Most yoga studios see new students flock through the doors each new year, committing to resolutions of stress relief, spirituality, and interrupting a sedentary schedule. Barbara Boris, owner of Woodstock Yoga Center, wants to help students develop a meaningful practice and teach them how to remove chronic hip pain.
Boris has been teaching since the 1990s and started Woodstock Yoga Center in 2012. As the pandemic story goes, classes abruptly halted during lockdown. When precautions lifted, Boris noted that her students returned to class physically and emotionally changed. She wanted to help them find their way back to yoga and solve a problem she saw—debilitating hip pain.
Boris recently created “Hip Healing Yoga: A Three-Month Journey to Freedom from Pain,” a series starting this May where those with some prior yoga experience can immerse themselves in yoga for chronic pain. The series includes in-person or online classes every other Tuesday and personal access to Boris’s 30 years of teaching experience.
The series is for anyone who experiences hip pain while practicing yoga, meditating, in warrior poses, pigeon pose, or for those who are putting off a hip replacement or experience hip pain when walking. While many yoga classes just help people stretch, Boris also provides yoga therapy exercises to help strengthen hips.
The series will also teach students to identify the different types of pain. Students will receive personalized advice based on their experiences. “The course will teach you how to identify what’s causing pain, how to adapt poses, and how to do the right poses to fix your pain,” Boris says.
“How does someone’s relationship with yoga shift when their hips hurt? That’s a question that I want to change the answers to—students don’t have to stop their practice,” explains Boris, a certified Iyengar teacher and yoga therapist.
While “Hip Healing Yoga” is for people with some prior yoga experience, Woodstock Yoga Center also offers weekly classes for all levels. Boris pulls inspiration from her surrounding community. After all, the median age of a Woodstock resident is 61, and though hip pain can affect anyone, it is common among seniors. Boris’s offerings range from an Iyengar fundamental series to weekly meditation-based Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings.
Building a personal practice is integral to healing hips. “Any yoga class can teach you the poses to practice at home, but I want to teach my students how to practice in a way that heals them each day to become pain-free.”
Hip Healing Yoga starts on May 6, 2025, and is capped at 30 students. Early bird pricing is available until March 1, 2025. For more information or to register, visit woodstockyogacenter.com
