20HRS - IMMERSIVE WORKSHOP WITH CELEST PEREIRA [01 - 03 oct 2026]
THURSDAY 01st OCT
16:30 - 20:30 → Deeper Backbends with Braindrills
FRIDAY 02ND
09:00 - 13:00 → Neural Flossing and Brain Hacks for Splits
14:00 - 17:00 → The Power of your Diaphragm
SATURDAY 03RD
09:00 - 13:00 → Neuro Inversions
14:00 - 17:00 → Advanced Adjustments
WHAT TO EXPECT
Thursday evening: Deeper Backbends with Braindrills
Why spinal extension is as much neurological as it is structural
Backbends are often taught as a question of flexibility or strength in the spine, shoulders, and hips. But for many bodies, the real limitation lies elsewhere, in how the brain perceives safety, orientation, and load in extension.
This workshop blends a playful, intelligent flow with a clear exploration of the anatomy of the spine, shoulders, and hips, helping you understand how these structures contribute to backbending without unnecessary compression or force. Alongside this, we introduce targeted brain-based drills designed to change how the nervous system responds to extension.
By working with visual input, balance, and other neurological strategies, we can often unlock more ease, range, and control in backbends, without pushing deeper or straining tissues. The focus is on improving organisation, confidence, and coordination, rather than chasing shape.
When you learn to work with the anatomy above the neck (aka the brain), the rest of the body often follows.
Friday morning: Neural Flossing and Brain Hacks for Splits
Why flexibility is often a nervous system limitation, not a muscle one
Nerves are the communication highways between the brain and the body. When their ability to move, glide, and tolerate stretch is reduced, range of motion can feel blocked, uncomfortable, or simply unavailable even when muscles themselves are not the primary limitation.
In this workshop, we explore how the nervous system influences flexibility, comfort, and perceived end range, with a particular focus on positions like the splits. You’ll learn how neural tension, sensitivity, and protective responses can restrict movement, and how neural flossing, sensory input, and targeted brain-based drills can change that conversation.
Through anatomy-led education and practical exploration, we will work with key neural pathways and movement strategies that often produce immediate shifts in range, ease, and confidence. This is not about forcing deeper stretches, but about improving the quality of information moving between the brain and body.
If certain poses, like the splits, have always felt out of reach, this workshop offers a different lens, and often a different outcome.
Friday afternoon: The Power of your Diaphragm
Not just a breathing muscle, but a central organiser of the body
One of the largest, most vital, and most misunderstood, muscles in the body, the diaphragm is far more than a breathing pump.
In this workshop, we explore the true morphology and function of the diaphragm, moving beyond simplistic ideas of “belly breathing” to understand how this muscle integrates respiration, posture, pressure regulation, circulation, and nervous system function.
You’ll learn how the diaphragm interacts with the rib cage, spine, pelvic floor, and abdominal contents, and how its movement influences systems as varied as balance, vocalisation, digestion, lymphatic flow, and autonomic regulation. We will examine why diaphragmatic dysfunction often shows up far from the breath in neck tension, low back pain, altered tone, or a sense of poor stability.
Through anatomy-led education and intelligent movement, this workshop reframes the diaphragm as a central coordinator, shaping how the body organises itself moment to moment.
This is not about breathing, it’s about understanding what the diaphragm organises, and how restoring its function can change everything downstream.
Saturday morning: Neuro Inversions
Struggled with inversions?
Or feel like you’ve hit a ceiling with what your body can do upside down?
This is an inversions workshop like nothing you’ve experienced before.
Most inversion training focuses on strength, repetition, or bravery.
But inversions are not a strength problem, they are a nervous system problem.
In this workshop, we explore how targeted neurological drills can rapidly change your experience of being upside down, sometimes in minutes, not years. Through neural flossing, brain mapping, cerebellar challenges, and precise visual and vestibular work, we create the conditions your nervous system needs to feel safe, organised, and capable in inverted space.
You’ll learn how the eyes, inner ear, and brain work together to determine balance, orientation, and confidence, and how subtle inputs can dramatically shift your capacity, control, and ease. Traditional anatomy is woven throughout, but always in service of what truly drives inversion success: perception, reflexes, and sensory integration.
Saturday afternoon: Advanced Adjustments
When touch becomes communication with the nervous system
What actually happens when touch meets the skin?
Why can the same adjustment feel deeply grounding to one person, yet intrusive or overwhelming to another?
Why do some bodies soften under deep pressure, while others recoil, even when the technique is “correct”?
This workshop explores touch not as a mechanical skill, but as a neurological conversation.
Drawing on current neuroscience, sensory processing, and motor control, we will unpack how the brain interprets touch, how context and expectation shape response, and why intention alone is never enough. You’ll learn how different types of contact influence perception, reflexes, tone, and emotional state, often within milliseconds.
Through practical, brain-based techniques, you’ll refine the way you assist so that your touch becomes clearer, safer, and more effective. The focus is not on force or choreography, but on precision, timing, and nervous system readiness, creating adjustments that feel supportive, respectful, and genuinely transformational
About CELEST
Celest acquired her BSc (Hons) in Physiotherapy in 2009, and is currently specialising in functional neurology. She teaches yoga internationally, co authored the book Too Flexible to Feel Good, and runs regular education based workshops internationally. She is also co-founder of Alba Yoga Academy, an online 200 and 300h teacher training school, with her friend and business partner Hannah Barrett
Earlybird: 1,450 QAR (till 17th Sep)
Full Price: 1,650 QAR