Meet Shana Meyerson
To me, yoga has always provided a sanctuary where everyone is perfect and, miraculously, it's okay to fall. It's funny how many of us go through our lives so afraid of falling that we wind up avoiding challenges at all costs and, as a result, miss out on some of life's greatest treasures. Yoga is a gift that gives back the power to do something that scares you and always, always come out stronger in the end. It teaches you about living in the moment and knowing what's important in life. Standing on one foot: not important. Standing on your own two feet: important. And I think that's, more or less, what it all boils down to.
I left business school and the corporate world years ago to pursue a path of teaching yoga and start helping others to live more loving, peaceful, and accepting lives. My YOGAthletica practices are provocatively authentic. They're intense and challenging, yet accessible and spiritual at the same time. I've practiced with a wide variety of instructors from numerous yoga disciplines and amalgamate elements from each of the styles into one cohesive whole. Each practice I teach is different from the last, utilizing creative transitions and fun, funky poses to keep everyone in tune, intact, and constantly aware.
Not only do I work with adults, but I'm also the founder of mini yogis® yoga for kids, through which I have taught children and trained teachers around the world. It's a life-changing practice that I am blessed to be able to share so broadly.
www.YOGAthletica.com
www.miniyogis.com
a description of YOGAthletica:
YOGAthletica classes are all-level classes that are spiritually, mentally and physically intense and challenging, yet totally authentic and accessible. Every single practice is completely unique and different from the last, and breakthroughs happen daily. YOGAthletica classes use fun, funky transitions and break challenging postures down, step-by-step, so that anyone can try them...even if you've never taken yoga before.
Meet Rudy Mettia
My students are indeed YogaWarriors and I am honored and blessed to be able to lead them in their practice when they choose to study with me. I coined the name "Yoga Warriors" as a basis to the philosophy I try to practice in my day to day life and in the teaching of my classes. As with all great warrior traditions from the Samurai, to the Sioux, to the mythical Amazon women warriors, we also have a cause. Ours is the great battle for the liberation of our minds. A victory in this battle must be assured if we are to obtain our goals of a liberated mind and a disease and stress free body. However, to achieve this goal will take a bit of suffering (tapas) and perhaps many years (even lives) of a consistent, dedicated, and pious practice. Or as written in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Success in yoga follows he who practices, not he who practices not.
As Yoga Warriors on our journey we will undoubtedly cross paths with many formidable enemies that must be eradicated. These obstacles include a sick and weak body, a weak and distracted mind, a lack of discipline and enthusiasm, self defeating doubts and fears, laziness, ignorance, cowardice, envy, greed, jealously, desire, aversion, attachment, perhaps an overindulgent diet and lifestyle, expectations rooted in ego. These are just a few of the enemies of your practice that lay in wait for you. (And all of these are just for the experienced yogis, Lord help the beginners!) Fear not Yogis, for as a warrior tempers his steel we can also strengthen ourselves for this struggle. Our minds and bodies are our weapons and just as a sword is thrust into the fire and heated for shaping and strengthening we also can use our breath to stoke the furnace that heats, shapes, and strengthens our bodies. We can use the anvil of our Asanas and the hammer of our will to defeat and eradicate these enemies while purifying and cleansing our minds and bodies. However, that's just the beginning. Afterwards, meditation waits.
Om, Peace,
Rudy Mettia
Meet Michelle Mazur
CYT (Certified Yoga Teacher), E-RYT (Experienced Registerd Yoga Teacher), Certified Yoga Therapist and registered with Yoga Alliance.
I completed three teacher training courses at yoga works, one was the advanced teacher training. Studied in the Iyenger system for eight years but did not take the exam because I was more interested in yoga therapy. I graduated from Loyola University with a two year certification in yoga therapy. Studied Ashtanga for the last ten years and I'm working on a certification in yoga philosophy at Loyola . I have done a few thousand hours of workshops with many of the senior and master teachers around the world. I apprenticied with many master teachers and had my own yoga studio for a few years. My main interest currently is yoga therapy which is the process of empowering individuals to progress toward improved health and well being through the application of the practice and philosophy of yoga.
Improved health and well being through the application of the practice and philosophy of yoga.
Michelle Mazur
Meet Brynn Rybacek
I was blessed to find a book on yoga at the ripe age of 11 and have been exploring its many gifts and benefits ever since. As a National Yoga Alliance certified instructor, I have been teaching for 5 years at Triad Yoga in Irvine. I have studied extensively with a multitude of senior teachers all over the country in classes, workshops, and retreats over the past 10 years. In 2004 I graduated Summa cum laude from Chapman U. where I studied social sciences, religion/philosophy, and anatomy/physiology & also founded their first yoga club. I teach my own unique flow-style of yoga characterized by the anatomical precision of my formal training under Karin O’Bannon (devoted student of BKS Iyengar), the rigorousness of 10 years of personal vinyasa and ashtanga practice, and the spiritual curiosity owed to my years of religious, psychosociological, and philosophical coursework.
While yoga’s physical appeal both with its visual beauty and its ability to heal the body initially attracted me, it has been the practice’s power to calm my nerves and keep me focused that has driven me to explore it further. As my practice has deepened over the years, I have grown to feel a strong love for and connection to everything in this vast Universe. I have experienced what it is to know Spirit and have found this awareness to be undoubtedly the most valuable reward of yoga. My personal practice has become like a constant prayer as I strive to make every movement an offering and every breath a reminder to be grateful for life in all of its forms. It is true that the real yoga begins when we leave the mat and recognize how to translate the grace, patience, compassion, and joy of our practice into the rest of our lives. In this way, we begin to change the world one breath, one movement, one word, one action, one person at a time. To decide to become a teacher is a profound choice. As teachers, we inevitably acknowledge how little we actually know and thus humbly determine to remain students our whole lives.
Brynn Rybacek
