Chad Balch
Chad embarked on his yoga journey in 1988. He is a certified Iyengar yoga instructor and a graduate of the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco teacher training program, and has studied at the California Yoga Center and the Abode of Iyengar Yoga. He studied with the Iyengars in Pune, India in 1994. Chad loves to explore and share the benefits of focused attention to body, mind, and breath. He has taught in corporate settings in Silicon Valley, and draws from his first-hand experience with the counterbalancing effects of yoga in the context of high-stress environments. Chad believes in yoga as a path of personal transformation, a regimen for holistic health maintenance, and a practice that we can bring to each moment of our daily lives. For more information visit www.chadyoga.com.
Cynthia Bates
Natalie Cox
Natalie Cox loves yoga because it can be an embodied art form, a life style, a tool for therapeutic relaxation, or a form of spirituality. Since 2000 she has practiced Ashtanga yoga in all of those capacities. As a teacher she encourages students to personalize their practice for their own needs. She teaches yoga with a sense of fun and creativity, and her joyful irreverence is ever present in her classes. With influences ranging from Pilates to Hatha vinyasa flow, she leads an intense modified primary sequence that allows you to dance along your edge. Overall she believes that yoga is an accommodating practice that requires only loving care for the mind/body and the willingness to nurture and cherish the breath.www.itznatzyoga.com
Brenna Geehan
Brenna believes that we all have the right and capacity to realize a life brimming with joy, meaning and purpose. In her classes, she offers a Tantric- Vinyasa practice that encourages an inner listening . Her mission is to help transform students’ bodies to be stronger and more flexible and also aid in removing mental and emotional obstructions so they may
have a more balanced and healthy energy flow. Her classes include pranayama and meditation practices that encourage students to find clarity of mind and peaceful dispositions.
Brenna is an ERYT and a Level II Certified ParaYoga Instructor. She currently assists Yogarupa Rod Stryker in ParaYoga teacher trainings and travels nationally offering Yoga seminars. Brenna has over 700 hrs of training and over 7 years of full time teaching. Over the past 10 years, Brenna has had the great fortune of learning from master teachers including Pandit Rajmani Tigunait , Yogiraj Alan Finger, David Life, Shiva Rea, Doug Keller, Beryl Bender Birch, Tias Little, Ana Forrest, Tim Miller, Gary Kraftsow, Andrey Lappa, Gabriel Halpern, and Judith Lasater. www.brennageehan.com
Sonya Genel
Sonya believes in the power of Yoga not only to heal, transform, and refine the body, but also to heighten human consciousness. She has been devoted to the path of Yoga for over a decade. The powerful transformative effects she experienced through her own yoga practice compelled Sonya to share it with others. She completed her first teacher training at Kripalu in 2007. Today her teaching and practice are strongly informed by the philosophies of Anusara Yoga and Shiva Shakti Tantra which she studies with her primary Teacher KK Ledford. Sonya has also spent a year immersed in study with world renowned scholar and meditation teacher Paul Muller-Ortega. When she is not teaching yoga, Sonya can often be found painting in her studio. As an artist, she noticed the profound effects yoga had on her creativity, and she has dedicated herself to enthusiastically guiding others toward enhancing their own unique life path through yoga. To learn more about Sonya visit her website www.sonyayoga.com check out her art www.sonyagenel.com
Nina Gold
Nina Gold was first introduced to yoga as an acting student in New York In the late 1980′s. It was being taught as a means to center oneself and prepare the body for performance. Though she was immediately struck and intrigued by the practice it wasn’t until she returned home to San Francisco in the early 1990′s that she began a more serious study of the subject. She began teaching in 1998 and brings her love of yoga to her teaching. Her classes are focused and fun, serious and light hearted. She has been blessed to study with many gifted teachers over the years. She currently studies with Janet MacLeod, Anne Saliou and Kathy Alef. She is a certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher.
Isabelle Grotte
Isabelle Grotte took her first yoga class in 2003 while living on the island of New Caledonia. In 2004 and around the world later, she made San Francisco her home, where completed her teacher training at Yoga Tree. Isabelle is an avid Vipassana practitioner and she keeps on learning and being inspired by her amazing Iyengar and Vinyasa teachers. She is passionate about sharing the transformative gift of yoga and believes in creating a safe space for students to go inward and experience the present moment.
Ana-Mari Hamada
Ana-Mari has been a practitioner, teacher and student of yoga in the Iyengar tradition since 1997. A graduate of the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco Advanced Studies/Teacher Training Program, she continues to study regularly with the Iyengar family in India and with senior teachers, Manouso Manos, Kofi Busia, Kathy Alef and Anne Saliou in the US. She is on the faculty at Yoga Garden, Satori, Yoga Loft and Bija Yoga where she is honored to work with students of all levels through public classes, workshops or individually. She is grateful to all her teachers and students for the love and light that they bring to her life through their generosity, sacrifices and wisdom.
Jung Park
Jung is a Yoga Alliance RYT 500 hour certified yoga teacher with a background in Ashtanga and Iyengar yoga. She started practicing in Los Angeles over a decade ago. She is excited to be back on the West Coast, sharing her love of yoga with the San Francisco community.
Jung is a native of the East Coast and discovered vinyasa flow in New York City where she practiced Jivamukti yoga with David Life and Sharon Gannon. She furthered her studies with Dharma Mittra and Elena Brower, exposing herself to a wide range of influences, but kept her foundation in Ashtanga vinyasa and Iyenger methods through workshops with Richard Freeman and Kofi Busia.
Jung has completed Thai Yoga Massage training and is certified as a holistic health counselor. Jung is currently completing another 300 hour yoga training with Shiva Rea. With indebtedness to all her past and present teachers, Jung considers the breathe to be the primary teacher and encourages all practitioners to become more intimate with their own breathe, thereby becoming more intimate with their True Selves.
David Jones
David is a competitive cyclist and yoga teacher in San Francisco. When he began to practice Bikram Yoga as a means of cross training in 2007, he developed an appreciation of the symbiosis between breath, mind, and body. David began practicing Ashtanga Yoga in 2010, which complimented his athletic abilities and fostered a disciplined foundation. David moved here from Chicago in September of 2010 and received his Yoga Alliance teaching certification from Yoga Garden SF. He is also a certified personal trainer through the National Personal Training Institute.
Megan Lipsett
Megan Lipsett studied Hatha and Ashtanga Yoga in Nashik, India as well as vinyasa yoga in San Francisco. She teaches practical philosophy and a holistic lifestyle, incorporating both traditional and modern scientific understandings. Megan is passionate about community and wellness, working to integrate many aspects of the yogic path into her life. She is currently working towards a master’s degree in Integrative Health Studies. Her integration of Ashtanga and Vinyasa practices result in balancing the entire nervous system, leading to increased balance of body and mind, physical energy and mental energy. Her meditation influences include Raja yoga and Vipassana. She is an eternal seeker and a lover of the flow of grace within everyone.
Karen Macklin
Karen Macklin has been studying yoga and meditation since 2000 and has received training in the traditions of Ashtanga, Iyengar, Shadow Yoga, AcroYoga, and Restorative, as well as various forms of Buddhist meditation, yogic philosophy, and the science of Ayurveda. She has studied with many wonderful teachers, and has been most influenced by Jason Crandell, Scott Blossom, Sean Feit, and Chisandra Fox. She teaches with an emphasis on building internal and external strength, creating mindfulness, and establishing a deep connection with the energetic body. Her classes are typically strong but slow, rhythmic flows that incorporate hands-on adjustments, verbal alignment cues, and an opportunity for students to enter a space of meditation and inquiry.
Karen is also a professional writer. She has written about yoga for Yoga Journal, Yoga International, FitYoga, andTricycle magazines and is currently a contributing editor at Yoga Journal and the writer-editor of The Sacred Cow online yoga community (www.thesacredcowblog.com). Visit www.karenmacklin.com to see more about her yoga and writing life.
Jean Mazzei
Jean Mazzei, (E-RYT 500), has logged over 10,000 teaching hours. Often called “teacher’s teacher” she is an expert in the subtleties of yoga sadahana (practices), and bringing the practices to life off the mat.
Her philosophy is to inspire students to better understand themselves and support them in discovering who they really are. In her practical approach to yoga, it is Jean’s belief that one of the keys to enlightenment is to literally “lighten up” so having fun is always a part of the process. Her sense of humor and commitment to non-judgment provide a safe place for students to explore, break boundaries, and release layers of physical, emotional, and psychic weight. She inspires and supports everyone in finding the path that is right for them.
Jean’s quest for healing herself and finding the truth within has guided her education. Her studies include 4 years with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen in BodyMind Centering, 14 years with master healer and metaphysician Dennis Adams, yoga with Dr. Albert Franklin (TKS Desikachar lineage), BKS Iyengar, Baron Baptiste, Rod Stryker, Ana Forrest, and Dharma Mittra. She is currently studying the ancient Tantric teachings of the Sri Vidya lineage with Pandit Rajmani Tigunait and Rod Stryker.
Being of the school of “Whatever Works”, she believes that one size does not fit all when it comes to yoga.
Michelle Myhre
San Francisco yogini Michelle Myhre (ERYT-500) teaches alignment-based vinyasa yoga with playful sequencing and extended holds of key poses that build strength, flexibility and stability. She’s also a devotee of Yin Yoga, which is completely different and gives you the long, slow, delicious burn. Michelle currently teaches on the Peninsula and SF, as well as internationally.
Classes are challenging, yet accessible. You may find yourself in compromising positions with a crystal clear mind. This is your edge. Your restrictions are respected. Your body is safe. You’re having a great time. This is yoga. yogawithmichelle.blogspot.com
David Nelson
David Nelson began teaching in 1998, after receiving certification from the White Lotus Foundation. He has studied Bikram, Ashtanga, and Iyengar yoga, and has been a student of Dharma Mitra, Edward Clark, and Judith Lasater.
From 2001 to 2006 David studied with Advanced Senior Iyengar Instructor Manouso Manos, and apprenticed weekly with him from 2002 through 2006. He has also studied scoliosis with Elise Miller, and has more recently practiced under the instruction of Lois Steinberg, Kathy Alef, Stephanie Quirk, and Victoria Austin. He studied with the Iyengars in 2004 and with Geeta Iyengar at the 2007 National Conference and at the Ascent Intensive in 2008.
David started his yoga practice to seek relief from chronic back pain, and found that yoga was a powerful and dynamic medium to explore the meaning of life. Though his classes are physically challenging, they are safe and accessible to everyone. From the instruction of a physical practice, David encourages students to develop a higher awareness, or consciousness, about how we live our lives and how to achieve our own potential.
David has a B.A. and an M.B.A. from the University of San Francisco. He was a founder of Castro Yoga in 1998 and he owns and operates Yoga Garden SF with his wife, Marisa Toriggino. Read more here.
Rebecca Ratzkin
Rebecca Ratzkin has been a student of Iyengar yoga since 1999 and is in her second year of study in the teacher training program at the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco. She is inspired by deepening awareness, understanding and acceptance of the mind, body and spirit. Her classes focus on building these skills and finding deeper connections to ourselves and our environment.
Rebecca studies with Jim Benvenuto and Paul Cabanis in Los Angeles, and Kathy Alef, Joe Naudzunas and Manuso Manos in San Francisco. She is grateful to her teachers and students from whom she continues to learn and grow as a student, teacher and human being.
Rebecca Rogers
Rebecca offers Hatha and Vinyasa classes for all levels and ages that are physically and emotionally challenging, uplifting, and rewarding. She discovered yoga nearly ten years ago as an active runner and cyclist while living with chronic knee pain. What she found in yoga was a different sort of challenge than she had ever encountered: one that required an inner strength, a deeper connection to the breath, and self discipline to keep coming back. Upon being laid off in early 2009 from a job she loved working in environmental conservation, Rebecca was able to turn a potentially painful experience into an opportunity. She spent the rest of the year traveling and deepening her practice with yoga masters and spiritual guides from the jungles of Costa Rica to the Himalayas of India. In her classes, Rebecca aims to inspire mindfulness through focus on the breath and moving meditation, to find one’s natural flow while moving through a vigorous asana practice, to experience a radiant connection to joy through Kirtan, and to cultivate compassion and truthfulness as we discover and surrender into our own unique expression of yoga. For more information, visit www.rebeccarogersyoga.com.
Amber Allen
Amber Allen began practicing yoga asana and meditation to train her body, breath and voice for the stage. Little did she know the doors that the practices would open and the journey that was to follow. After graduating from Cornish College of the Arts, she moved to Chicago, Illinois, to pursue a theater career and found herself more on the yoga mat than in the rehearsal room. In 2004 she took a year long teacher training at Moksha Yoga Center and was certified to teach. She spent three years in Chicago teaching and continuing her yoga studies. Still seeking deeper understanding in 2007 she traveled to India where she lived and studied with Indian Buddhist Tantra-Yogi Master, Kulavadhuta Satpurananda. Returning to her hometown of San Francisco in 2008, she went on to study nutrition at the Global College of Natural Medicine and received a Nutritional Consultant Certification in 2010. Her classes offer yogic practices that will still the body and quiet the mind in an effort to awaken each individual to the wisdom within. As well as offer Yoga Classes Amber Allen also offers Nutritional Consulting and teaches Drama at elementary schools in the Bay Area.
Roy Gan
A classically trained dancer from Singapore, with over a decade of experience in dance, teaching and choreography, a non-practicing lawyer and a graduate of Yoga Garden SF 200-hour Advanced Studies program, Roy’s approach is about embracing and fully engaging in the human experience in all of its physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects. Through mindful practice, he supports people in meeting themselves unconditionally and provides a safe and non-judgmental space and openness for them to discover their true inherent greatness. His physical style of teaching places a strong emphasis on alignment, breath, with a creative and challenging sequencing drawn from his experience in dance and choreography. His approach is imbued with openness, vulnerability, humor and honesty. In Roy’s understanding, movement and active poses are not specific to any one particular form or body. The invitation is to be fully expressed in one’s own unique physicality and constitution. Self-expression knows no bounds, limitation, question or distinction. http://www.roygan.com
Greta Kent-Stoll
Initially a dancer, it was her studies with Kofi Busia, Senior Iyengar teacher, that inspired Greta to pursue the practice and study of Iyengar Yoga more deeply. Greta completed teacher training at the Yoga Loft and The Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco; she has had the good fortune of studying with Senior teachers and those who have learned straight from the source. She made her first trip to Pune, India in July 2011 to study at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute.
Eric Shaw
Eric Shaw has spent his life teaching and earning degrees and learning more and more about the human body through athletics, yoga, martial arts, dance, energy work, and anatomy study. He is certified by both Kripalu and Yogaworks teacher training programs.
His first teachers in self-transformation were his parents, Christian ministers who integrated Jungian and Transpersonal psychology into their work. He began daily meditation in 1984 and was introduced to yoga in 1987. His key teachers have been: Paul Grilley, Matt Huish, Natanaga Zhander, Tony Briggs, Arkady Shirin, Sianna Sherman and Karl Erb. Since 2001, he has taught unique vinyasa forms from shadow, ashtanga and other flow yogas. His classes are vigorous but relaxed, serious but fun, meditative but expressive and informed by years of formal training in alignment and investigations into ancient texts. He has earned Masters degrees in Teaching and Religious Studies and notice for his PhD work in yoga. His lectures on Yoga Philosophy and History are offered nationwide at conferences, studios and universities. He is writing a History of Modern Yoga for Anusara Press. For more information, visit prasanayoga.com
Julia Sterling
Julia found Iyengar yoga as a respite from a dance career in the early 1990′s. Captivated and inspired by the precision and genius of Mr. Iyengar’s teaching, she studied, travelled, taught and lived Iyengar yoga for many years. Now, two lovely daughters and family life inform her teachings, too. She is especially drawn to working with mothers, specializing in helping to reduce stress and tensions of everyday life. Julia is a certified Iyengar yoga teacher.
Marisa Toriggino
Marisa Toriggino, E-RYT & PRYT, has been studying and teaching yoga since 1987. She is a certified and nationally-registered yoga teacher who has taught hundreds of yoga students per year for the past decade. She has studied extensively and has been influenced by her experiences in India, her own spiritual practice and the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, Yogi Bhajan and Geeta Iyengar. This journey has helped to inform her personal life and yoga practice with Western innovation and Eastern sensibility.
Marisa has a B.A. from UC Berkeley, a Certificate from the Rudolf Steiner College in Administration for spiritually based organizations and an active member of the Association of Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health. She is married to David Nelson (together they have co-own YGSF for 12 years) and they enjoy family life with their two young children.
Jeremiah Wallace
Susan Whang
Susan’s 14 year yoga practice spans a range of styles from Hatha, Iyengar, Vinyasa, Bikram, Jivamukti & Ashtanga. She was certified as a teacher in New York City, where she taught privately as well as group classes. Susan is also a certified Holistic Health & Nutrition Counselor, and works with people to help them self-heal and find balance through proper diet, nutrition, and yoga. To learn more, visit www.pranawellness.org.
Gabbriella Yates
Gabbriella discovered yoga in 1994 when she visited San Francisco for the first time. The insight and awareness that just a few class offered her were enough to inspire a yoga practice and fuel a passion that, 5 years later, led her to become a yoga teacher. Now as a new mother and in awe of yoga’s capacity to connect women to the tremendous power of their bodies during and after pregnancy she enrolled in and is completing Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training at Yoga Garden SF. Gabbriella currently studies Iyengar yoga with Anne Saliou and previously studied Iyengar yoga with Joan White in Philadelphia. The teachings of Kamini Desai, dedicated to the art of relationship and communication, are precious to her and in 2002 she completed a 100 hour Contact Yoga teacher training with Kamini to expand her teaching into the realm of partner yoga. In her classes you will find teaching that is grounded in alignment and practical wisdom that she has gleaned from her personal yoga practice, teachers and students.
Gabbriella believes in yoga’s inherent role in promoting social justice and fostering non-violent solutions to conflict. Since 2003, and after completing her Masters in Conflict Transformation, she’s been working in the field of refugee return and reconciliation facilitating dialogue with war torn communities. She uses yoga in workshops and trainings with community leaders as a tool to integrate body awareness into the dialogue and to heal in the aftermath of violent conflict. Gabbriella continues to work in Kosovo as a consultant and travels there periodically with Consultants for Collective Response. Visit Gabbriella at www.BacktotheBody.com.
Lawrence Clark
Lawrence began learning yoga from books at the age of seventeen. In 2001 the insights he experienced while attending a Vipassana meditation course placed him very firmly on a spiritual path. In 2006 he took his first yoga class which happened to be in the ashtanga style and he has continued to evolve in this tradition since. He has practiced in New Zealand with John Scott and has completed a 200 hour teacher training at Yoga Garden SF.
Lawrence’s classes are based in the ashtanga style and are vigorous and enlivening. His goal is to help his students achieve strong and supple bodies while guiding them deeper towards the magical union of body, mind and breath.
Russell Case
Russell Case received the Mysore Level II authorization to teach full Intermediate series. He is the only such teacher in San Francisco and one of only two in the San Francisco Bay area.
Russell began studying yoga in 1992 with Lillias Folan‘s after school television specials and a dogeared copy of the Tao te Ching. In 1994 he started formal ashtanga-vinyasa studies with Suddha Weixler, the most senior ashtanga yoga teacher in the U.S. midwest. From 1997 to 2000 he lived in Austin, Texas, mastering David Swenson‘s flying technique. In 2002, he became Guy Donahay’s apprentice in New York. Guy is the last person personally certified by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. On his second trip to Mysore in 2004, Russell completed intermediate series with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in one month and was given his blessing to teach. Russell is one of a handful of Guruji’s students to learn his pranayama method personally. He is now practicing Advanced A with Sharath Jois, Pattabhi Jois’s grandson and current director of the KPJ Ashtanga Yoga Intisitute.
Between 2006 and 2009 Russell and his wife Sally built the largest population Mysore room outside of India in Asia. They developed three authorized teachers in Space Taiwan. Two of them level II in their own right. They are proud of their achievement in Southeast Asia but look forward to new challenges in San Francisco.
In January 2011 Russell became director of the Stanford University Mysore Yoga program.
