Adho Mukha Shvanasana, or downward facing dog pose, isn’t just for people. It’s actually for dogs, too. At least, according to certified yoga instructor Suzi Teitelman it is. Not only is it fun for owners and their pups, but it’s called “Doga” and it’s a great way to enhance your workout.
Teitelman started Doga Dog 20 years ago in New York City, just after 9/11. She was the director of yoga at Crunch Fitness and started taking her dog to class for mutual comfort. Many of her clients enjoyed her dog’s presence and she found that her pup was loving it as well. Soon after, she started Ruff Yoga, a yoga class that allowed clients to bring their pets with them. People loved the opportunity to exercise with their animals while growing closer to them. Today, she not only teaches Doga through a partnership with Rover.com, but trains instructors from all over the world in the art of dog-partnered yoga.
Doga, much like yoga, relies on traditional methods of Hindu spiritual and ascetic disciplines—including breath control, simple meditation and the adoption of specific bodily postures aimed at stretching and relaxing the body and mind. In Doga, however, your dog participates too.
“I'm all about the people doing the pose correctly,” Teitelman said. “You just start to add your dog and let them feel you get calm with a meditative breath. You sit on the floor and your dog will come over. As you move from one pose into the next, you add your dog into the pose.”
Teitelman says dogs will put their paws on clients’ shoulders or lay on their backs next to them, allowing clients to stretch their legs.
“You're just kind of melting together,” she said. “The more you do, the more you have a beautiful flow together.”
It’s not just the exercise and connecting owners with their pets, however. Teitelman said that the yoga experience is also enhanced by the dogs and their free-loving nature.
“People already people have a hard time turning their minds off,” she said. “If you allow yourself to be with your animal you are just going to massage and touch. Eventually, you’ll just forget where you are.”
Recently, Teitelman has begun to realize not only the positive effects dogs have on their human yoga partners, but the therapeutic nature the practice provides dogs in need of human companionship and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder recovery.
Her newest family member, Aloe, was adopted from a humane society shelter after a horrifying experience.
Teitelman met Aloe after she decided to foster a dog from the shelter, asking the volunteers for the “most needy dog” for the weekend. Aloe was very much that.
Aloe was found after being left to die at 3 a.m. outside of a bank in Jacksonville. He had been stabbed in the chest, puncturing a lung. One his front legs had been broken and reset improperly. The other had nerve damage from an injury. On his head, someone wrote the word “R.I.P” with a big black Sharpie.
Teitelman, who found out later the extent of his trauma, knew Aloe wasn’t going to just be a foster but a family member. Slowly, she started doing yoga with him, stretching his legs and massaging his injuries.
“He has learned yoga and it has brought us together as a family,” Teitelman said. “It's taken him a while to be able to learn the poses and he is starting to roll over on his back and actually move his legs and work on that leg that got stabbed through his shoulder. I can't imagine what he has gone through, but he really is the sweetest dog.”
Now vibrant and happy, Aloe is filled with life despite how his previous owners labeled him. Together, he helps Teitelman teach her class, showing the power of yoga for therapy, love and even forgiveness.
Dogs “live in this pure, happy world until we ruin it for them,” Teitelman said. “We are trying to be like a dog. We are trying to be more like our dogs.”
For more information about Doga Dog visit https://dogadog.org/ Or Rover.com . For more information about working out with your pets, visit https://www.rover.com/blog/a-guide-to-working-out-with-your-dog/
Photos provided by Suzi Teitelman
