Check out our NEW web site... www.CircusYoga.com!
Workshops & Retreats
Join us for a family retreat at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Lenox, MA, every Easter, Thanksgiving, and Fourth of July holidays. Look at our schedule for other dates and venues.
CircusYoga is an imaginative, fun-filled experience for the whole family designed to strengthen self-confidence, focus, trust, and teamwork. CircusYoga combines the consciousness of yoga with the communal ceremony of circus. Together we create a tribe that embraces balance, joy, courage, agelessness, appropriate risk, and transformation.
Parents and kids learn, grow, and experience together as life-long learners, opening new realms of vocabulary for play and communication through:
- Hatha Yoga
- Partner Acrobatics
- Juggling, Diablo, Devil Sticks, Spinning Plate
- Parent-Kid Clowning & Physical Comedy
- Flying Partner Yoga
- Tightwire
- Group Story-Creation
- Parent-Kid Thai Massage
- Creative Movement & Dance
Join us if you are a kid ages 7 and up. We invite parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents to participate with their kids. We also encourage adults without kids to come their own. Classroom teachers, yoga instructors, circus educators, family social workers, and occupational therapists can explore new techniques applicable to their own work and play.
- CircusYoga changed my life! It renewed my desire to be creative and play with my kid. —Bert Bland, parent, Ithaca, NY
- The CircusYoga program inspired me to find a yoga class in my hometown where my kids and I can do yoga together every week. —Wendy Rickard, parent, Princeton, NJ
- I learned a lot of FUN yoga! —Naima (age 9)
- I truly believe it was one of the most meaningful, valuable experiences I've had with my daughter.
- —Brette Logan, parent, New Haven, CT
- It was a thrill a minute as the captivating blend of yoga, dance, discovery, imagination and circus skill unfolded before us! —Pam Gaither, yoga teacher, Boston, MA
- It was really, really, really wonderful. The playfulness and light-heartedness, combined with the deep connection that you and Kevin fostered so powerfully (and in such a skillful way) was so very effective in creating a safe, yet energetic and fun space for us all to play and work. —Joanne Myrup, yoga teacher, Taos, NM
CircusYoga Teacher Trainings
What is CircusYoga? CircusYoga combines the consciousness of yoga with the communal ceremony of circus for a deeply transformative experience. In CircusYoga, we foster a spirit of play and provide a level playing field for people of all ages and abilities. CircusYoga strengthens self-confidence, focus, trust, expression, and teamwork.
Developed out of our work with families and kids, CircusYoga offers a safe, supportive environment for transformation within groups of all ages. CircusYoga celebrates the whole community, the whole family, the whole person. Most of all, CircusYoga models the principles of inclusion, partnering, and community cooperation, embracing each individual’s gifts in our circle. CircusYoga says “yes” to life.
Who is the CircusYoga Teacher Training for? Anyone who works with groups of people to facilitate learning or healing can benefit from this training: yoga instructors, classroom teachers, circus educators, social workers, family counselors, occupational therapists, group facilitators, recreation directors, parents and any yoga practitioner who wants to work with kids and adults. We recommend that applicants have at least one year of yoga practice; however, no circus experience is necessary.
What will I learn? We will learn techniques that support parents and kids, and other groups, as collaborators and life-long learners. Opening new realms of vocabulary for play and communication, we will explore:
- Creation of an environment where every student can be seen and celebrated
- Group dynamics in Hatha yoga and story creation
- Kinesthetic communication through partner acrobatics and partner yoga
- Integration across the mid-line with juggling and balancing
- The spirit of play in clowning and physical comedy
- Balance on a tightwire and in asanas
- Nurturance in Thai massage
- Self-expression through creative movement and dance
- Cultivation of your authentic teaching voice
We will also provide an opportunity for trainees to assist in creating a CircusYoga experience for others at a public CircusYoga Family Workshop during the training—a powerful and transformative experience.
Erin Maile O’Keefe is a certified Kripalu and Rasa Yoga teacher whose practice is informed by Viniyoga, Body-Mind Centering, and dance. Through her practice she continues to explore embodiment, expressive movement, balance, partnering, and group dynamics. Erin has taught movement studies to kids since 1981. Through the “Growing A Story” program she has taught story creation, creative movement, and play production to inner-city elementary students. She is the former Festival Director and Vice President of the American Youth Circus Organization. Born and raised in Hawai'i, Erin regularly teaches yoga classes, workshops, and retreats in New York, Vermont and on the Big Island.
Kevin Maile O’Keefe has been a certified advanced Integral Hatha yoga teacher for the past fifteen years. At the Big Apple Circus School he was a director of inner-city teens for five years. As the founder of Circus Minimus Kevin has taught students and teachers around the globe for twenty years. Circus Minimus educates youth in and through circus arts, running in-school residencies, integrated circus curriculums, and afterschool programs in NYC and New England. In 1998 he became the founding president of the American Youth Circus Organization. He has toured internationally with his One-Man Circus in-a-Suitcase show and teaches in the MFA theatre program at Sarah Lawrence College.
Together they have led Flying Partner Yoga workshops for 6 years and continue to study Yoga, circus arts, Thai massage, and meditation. Their studies have also taken them to Chennai, India, to study with TKV Desikachar at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram. Erin and Kevin's teaching style is playful and dynamic. Over the past 6 years they have developed CircusYoga for the Whole Family workshops and teacher trainings at Kripalu Center for Yoga and presented them around the world. Together they continue to discover CircusYoga by
exploring deep questions in themselves and in the CircusYoga community.