Yogahour – More Badass Than Bendy
Yogahour is a fun, full-spectrum alignment-based flow class with music. Faster pacing means we cover more poses per class. No inversions. Beginners welcome.
Full-spectrum means that we cover all of the categories of poses in each class to leave you all-around feeling great! We give lots of alignment cues to keep you continually refining your poses and to promote safety as you practice. Our playlists are rocking and awesome! We cover a large number of poses per class, so you get a lot done in an hour. We take the inversions out in order to increase the number of poses we can cover and to decrease risk. Yogahour classes are all-levels classes designed to keep everyone from the fit beginner to the experienced practitioner entertained and engaged.
Yogahour has a lot to offer the Philadelphia yoga community, both as a style of yoga and a teaching technology. Yoga practitioners in Philadelphia should love yogahour because it offers a full-spectrum practice in only 60 minutes with clear and succinct alignment cues to guide students (from beginner to advanced) more safely and specifically through the poses. The classes also have a rockin’ playlist to keep you bumping along to the beat as you move around on your mat. A yogahour class packs a real punch, it’s not easy, but it is always doable, and it caters to practitioners of every level. Yoga teachers should be jazzed about yogahour as a teaching technology because it provides a framework for a deeper understanding of the poses and how to guide students safely and efficiently into and out of the poses throughout the entire class. Vinyasa flow teachers, in particular, can get a lot out of studying yogahour as a way to more easily incorporate alignment into their classes.
“Yogahour® is an accessible, affordable, expertly taught flow class that offers clear and specific alignment instructions. Yogahour is a teaching technology that allows teachers to get students into and out of poses effectively and efficiently with economy of language. It is also a style of yoga that is the perfect blend of form (alignment) and flow (movement with breath). Yogahour maximizes safety and promotes longevity of practice. It’s designed for practitioners of all levels, from experienced students to the fit beginner.”
“Yogahour originated in Tucson Arizona by founder, Darren Rhodes. One of the central aims of yogahour is to support and sustain the local studio and the longevity of practice.”
“Yogahour aims to be the most doable yet difficult one-hour flow class offered anywhere.”
Maha Yoga is a certified Yogahour studio offering yogahour classes, workshops, and teacher trainings.
For more information about yogahour, visit the yogahour website:
Teagan Schweitzer leads our yogahour program at Maha Yoga. She is a certified Yogahour Teacher Trainer (E-RYT 500) and is available to lead or co-lead yogahour teacher trainings and workshops, as well as classes.
My Yogahour story
I first began teaching yogahour in January of 2013 when Maha Yoga opened its doors in Center City Philadelphia. At the time, I hadn’t yet met the founder of Yogahour, Darren Rhodes. The vision of yogahour at Maha was and is to offer a yoga practice to the Philadelphia community that is (a) affordable, (b) accessible to beginners, (c) challenging for more experienced practitioners, (d) taught by experienced yoga teachers, and (e) a full-spectrum practice in 60 minutes.
In March of 2013, Darren Rhodes and Brigette Finley came to Maha to offer the first in a series of three Yogahour four-day trainings for experienced teachers in how to teach a yogahour class.
I personally felt a deep connection with Darren from the moment we met. The first day of the training he came up and introduced himself to me and there was something about the way he said hello and engaged me in conversation that made me inherently have more awareness of my own capacity. He made it seem like he already knew that I was a good teacher before I’d ever taught anything in front of him. I remember those trainings as being the most fun yoga trainings of my life. It felt like we were all building something together and it was a real gift to work with other experienced teachers.
I started out my yoga teaching career as a power yoga teacher. One of the things I initially loved about yogahour was that it felt like a power yoga class with the addition of more alignment cues. It had the pulse or pacing of a power yoga class with alignment instructions included and the added benefit of a larger number of poses in the syllabus to keep things interesting. As a lifelong dancer, particularly ballerina, technique has always been important to me. Yogahour allowed me to get in a well-rounded and challenging practice with instructions that were continually helping me to refine my poses. I felt like I was becoming a more intelligent practitioner every time I stepped onto my mat.
In August of 2015 Yoga Oasis in Tucson, Arizona (the home of yogahour) offered a 300-Hour Yogahour Teacher Training taught by Darren Rhodes, Sam Rice, and Brigette Finley. For those of us who wanted to become Yogahour Teacher Trainers, this training was essential. As a Yogahour Teacher Trainer, I am available to lead or co-lead Yogahour teacher trainings, workshops, and classes anywhere in the world. For the 300-Hour teacher training in Tucson, I flew 9 times in the span of a year to Tucson for 5-day long trainings. It was a significant time and money investment and, in my mind, absolutely worth it. I had an opportunity to examine my teaching skills in a whole new way and develop myself into a more proficient teacher. I also made deep connections with fellow yogahour teachers from all over the world.
Since starting the 300-hour, I have taught two 200-Hour Yogahour Teacher Trainings at Maha Yoga. One of the best parts of the Yogahour Teacher Training is that it truly does provide the skills necessary to teach really great yoga. Graduates of the program walk out feeling confident to teach and teach well. There are now nine certified yogahour teachers in Philadelphia, including myself, as a result of these trainings.
Yogahour is a growing global community of yoga teachers and students. The first 200-Hour Yogahour Teacher Training was offered this year in Japan. Workshops have been taught in the Netherlands, Romania, and Japan. There are certified yogahour studios in both Canada and Japan. And there are over 200 certified yogahour teachers worldwide.
