Hala Khouri, M.A., has been teaching the movement arts for sixteen years. Her roots are in Ashtanga, Iyengar and Anusara yoga, dance, Capoeira, CORE energetics, and the juicy mystery of Life itself.

Hala earned her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Religion from Columbia University and has a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute.

She is one of the creators of Off the Mat, Into the World, a yoga and activism initiative that aims to get yogis to take their practice outside of the yoga studio and to touch the lives of others. Visit: www.offthematintotheworld.org

Hala has taught yoga and the movement arts to a wide variety of people ranging from schizophrenics and at-risk youth to mommies and rock stars.  She currently teaches at Exhale, in Venice California.  Visit her online at: www.halakhouri.com

For more read an article about her in Yogi Times

Kathryn Nicolai,

“The person I was ten years ago would never have done yoga. I was obese, unhappy, and very unhealthy. The only physical activity I experienced involved moving from the couch to the fridge and back again. Although I was a vegetarian my version of a meat-free diet was chocolate cake and french fries. Over the next few years I bounced from one addiction to another. I went from overeating and never exercising to frantically counting calories, skipping meals altogether, and working out for hours everyday. One night after my 3rd kickboxing class in as many hours my shin splints and bleeding feet finally forced me to give up. I knew my body wouldn’t let me get back on the stair climber but not wanting to stop working out I wandered into a yoga class.

That first class sold me; not because I was finding some peace but because I had found a new addiction and a new way to compete with myself. I found out that I was very flexible and although I wasn’t very strong I could see that changing quickly. Rather than practice yoga in a balanced sensible way, I attacked yoga, determined that I could beat it and maybe be crowned Queen Yogini.

Overtime the practice and the words of my teachers started to soak in; I stopped competing and slowly started to accept the nature of my own body. Yoga stopped being about battling with myself and became about nurturing myself.

Along the way I found myself wanting to be more involved in yoga. I started teaching at Samadhi Yoga Center in Flushing in 2001 and went on to train with Jonny Kest at the Center for Yoga in West Bloomfield in 2003. I gained invaluable experience teaching at both of the studios mentioned above as well as at Prana Yoga Center in Grand Blanc, and Continuity Yoga in Ypsilanti. Another big piece of my education came when I sat 10 days of Vipassana Meditation in 2005. The concepts of Vipassana, namely accepting reality as it is and recognizing the impermanent nature of all things, greatly influence the way I practice and teach yoga.

While I was doing my teacher training, my mom was working on her Masters in Counseling and at one point we realized that we’d been assigned the same books. The more we talked shop the more we realized that we were doing very similar work in different venues. We wondered, “What if we combine our work in one facility?” The idea for Ethos was born. We wanted to offer a place where people could go to let go of stress and find a healthier, more balanced mind and body.

Nearly seven years and thousands of practices after that first class, I have balance in my life and I’m eager to share what I’ve learned. For me, peace of mind and equanimity are not products of squeezing yourself into crazy postures but of the knowledge that comes from understanding just how your body and mind work. I have been an overeater and a non-eater, afraid of exercise and obsessed with it, finally I have reached a point of balance and peace and I invite you to do the same”.

Kathryn Nicolai, co-owner, CYT
kathryn@ethosyoga.net
www.ethosyoga.net
(248) 328-YOGA

ethos yoga
113 South Saginaw Street
in historic downtown
Holly, Michigan

From www.pranaflownz.com, Kara Leah writes,

“I’m someone who’s life has been profoundly changed in every way because of yoga.

I remember walking into my first class when I was 20 years old – it was held on Auckland’s North Shore and was an Iyengar class. I’d had a spinal fusion four years prior and I was the stiffest person in the class by far. When we went into a standing forward bend, I was hunched over like an old woman, struggling to reach my knees. Yes – my knees!

I knew then that yoga was something I was meant to do, but it was another three or four years before I found my way to another class, this time in Whistler, Canada. Again, I pre-paid for a ten week course, this time an astanga-based class. I remember in our first or second class the teacher brought us into Virabhadrasana I and it touched something deep inside of me I wasn’t ready to face. I stopped right in the middle of the posture, and ran from the class, never going back to complete that course.

It took severe pain and some disheartening news about the state of my spine (degenerative disc disease!) from a doctor to send me back to yoga. When I re-started, I had intense sciatic pain down my right leg, half of my right foot was numb and I was walking with a limp.

Today, eight years later, I am pain free. I can finally sit in Dandasana with my legs flat on the ground and I have full sensation back in my right foot.

But yoga has touched me in many ways other than physical – it has taught me how to live life, and how to open my heart again. It has taught me to accept myself, and to accept others. Best of all, it has reminded me of the joy that is to be found in all moments of life. All we need to is stop, take a breath and then laugh at the absurdity of this human life.

As Twee Merrigan says, “How can I hate traffic when I AM traffic?”

So now, living in Wellington after many years overseas in Canada, I am combining my love of writing with my passion for yoga. My intention with this site, and with my life, is to share my passion for yoga with as many people as possible. Let’s get the whole world doing yoga – whatever type or style of yoga that might be.

Yoga to me means to connect, to unite. It means expanding and opening. So anything that we do that connects us to each other, that unites us as one, that expands and opens us outward… this is yoga”.

Kara-Leah teaches at at Configure Express Kilbirnie, and at Kelburn Rec Centre at Victoria University, in Wellington, New Zealand.

Visit her at her site and blog: www.pranaflownz.com

Chandra has spent most of her life in service to humanity, disseminating the ancient knowledge of how to achieve radiant health and spiritual development through the science of Yoga. She is the founder and director of the North Carolina School of Yoga, and the Senior teacher and Disciple of Sri Dharma Mittra. Chandra was born in Miami, and raised in New York, where she met her Guru and Teacher, Sri Dharma Mittra. After intense study, immersion and practice of the eight limbs of Yoga, she was accepted and initiated by Sri Dharma as Chandra Om (meaning ‘Moon’, ‘Luminous’, ‘Bright and Shining’), and remains with him to this day. Chandra was initiated into the family as a religious student who devotes herself to her teacher and the practice of spiritual disciplines—one who renounces the world in order to achieve liberation.

Visit her online at:www.ncschoolofyoga.com

In 1981, Rodney began to study yoga full time at the San Francisco Iyengar Yoga Institute and at The Yoga Room in Berkeley.  In 1987, after becoming a certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher, he opened the Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, CA, with Richard Rosen and Claire Finn.

Presently, in addition to teaching at Yoga Shanti, Rodney leads teacher trainings, workshops, and retreats nationally and internationally with Colleen.  In Spring 2007, Rodney and Colleen were co-chairs and panelists for the Urban Zen Initiative, a forum dedicated to integrating eastern healing arts into the western medical paradigm.  They are now helping to run the Health and Wellness branch of Urban Zen, a world-wide initiative of Donna Karan’s.   Rodney has also been featured in over 30 video titles and numerous audio recordings with Gaiam.  He has written two books, Yoga: the Poetry of the Body and Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee, both in collaboration with Nina Zolotow.

Colleen is  graduate of Jivamukti’s Teacher Training program in 1998, she has been teaching ever since. Colleen has been featured in both The New York Times and New York Magazine and in November 2003, was on the cover of Yoga Journal. A consummate student, Colleen has traveled throughout Europe and Asia studying alternative medicine and spiritual healing. Colleen holds a certification in Shiatsu and lived in Calcutta, India working with Mother Theresa at the Home of the Destitute and Dying.

Colleen owes tremendous gratitude for her studies of bhakti and vinyasa to David Life and Sharon Gannon. She also offers thanks to the many other teachers with whom she has studied, as well as to Rodney Yee, who remains her principal teacher. Five years ago, Colleen opened Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor, New York.

Rodney and Colleen are raising and being raised by four awesome children, Evan, Adesha, Rachel, and Johanna.

Visit them online at:
www.gaiamyogaclub.com
www.yogashanti.com
www.yeeyoga.com
www.urbanzen.org

Seane Corn’s classes combine a vigorous, fluid vinyasa or “flow” style with emphasis on intention and prayer — a mix she says encourages an inner journey toward self-awareness, acceptance and empowerment.

Seane has been featured in magazines including Glamour, Self and Allure and has become one of the most sought-after yoga teachers in America. Her clients have included Sting, Heather Graham, Ashley Judd, Drew Barrymore, David Duchovny, Elizabeth Berkley, Sally Field and Dr. Caroline Myss.

Seane was first introduced to yoga during the late ’80s, as a teenager waiting tables at David Life’s Life Cafe in New York City. She became close with David and with her fellow waitress Sharon Gannon, who together with Life later opened the Jivamukti Yoga Centers.

In 1992, Seane moved to Los Angeles and began studying at Yoga Works in Santa Monica, where she learned from some of the most renowned teachers in the country including Patricia Walden, Rodney Yee, Richard Freeman, Eddie Modestini, Tim Miller, Maty Ezraty, Chuck Miller, Lisa Walford, Erich Schiffman, John Friend and Shandor Remete. She also trained in India under Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and studied with the spiritual teacher Ammachi Barbara Soloman and Mona Miller.
Seane teaches at Exhale in Venice, Calif., and travels extensively teaching workshops, conferences and retreats internationally. She is a devoted supporter of programs for at-risk girls and women and has joined with her friend Ashley Judd in supporting fundraising and awareness-campaigns for the educational nonprofit YouthAIDS.  She is also co-creator of www.offthematintotheworld.org

Visit: www.seanecorn.com

Chaz, (BA, CYT, CYKF) is a certified yoga instructor who has developed several unique yoga programs from the globally successful YOGAmazing Video Podcast within iTunes (over 6.1 Million downloads and counting) to his award winning video/DVD, Yogamazing: Yoga for the Kid In All of Us, which was one of Yoga Journal’s Editor’s Choices for 2002, and encourages parents and children to work out together. Chaz has taught yoga at the prestigeous OMEGA Instutute in Rhinebeck, NY, the Yoga Expo in Los Angeles, in his own studio, the corporate world, schools, and to those engaged in all sorts of sports, from basketball to golf to cycling. He’s also a singer-songwriter with an infectious spirit and zest for life who has performed at the White House, taken part in the International Children’s Peace Festival at Sivananda Yoga Camp in Montreal, Canada, and has been featured in Billboard Magazine. Chaz took his ideas from yoga and his music and designed a fun and interactive approach to teaching. Since yoga teaches the union of the body and mind, and Chaz’s music teaches the message of Unity, it only made sense that he would put the two together. With that combination in mind, “Yogamazing” was born.