Course Syllabus
Course: DANC 1215
Division: Fine Arts, Comm, and New Media
Department: Dance
Title: Yogastrength
Semester Approved: Fall 2022
Five-Year Review Semester: Fall 2028
End Semester: Summer 2028
Catalog Description: This course focuses on the strength aspect of yoga practice through the incorporation of weight and toning equipment in the flowing sequence of yoga postures. This course is repeatable for credit.
Semesters Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer
Credit/Time Requirement: Credit: 1; Lecture: 0; Lab: 2
Repeatable: Yes.
Prerequisites: None
Corequisites: None
Justification: The healing exercise of yoga brings energy, strength, flexibility and balance to the physical bodies. It reduces stress and tensions in the mind while calming, clearing and focusing the thoughts. All postures are performed in a safe and nurturing environment that allows students to develop focus and inner strength resulting in a better quality of life.
Student Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to perform a series of beginner to intermediate yoga poses with proper alignment and breathing pattern, be familiar with and demonstrate all learned poses by vocal cues only, and demonstrate increased ability in areas of flexibility, strength and proper breathing. Students success will be assessed through classroom attendance and participation in yoga practice and teacher/student observation and feedback.
Upon completion of the course students will be able to apply yoga principles of breath, stability and flexibility to a dance performance. Students will be assessed through attendance and critical review of a Snow College Dance Performance.
Through supplementary reading materials students will learn to differentiate the physical practice of yoga as reflected in the asana practice from the broader view of yoga as a spiritual path that aims to make us into better and happier human beings. Students will be assessed through classroom discussion.
Content:
The very nature of dance increases physical fitness in many ways: strength, flexibility, endurance and coordination. Through discussion of correct movement principles and how they apply to dance and all types of movement, journaling and classroom practice students will gain the knowledge that allows them to exercise safely in all physical endeavors. All dance class students are required to attend and critically review Snow College Dance Performances. This further increases students knowledge of movement and movement's relationship to meaning. In this course students will practice a wide variety of yoga poses that will stretch and strengthen every major muscle group of the body. However, unlike in Yoga I and II courses, students in this class will be using a variety of props and weights that are meant to increase body strength. Each class will begin with a warm-up series (breathing/heat building), then progress to the more physically demanding work series (maintaining heat/building strength) and finish with a cool down (deeper stretches/inversions/relaxation.)
Students will be exposed to a variety of strength-building asana practices including Vinyasa, Ashtanga, and sculpt yoga. The class is accessible to students of all backgrounds and body types.
Key Performance Indicators:
Attendance and classroom participation 60 to 80%
Dance Concert attendance and review 10 to 20%
Reading/Classroom discussion 10 to 20%
Representative Text and/or Supplies:
Online materials on yoga.
Pedagogy Statement:
This exercise class welcomes students of all abilities and backgrounds as we explore various styles of asana practice that range from Hatha/Vinyasa to Bikram, Ashtanga and Sculpt Yoga. Through supplementary readings materials students will also gain a deeper appreciation of yoga as not only a form of exercise, but also as a spiritual non-Western based tradition rooted in non-attachment and virtue.
Instructional Mediums:
Lecture/Lab
Maximum Class Size: 35
Optimum Class Size: 20
