CarolKrucoff,E-RYT500 healingmoves.com

Introduction: My name is Carol Krucoff,and I’m an author and health educator specializing in therapeutic applications of yoga for people with health challenges. Presentation Title: Think Outside the Mat Utilize Your Unique Talents to Build a Diverse Practice Description: My passion is making yoga safe, effective and available for older adults and people with health challenges, and my work in this area takes several different forms. I offer individual yoga sessions, Gentle Yoga classes and condition-based workshops at Duke Integrative Medicine, part of the Duke University Health System. This traditional, “on the mat,” teaching is just one aspect of my career. As a long-time health journalist (I was founding editor of the Washington Post’s Health Section) I also write articles, books and newsletters for the general public about using the tools of yoga—postures, breathing, meditation, and principles—to enhance health and well-being. Through my own desire to learn and integrate current medical wisdom with the yoga practice, in 2007 I co-founded (with Kimberly Carson), Yoga for Seniors—an IAYT member school—that offers specialty trainings for yoga teachers who want to make their classes safe and effective for older adults. We offer a 50-hour Master Training at Duke IM with a faculty of top Duke physicians, physical therapists and health psychologists. We also hold several abridged, 24-hour trainings around the country. More than 700 yoga teachers have attended our trainings. Talking Points: I’d like to help you recognize and develop your own unique skillset, which you can integrate with traditional yoga teaching, to build an innovative, enjoyable, lucrative, and useful career. #1: Identify your special skills. In addition to being a wonderful, well-trained yoga teacher, what other talents do you offer? This can be through education—a degree in business, for example, or social work. Or it can be through experience—years of caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s disease, or a child with special needs. Or it could be a hobby—gardening, painting, knitting, poetry, ballroom dance, etc. #2: Brainstorm ways to integrate your training/passion/experience with yoga. For example, offer yoga workshops for people who share your situation/hobby—ie. gardeners, poets, knitters, parents of twins. Use your degree in service of other yoga teachers—for example, a lawyer might offer workshops to yoga teachers about legal aspects of business or an interior designer might consult with yoga studio owners on creating an appealing space. Or use your degree to teach appropriate yoga practices to others with a similar degree—i.e. a social worker might offer workshops for other social workers focused on yoga-based skills to help themselves and/or clients, such as breathing or relaxation techniques. #3: Create and develop a community of like-minded people. Consider using social media and/or email blasts to create community, build your audience and encourage networking You might start a Facebook group for Yoga Poets, Design-Minded Yogis, Yo-Golf, etc. Start a newsletter with relevant articles, information and events. Summary: Let your passion fuel your career and allow your career to follow your passion. My career as a newspaper and magazine reporter and editor has informed the work I do now, and writing is still a significant part of my life. However I have evolved from being a journalist who writes about health to a yoga expert who also writes. This evolution came, in part, through decades of yoga studies and traditional yoga teacher training. But it also arose from Thinking Outside the Mat. Early in my yoga teaching career I volunteered at the Durham VA Medical Center, and recognized—then filled--the need for specialized training in teaching yoga to older adults. I’m grateful to have been able to partner with Duke Integrative Medicine, to enlist the support of expert medical faculty and also to offer them services they needed—including teaching specialized yoga classes and private sessions, as well as bringing hundreds of yoga teachers to attend trainings at their facility.