Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, India. At 29, she received certification to teach. With her roots in Miami, Macgregor co-owns the Miami Life Center with her husband Tim Feldmann , while also traveling and teaching all over the world. Macgregor is the author of three books and six yoga DVDs as well as the owner of a YouTube channel featuring yoga classes and tutorials with a subscriber base of , MacGregor has also developed one of the largest social media followings of any yoga teacher, offering advice and teachings on poses as well as frequent Instagram challenges for her nearly 1 million followers.
Certified to teach Ashtanga Yoga by in , after three years of committed study under Sri K. Williams continues to teach on Maui, where he has lived since A senior teacher at Katonah Yoga, Abbie Galvin has been teaching yoga for more than 25 years.
Her classes are focused on aligning the body and opening it so that the organs, the bones, and the breath can function freely. Kapuler has taught Iyengar yoga for 36 years, and first started practicing in with the late Mary Dunn, a pioneer of Iyengar yoga in the West. Before taking up yoga, Kapuler was a modern dancer; she is certified in the Alexander technique and is a practitioner of Body-Mind Centering, a method of applied movement to aid in self-discovery and developmental repatterning through the body-mind relationship.
David Miliotis has been a dedicated student of Ashtanga yoga since David was authorized to teach by Sri K. In addition to his study of Ashtanga, Miliotis is a Sanskrit scholar, teaching bi-weekly online courses, and hosting gatherings for chanting and discussion.
In addition to his regular teaching, Miliotis is devoted to bringing yoga to at-risk youth in Santa Barbara County through his non-profit organization, the Tapas Project.
When she moved back to Manhattan, Auder opened a small boutique studio in her home in the West Village, and began teaching at the Kula Yoga Project, where she still teaches master classes today. Last year she opened up Magu Yoga in Philadelphia. Her teaching is influenced by the system of structural alignment and integration as taught by the Iyengar method, and Kula Yoga, as well as her studies with Nevine Michaan, and her life-long study of Vedanta.
A yoga practitioner for more than 35 years, Richard Rosen has been one of the leading Iyengar yoga teachers in the world since the s. Rosen serves on the board of the Yoga Dana Foundation, which helps bring yoga teachers into underserved communities in Northern California. Saidman is a highly devotional teacher who is studied in meditation and a lover of music. Saidman teaches all around the world both on her own and in partnership with Yee, and also appears in a variety of videos and DVDs produced with Gaiam and oneoeight.
In Saidman released her first book Yoga for Life: A Journey to Inner Peace and Freedom , a radically honest personal account of how yoga has informed her decisions and growth over the course of her life, along with practical applications of yoga sequences for everyday issues, such as depression, stress, and energy boosting.
Tiffany Cruikshank has spent the past 20 years crafting a system for teaching, which understands yoga as medicine. A holistic health practitioner, acupuncturist, and advanced yoga teacher and practitioner with a specialty in sports medicine, Cruikshank has been one of the foremost voices in successfully fusing Eastern and Western medicine within the yoga world.
Founder of Yoga Medicine , Cruikshank has trained hundreds of students. Based in Los Angeles, Cruikshank teaches regularly for YogaGlo , and travels extensively around the world. She is also the author of the book Optimal Health for a Vibrant Life. Almost every Sunday night Khalsa teaches a yoga class to eager yogis at Golden Bridge Yoga Center, the Kundalini yoga studio she co-founded with her husband Gurushabd in Santa Monica. Khalsa later opened a New York City location and today Golden Bridge is considered the premier center for studying Kundalini.
Khalsa studied with Yogi Bhajan, the man who introduced Kundalini yoga to the United States, and was one of his first students to consider the method as it pertained to pre-natal practitioners. Gurmukh travels around the world teaching both Kundalini and pre- and post-natal yoga. Khalsa is also a Zen Buddhist practitioner. Nancy Gilgoff has been practicing Ashtanga Yoga for over 40 years. Though Gilgoff was one of the very first teachers to be certified to teach by Sri K.
Pattabhi Jois, and she has been a major influence on the dissemination of Ashtanga yoga and its associated practices and dharma in the West, she has also done studies outside of the tradition. She started off as an Ashtangi in Encinitas alongside her boyfriend at the time, David Williams, and the two traveled to Mysore together in to study with Pattabhi Jois.
She has studied with Baba Hari Dass, a silent monk and master yogi known for his interpretations of yoga scripture and philosophy, and several senior Iyengar teachers. Gilgoff is based in Maui, but she travels around the world teaching workshops and trainings, spreading her love of the practice, to which she has been lovingly bound for most of her adult life.
Erich Schiffman has been a student of yoga for more than 40 years, during which time he has studied with some of the greatest teachers to ever live. He has had a massive influence on American yoga in spite of his very laid-back, low-key approach. He teaches two weekly classes in Los Angeles, one monthly workshop, and a couple of teacher trainings around the world every year.
In , after eight years of practicing with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, and 14 years of studying yoga, Chuck Miller was certified to teach Ashtanga yoga. Miller has studied under many traditions, and has been a huge influence on some of the greatest modern yoga teachers in America.
Seane Corn is an internationally renowned yoga teacher, known for her tremendous work in social activism. Pattabhi Jois, and was influenced by the teachings of Amma, the Hindu spiritual leader who is revered as a saint by her followers. Corn has been teaching Vinyasa yoga for more than 20 years, leading workshops and teacher training around the world, and inspiring her students to give back to their communities through radical self-transformation.
To date she has been featured on more than 20 magazine covers, a dozen DVDs, and she also teaches on Gaia. Founder and director of Kula Yoga Project in New York City , one of the most popular yoga schools in the region which combines the Iyengar and Ashtanga lineages, co-creator of Wanderlust international yoga festival, and director of the Wanderlust Teacher Training , Schuyler Grant is a powerful instructor who has touched thousands of yogis around the world through her work.
Her practice and her style of teaching is heavily influenced by Ashtanga, Iyengar and her own practice and study with anatomical master Alison West.
Punk rocker-turned monk-turned yogi and father of five, Raghunath Cappo is a beloved voice in the yoga world. He now leads yoga teacher trainings in America and India, focusing on inversions and devotional bhakti, chanting, yogic philosophy, and Sanskrit.
It functions as a community center, yoga studio and teaching facility, farm, and ashram. Upon returning to his birthplace, Denmark, Feldmann began his Ashtanga practice with Lino Miele, and eventually made his way to Mysore. He began teaching nearly 25 years ago, and continues to teach in Miami and around the world today.
He is known for his sweet, easy-going attitude, and his simultaneous deep caring for the physical and philosophical elements of the practice. Lisa Walford has been teaching yoga since She holds an Intermediate Senior Iyengar teaching certificate, and continues to make annual trips to India to study with the Iyengar family.
Up until , Walford directed the curriculum for all Yoga Works teacher trainings, and was one of the most celebrated teachers on faculty. She is also the co-author of The Longevity Diet , and sits on the board for Iyengar Yoga Therapeutics, a collaboration of yoga teachers dedicated to improving the quality of life of those who live with health conditions and disease, and the Iyengar Yoga Association of Los Angeles, which serves Southern California with daily classes and teacher training.
Nikki Costello is a profoundly intelligent advanced yoga teacher who teaches Iyengar yoga. She began teaching over 22 years ago in New York City and has extensive knowledge in yoga, Sanskrit and the scriptures. Her teaching is influenced by over 12 trips to India where she has lived and studied. She also travels the world extensively bringing her unique approach to The Practice, including mentoring teachers, sutra study, meditation and retreat.
Budig is a stalwart presenter for Yoga Journal conferences around the world, and is part of a new wave of traveling yoga teachers. Budig is playful, vivacious, and relatable, sharing her joie de vivre with her hundreds of thousands of social media followers. Born to yogi parents who opened the very first yoga school in San Francisco in , Baptiste was brought up around the practice.
Baptiste continues to teach workshops, retreats, and teacher trainings around the world. Judith Lasater, Ph. Iyengar in America. Teaching now for more than 45 years, Lasater leads workshops and trainings around the world. A celebrated author eight books, and many more articles, Lasater is a physical therapist and has a doctorate in East-West psychology, and she is recognized for popularizing restorative yoga. In addition to her work as an author, editor, and teacher, Lasater co-founded the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco, where she still teaches to this day.
Every year she leads retreats and trainings all over the world—one week in Ubud, the next in Berlin, and then off to India before circling back to New York. As one of the most senior Jivamukti teachers, Yogeswari is responsible for having trained and mentored hundreds of students around the world.
In addition to her work with Jivamukti over the past 16 years, Yogeswari is the founder of the AZAHAR Foundation, an international non-profit organization that promotes cross-cultural understanding and non-violent conflict resolution through yoga and the arts.
An authorized Senior Intermediate Iyengar teacher, Carrie Owerko walks around with a warm and playful smile on her face. Trained formally as a dancer and versed in many movement styles, Owerko has participated in and co-choreographed multiple yoga demonstrations throughout her career. Owerko continues to study in Pune, India with the Iyengar family, and teaches Iyengar yoga around the world. Owerko has also brought yoga, movement, and mindfulness teaching into schools and to Rikers Island, a complex of ten jails located outside of New York City.
Owerko is deeply versed in yogic philosophy as well as the science of the body and has been a mentor and teacher to some of the most influential yoga teachers in the world. Iyengar and Sri K. Pattabhi Jois to create a powerful, flowing practice. Little is also a massage therapist with a background in cranial-sacral therapy, and has been heavily influenced by the work of Ida Rolf , Moshe Feldenkrais , and Thomas Hanna.
In addition to his extensive background and understanding of the physical body, Little has studied both Tibetan Buddhism and Zen meditation. Related: Let Go, Let God. She leads teacher trainings and workshops globally, inspiring her students through mythology, storytelling, and Eastern philosophy. Tarkeshi has been teaching for over 20 years, and has made many trips to India.
She was raised with the Tibetan Buddhist teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and has been influenced by many traditions including Iyengar, Integral, Jivamukti, Sivananda, and her own practice. In addition to teaching yoga, Tarkeshi has led bhakti retreats with Baba Bhagavan Das, and is highly committed to bringing yoga to all beings everywhere.
An activist and a mystic, Tarkeshi is a member of numerous human rights and animal rights organizations. A practitioner since , Bryan Kest has been teaching yoga for more than 30 years. He has received incredible fame around the world for coming up with his distinctive style of yoga, Power Yoga.
For the past 20 years Kest has been teaching Power Yoga around the world, training teachers, helping to start studios, and most recently, creating an online platform to stream classes. Leslie Howard has been teaching yoga for over 20 years, and has accumulated 3, hours of yoga study. Howard is most closely associated with the Iyengar school, having studied with such master teachers as Patricia Walden, Tony Briggs, and Manouso Manos. Her main area of focus, however, has been around women and the pelvic floor.
She travels the world giving workshops, trainings, and talks, on anatomy, physiology, and breath work to help relieve pelvic floor issues, through the prism of the yoga practice as a therapeutic modality.
Inspired by her practice, she took a career-changing sabbatical from dance in to study Ashtanga with Maty Ezraty and Chuck Miller, founders of YogaWorks, where she received teacher-training with Lisa Walford and Ezraty. For the next 15 years, Carpenter taught at YogaWorks and developed her own method called SmartFLOW, a yoga sequence that focuses on mindful movement and alignment. Guy Donahaye has been teaching Ashtanga yoga since , and is one of the few teachers to receive certification to teach from Sri K.
He is known for his deep study of the ancient yogic texts and his art of hands-on assists. Nikki Vilella, co-owner of Kula Yoga Project, Williamsburg, with Schuyler Grant, has trained hundreds of teachers, since she first started teaching yoga more than 10 years ago. Her classes are highly specific, with precise attunement to anatomy and physical form.
In addition to her accomplished teaching, Slatoff-Ponte is also a scholar of Asian Languages and culture who recently released a book called Yogavataranam , a Sanskrit textbook for yoga students that integrates traditional and academic methods of learning, teaching grammar and reading through classical yoga texts.
Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, Rima Rabbath is one of the leading teachers of the Jivamukti yoga method in New York City and is known for her practical and loving integration of ancient wisdom into a modern life.
A student of Jivamukti for over 15 years, and a teacher for 10, Rabbath helps facilitate their teacher trainings around the world. Rabbath has been deeply influenced by the study of Ashtanga yoga, most notably through Rolf and Marci Naujokat, in Goa, India. David Regelin has one of the most beautiful advanced yoga practices in the world. A student of Katonah Yoga founder Nevine Michaan, his teaching focuses on sacred geometry and body origami—the notion that the body, when it is properly aligned, fits and folds perfectly into itself.
Regelin has been teaching for more than 15 years at various studios around New York City including Kula Yoga, Katonah Yoga, and The Shala, and leads intensives and trainings around the world.
Tony Briggs has been teaching Iyengar yoga since , and is one of the most senior teachers in the lineage to this day. He has trained some of the most influential teachers in the modern yoga world, and has written extensively for Yoga Journal and other online publications on the methodology of hands-on assists and alignment of various yoga postures.
He has been a regular teacher at Wanderlust and Kripalu, and now curates the yoga program at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee. Gary Kraftsow, who has been teaching for more than 30 years, is the director and senior teacher of the American Viniyoga Institute.
Beginning his studies in with T. Deskichar in India, Kraftsow is now one of the most prominent and trusted voices in yoga therapeutics and has published numerous articles on chronic pain and treatment through the yoga practice.
Additionally, he is the author of the books, Yoga for Wellness and Yoga for Transformation , as well as several DVDs that examine the methodology through which Viniyoga can help treat ailments, anxiety, and pain.
The music and chanting captivated her when she took her first Jivamukti Yoga class six years ago. Kaivalya has always believed that music has great power to influence positive change in people. Born with a hearing impediment, she says music has given her a profound vehicle for self-expression. The year-old seems both exuberant and wise. Her classes blend rigorous poses and soothing adjustments with bursts of yoga philosophy.
And the effect is a contemporary understanding of ancient knowledge that can inspire even the most stressed-out type A New Yorker. They felt that her being closer to them and their centers was the next step in her evolution as a teacher.
She happily obliged. Any time you act in accordance with that principle, good things will come. Visit jivadiva. Schubert started with Breuer when she was 24, and after a lifetime of bad posture, yoga finally helped her to stand up straight.
It also helped her resolve grief and depression, inspiring her to help others, starting with children. The notion of teaching kids came to her in a flash during her training. For three years she taught incarcerated teens. Her classes focus on traditional poses such as Tree, Cobra, Warrior, and Sun Salutations —asanas that beginners can do well and then grow with.
Simon Park remembers how, as a small child in rural Korea, he had an image of being a primal warrior. But all that changed when he was five and his family moved to Philadelphia. Eager to be an all-American kid, Park played baseball, football, and basketball. It took years for him to reconnect with the primal part of himself. It took Park some time to warm up to the practice, but once he did, he found it healing for his body and his mind. Yoga is a method to free yourself in the world—to be happier and more genuine and more connected to people.
I try to give that spirit in the classroom. These days Park, who has been influenced by many teachers, including Maty Ezraty, Dharma Mittra, Joan White, and Duncan Wong, teaches workshops and retreats around the world, spreading his own style of yoga that blends traditional hatha practice with Thai Yoga Massage. These classes, which Park has developed over the years through his own experimentation and study of martial arts, increase body awareness, encourage self-evolution, and just feel good.
Learn more at wheresimon. A typical class with Scott Blossom includes mantra, philosophy, asana, and pranayama. His asana teaching is based on Shadow Yoga, a style developed by Hungarian yoga teacher Natanaga Zhander a. Shandor Remete , which blends the Ayurvedic principles of energy flow with Tantra in the hopes of leading to effortless and spontaneous meditation. My vision is that people are going to fall in love with meditating and will then do it by choice. After a silent meditation retreat in Thailand with his twin brother, Michael, Blossom returned with a new perspective.
Blossom is a cofounder of Healing Opportunities, Inc. Down the line I see people really defining yoga as service. Learn more at shunyatayoga. In the Mysore room of YogaWorks in Santa Monica, Simi Cruz moves from student to student, offering them guidance as they silently move through the self-paced Ashtanga Yoga practice.
As she scans the room for misalignments and energetic blockages, Cruz, who has graced the cover and pages of this magazine many times with her stunning poses, will reach for a block or a strap to modify a pose if a student needs it.
As a small girl, Cruz learned Sun Salutations from her mom, and she began taking yoga classes at Visit simicruz.
Jason Crandell cares about the placement of your collarbones, thighbones, and arches of your feet, but not for aesthetic reasons. Both qualities made yoga difficult. He leads his own workshops and retreats and is a contributing editor for Yoga Journal. Beneath the asana, his message to students is consistent: Focus on the process of self-discovery rather than the goal of perfecting poses.
I want them to see that everything inside and outside is incredibly mysterious. Visit jason-yoga. Her mother took her to an Iyengar class in Los Angeles 17 years ago, and Apt was immediately hooked.
I had the sense that the teachers really knew a lot. Eventually, she began assisting classes taught by Iyengar, his daughter, Geeta, and his son, Prashant. She returns regularly with her husband and fellow teacher, Paul Cabanis, to study with the Iyengar family. Apt has held many leadership roles within the Iyengar organization: She served as president of the Iyengar Yoga Association of Southern California IYASC for four years, and she was president of the national association for two years.
She has also worked as an organizer of the Iyengar Yoga National Convention. Recently, she has pulled back from her public roles to focus more deeply on her practice and to begin teaching around the United States and internationally. Visit yoganga. Research by the CDC showed that yoga practices in the workplace can improve the wellbeing of employees and in turn increase productivity.
Findings published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, showed the more yoga sessions a respondent attended each week, the greater the reduction in their depressive symptoms. There are a number of depression and anxiety-reducing asanas you can try, to help calm a busy mind.
Stress relief, general fitness, improvement of overall health and physical fitness were also in the top five reasons for yoga participation. Yoga proved particularly successful in alleviating the symptoms. Research conducted by the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center found that yoga can help you lose weight. Not only did respondents drop pounds during the research but they reported a changed mindset. By adopting a more mindful approach to eating, they felt it would encourage them to keep the weight off.
The Faculty of Health Science at Sydney University carried out a study in which followed respondents with musculoskeletal pain, who had previously taken yoga classes. A study by the Department of Internal and Integrative Medicine in Germany, found that the shoulder stand and variations of the lotus pose also caused a higher number of injuries than other yoga poses.
The ongoing monitoring by the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, found that in there were 9. The rise is believed to have come from unqualified teachers offering classes to eager beginners. Our current workout culture, including CrossFit, HIIT high intensity interval training , and even yoga, can have negative consequences for the low back. However when done incorrectly these activities can cause low back pain and major tissue damage including fractures. The practice has spread quickly around the world:.
Though yoga originated in India, many countries across the world have now claimed it as their own. Supporting the Google Trend data is a study by The Frazer Institute , which found yoga was one of the top three most common complementary therapies used by the population of Canada over a lifetime:.
Sign-up for The Good Body mailing list and be the first to receive our latest news! This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more Got it! There are an estimated million yoga practitioners worldwide. Men practicing yoga rose from 4 million in to 10 million in Flexibility and stress relief are the most popular reasons for starting yoga. There are currently , yoga teachers registered in the US.
Key Statistics on Yoga: Infographic. Popularity of Yoga Statistics.
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