I began practicing asana in 1993, found the Ashtanga yoga modality in 1997 at Heartsong Yoga, and within a few years began studying to teach, primarily with first generation teachers of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. I look to Beryl Bender Birch, Christine Hoar, Nancy Gilgoff, Manju Jois and Tim Miller as my most formative yoga teachers. 

I was one of the few Mysore-style Ashtanga yoga teachers in Western Massachusetts throughout the past decade, serving students from all over the world who lived and studied in the Five College area. During that time, I logged tens of thousands of hours of practical, hands-on experience through the two yoga communities I founded: Florence Yoga (2009-2014) and Ashtanga Yoga Northampton (2014-April 2020.) After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Ashtanga Yoga Northampton closed permanently, but I continue to teach through my virtual home studio providing both group and private sessions online, and outdoor classes at my home in the warmer months. 
 
​I've made three pilgrimages to India to honor the indigenous sources of yoga, most recently in 2019 at a yoga retreat focused on the Krishnamarcharya Mysore Yoga Tradition, featuring a variety of Indian teachers and Sanskrit scholars, some of whom were his direct students. I began studying Sanskrit in 2011 through the American Sanskrit Institute's self-study program, and trained in Mindful Yoga Therapy in 2015 to better serve students with trauma.

During COVID I began practicing and studying to teach a new therapeutic modality of yoga with yoga educator and therapist Kaya Mindlin, the founder of ŚRY or Supreme/Spinal Release Yoga.  ŚRY is a deep, but highly accessible approach to yoga, and an effective counterpart to Ashtanga vinyasa yoga; it combines asana, pranayama, mantra and Vedic teachings to create a deep and nourishing yoga practice accessible to all. I have completed two teacher trainings (in ŚRY and in Yoga Nidra) with Kaya, and continue to study with her weekly in her SRY classes along with her longer courses on the Devi and and the Bhagavad Gita.  I also completed Dr. Claudia Welch's and Dr. Robert Svoboda's Foundations of Ayurveda I & II in 2020, too, and participate in their virtual monthly Satsangs to this day. 

REGARDING THE YOGA ALLIANCE (YA) - or "Why I Don't Have Initials After My Name." 

I have spent over a thousand hour over the past 20 years learning from senior teachers in the Ashtanga Yoga and SRY yoga systems, along with sustaining a consistent study of other Vedic systems of knowledge, including Ayurveda, Sankrit and Mantra. All of my teachers have consistently demonstrated a dedication to teaching traditional yoga through decades of their own experience and scholarship within the South Asian/Indian (SA) lineages of yogic knowledge - lineages that pre-date the Yoga Alliance (YA).

While it is an organization created to legitimize and make the teaching of yoga "safer" here in the US, the YA has a history of ignoring and even actively denying the legitimacy of both living and deceased Indian yoga teachers or students of those teachrs. As well, the teaching standards the YA have set are less rigorous, diluted and arguably culturually appropriative of Indian yoga traditions. Lowering the standard for creating YTTs (Yoga Teacher Trainings) and for proficiency in teaching yoga has created a proliferation of YTTs, some of which seduce earnest, wellmeaning, yet unsuspecting students with little yoga experience onto a premature pathway towards "teaching yoga."

There are many excellent, highly qualified yoga schools and yoga teachers offering YTTs here in the US.  But, because of the YAs lower standards, there are too many that are not. (Students interested in (ultimately) teaching should be both patient and discerning: seek out quality schools with veteran teachers, and not only practice yoga consistently and reverently for a long time, but study regularly with these qualified individuals.)

In short, the YA is not an entirely legitimate authority on a person's ability to effectively and safely teach traditional yoga: it is simply a teacher registry. Thus, I boycott the YA; I ended my affiliation with the organization in 2012. You will not see a series of letters after my name (i.e."E-RYT 500") as these initials are not an indication of the ability to effectively and safely share traditional yoga or yoga practices. 

More information can be found here in the WSJ, here in The NY Times, and here on Ideafit.