Yoga for Riders: Principles and Postures to Improve Your Horsemanship

A highly illustrated guide to simple exercises that help equestrians become more aware and conscious while improving strength, flexibility, and balance.

Yoga teacher and horsewoman Cathy Woods explains how the meditative, mindful breathwork and lifestyle aspects of yoga traditions, as well as the postures, can be profoundly helpful in our interactions with horses. Over the course of her 30-year career, Woods has created teachings that are accessible to everyone--those who have practiced yoga and those who have not, as well as riders of different levels and disciplines. From wherever they are starting, her lessons offer readers life-changing benefits, including:

• Increased confidence working with and riding horses.
• A better sense of connection with horses, on the ground and in the saddle.
• Unique ways to enhance "feel."
• Step-by-step exercises to improve strength, flexibility, and balance.
• Postures that contribute to rider safety as we age.
• Empowerment--with horses and in everyday life.

Cathy Woods' unique program is presented here in the form of highly illustrated instruction, guiding you through the steps to achieving present moment awareness; finding body, breath, and energy awareness; breathing through challenges; listening to your inner voice; slowing down; and developing balance and symmetry in the saddle. All of these are key to better communication and improved partnership with horses. The result is a book that helps us become more aware and conscious riders while gently correcting our imbalances, resulting in a richer, more rewarding, more joyful horsemanship experience.

About the Author
Woods, Cathy: - Cathy Woods is a long-time yoga teacher and retreat leader, having taught yoga to equestrians and non-equestrians since 1991 at distinguished locations such as Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, Yogaville Ashram, and Mount Madonna Center. An equine enthusiast and avid rider who loves exploring the natural world from the back of a horse, Woods combined her passions to create a program called "Body, Mind, Equine," which focuses on the use of yoga principles and postures to improve horsemanship, from ground to saddle. She offers retreats and clinics at ranches, resorts, equine centers, and expos--including Equine Affaire, Southern Equine Expo, and Equitana USA--as well as for private equestrian groups. Woods has written for and been featured in numerous online and print publications, such as EQUUS Magazine, Western Horse & Gun Magazine, Yoga Digest, Forbes.com, Equitrekking, and Horsecity.com. Woods aims to impart an aware/mindful approach to yoga and horsemanship in order to make good horsemanship and true yoga accessible to everyone while promoting a more enriched and skillful life. She is based in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Find out more at cathywoodsyoga.com.