will improve your breathing capacity, which will improve your running. You’ll learn better biomechanics so your running will be more effortless. You’ll bring the mental edge you have on the mat to your running and learn how you can coach yourself through challenging training and racing with a powerful tool that you will customize so it’s meaningful to you. If you’re a yogi, you’ll bring what you already know and love about movement to the outdoors, and in a more cardiovascular way, you’ll express yourself. Through running, you’ll have a wonderful partnered practice to use for exercise; one that will reinforce your love of a meditative style of exercise and one that will expand your cardiovascular fitness in a new way. You’ll bring your knowledge of biomechanics and moving effectively and efficiently to the road and this will translate easily and effortlessly into a new way of exercising. If you already do both yoga and running, this session will give you a new way of thinking about how each method of exercise can build on each other so they both grow in new directions.

Here’s what you’ll get in your private running/yoga coaching sessions:

· An initial guided meditation experience, meant to introduce you to how this powerful seated-in-stillness practice can be used as a pre-run or better yet, pre-race tool to give you internal power and focus;

· A series of easy-to-use pre-run yoga poses that can be done before a race or run as a way to warm up the body;

· A supportive coached running session (distance of up to five miles) where along the run, I will assess your biomechanics, give you suggestions using yoga as the foundation, all geared towards helping you run more effortlessly, easily and effectively;

· Also provided along the way will be short, easy-to-remember meditations, again using yoga as the basis, that will allow you to re-focus your mind in a moment of challenge and give you an effective tool to help you harness your physical power so you can run longer and harder, without getting hurt;

· A post-run cool down routine that will leverage the warmth you’ve created in your body to create new openings in the hips, hamstrings and calves, especially, so that you can increase your flexibility. This section can be customized to focus on your particular areas of tightness in your own body.

Running and yoga are the perfect compliments to each other. They are both physical practices that increase strength and stamina, and improve mental focus and concentration. They both expand our cardiovascular fitness and while running increases our cardiac muscles, it’s side-effect of creating tightness in the hips and hamstrings (among other things) is eased through a regular yoga practice.

If you like the idea of this offering and you book your session before July 15, 2010, your first session is only $75.00.

For more information about Karen Fabian, see www.kfabian.com and www.barebonesyoga.com. Karen’s fan page on Facebook is “Bare Bones Yoga” where she posts regular tips and information on yoga, running, health and wellness.