Alice Kennedy

Alice Kennedy is soon to be an Anusara-Inspired teacher. She encourages students to find their spectacular qualities inside and out, creating a community-filled, loving, and friendly environment. Grounded in a strong heart-body foundation, her students are surprised at how they can begin to do things they never thought possible, leading to more beauty and confidence on and off their mats. She has studied and worked at several yoga and buddhist centers internationally, and has been teaching 4 years. She has several teachers in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, as well as Darren Rhodes, Christina Sell, Simmin Joy Holland, and Kenny Graham in the Anusara tradition. When she isn't studying yoga, she is often roaming the kitchen, cooking up vegan treats, telling goofy jokes, and brewing watermelon kombucha-love! alice@yogawithalice.com

Annica Rose

E-RYT500, CHT, Ceritified Yoga Therapist

Annica Rose, Certified Yoga Therapist is a gifted healer with over 40-years of experience as a practitioner and instructor of Yoga. Founding director of the Adaptive Yoga Project, Annica maintains a successful private Yoga therapy practice in Santa Cruz County. She teaches specialized Yoga classes and mentors Yoga instructors interested in serving the special needs community. Annica’s spirited enthusiasm for Yoga, her keen intuition and a natural gift for engaging students are central to her work.

Her attentiveness to the unique needs of every student helps people of varying abilities become aware of their breath, improve balance and develop flexibility and function. This is accomplished with innovative adaptations of traditional Yoga postures often using props, like chairs, blocks and bolsters...

Annica’s training is based on classical Yoga principals, Buddhist studies and a ten year western medical career. She is very grateful to have studied with Allan Watts, Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche, Indra Devi and continues to study with Baba Hari Dass. annica@adaptiveyogaproject.com

Bridget Puchalsky

Bridget has extensive training and experience in both the fields of yoga and holistic medicine. She is an Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher (E-RYT 500) classically trained in Asthanga & Hatha Yoga. Bridget's life's work is in assisting others to find thriving health by utilizing her expertise yoga and holistic medicine.

Her classes are an enthusiastic and full-spectrum including attention to the breath, movement and alignment. She blends a complementary ratio of flexibility, strength and balance with encouragement for the practitioner to exercise their inner intuition and breath to guide their practice. Each session will be appropriately adjusted to natural forces such as: season, time of day, and current atmosphere with a holistic approach to work on the mat a method to building awareness of our beings from a mental emotional, energetic and physical form. Classes will build a skill set that allows the student to become increasingly inspired about using yoga practice as a tool in personal wellness. Expect to find, as appropriate, detailed verbal cues, demonstrations of poses or hands on adjustments. Practice often includes: gentle warm-ups with qi gong exercises, sun or moon salutations, sound anatomical alignment refinement using props, chakra and channel alignment, gentle breath work and meditation.

She is a licensed primary healthcare provider in California with a four-year Master's in Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine and a two-year Ayurvedic Medicine training. She is an adventurer and her most inspirational influence comes through living life to it's fullest in the solitude of nature when adventuring high upon mountain peaks or in the ocean's embrace. She was raised in the Michigan, lived many years in the high Rockies, and currently lives in the Bay Area with her partner Alexi and adorable dog Lily. www.essentialhealthsantacruz.com

Danielle Barr Vaden

Danielle found yoga in 2001 when she wandered into a class after 9/11 looking for meaning. That seed grew into a practice that changed her life by opening and healing her heart, her body and her mind in unimaginable ways. She continues to deepen her spiritual and asana practice, and believes in balancing the teacher and student roles equally. Manifesting in her classes, she encourages her students to move from their own heart, healing themselves, removing blockages and striving to realize their highest self. Through asana, pranayama, meditation, mudra, mantra, union, surrender and laughter she guides classes that allow each practitioner to get lost in the present and spread their wings. Each class is unique, filled with playful, yet challenging movements, and taught from her authentic heart for the benefit of her students. Danielle believes that we can work out our challenges on the mat, and that can create a more free and love-filled life. Her greatest teachers are her two children. She is currently receiving her 500 hour advanced teacher training and is grateful for the Pacific Cultural Center community. Currently registered as a RYT 200 with Alliance, and has her certification for Pre & Postnatal Yoga from Mount Madonna Center.

Dawn

Dawn is first and foremost a student of yoga, eager to learn and expand her understanding of the many paths of yoga. Her classes emphasize breathing, balance, and grounding as the foundations of asana and a launching pad to introduce yoga into daily life and the world. She enjoys weaving the flow of vinyasa yoga with the alignment of Iyengar Yoga in her classes and hopes that this leads students to find what her teacher calls "the flow of presence." She believes this "flow of presence" or mindfulness is the root of yoga (union), whether that be on the yoga mat, in meditation, or in daily life. For more information please visit: www.dawnhayesyoga.com

Gabriel Benjamin

Gabriel Benjamin is the son of Tri Yoga® Instructor Martha Posey, who quite wisely exposed him to the practice at the age of eleven. During young adult hood, Gabriel experienced chronic hip and back injuries that drew him deeper into the path of yoga and healing arts. Gabriel has been teaching yoga since 2001 and holds four levels of certification in Yoga and a certification as an Ayurvedic Consultant. As a former competitive cyclist Gabriel understands the needs of athletes and or students dealing with injuries in yoga practice. Gabriel assists teacher trainings, teaches group and private classes, as well as workshops, in Santa Cruz, The Bay area, and Southern California. Classes are designed to have equal parts strength and flexibility with an unbroken stream of breath awareness to create a challenging, healing, and meditative flow.

Hannah Muse

Ever since Yoga found her, Hannah’s heart has been softening open and spilling over with love. Then she became a mama and her heart opened even more! Hannah’s primary training is in classical Ashtanga Yoga and she loves to combine therapeutic physical alignment and dynamic movement with conscious awareness of the subtle body through asana, pranayama and meditation. She is currently pursuing her Advanced 500 hour RYT Training at Mt Madonna Center, where she completed her 200 hour RYT Training. She has also completed Jane Austin’s Prenatal/Postpartum training.

Hannah loves teaching yoga to all sentient beings, and feels especially honored to teach to mamas and little ones. She is eternally grateful to her teacher Baba Hari Dass, and all of the other truly inspiring teachers on her yogic path in the Ashtanga, Hatha, Iyengar and Anusara practices. Her greatest teacher of all is her daughter Ruby Bea, who endlessly inspires her to consciously evolve, and often more importantly, to laugh.

Kathryn Keller

Practicing yoga since 1990 and teaching since 1993, Kathryn is a registered yoga therapist. Her experiences with yoga, mediation, Feldenkrais, and gerontology allow Kathryn to offer a diverse and non-dogmatic approach. Kathryn has personally experienced yoga to be a powerful way of learning, healing, and transformation and she encourages a playful and noncompetitive attitude in all of her classes. Her style is inspired by a blend of Anusara, Integrative Yoga Therapy, and the Feldenkrais method. As an offering she states, “In gratitude to all of my teachers, I bow to the power and beauty of the practice of yoga.”

Kelly Blaser

Kelly's formal study of Yoga began in 1989, and she began studying with Kofi Busia, Senior Iyengar instructor, in 1995. She has a background in meditation, primarily guided by the Zen approach of Cheri Huber. Kelly began teaching yoga after her first teacher training at Mount Madonna Center in 1997. She has since continued her intensive training, primarily with Kofi, Sianna Sherman and John Friend. Kelly has been deeply influenced by the teachings of Anusara.

In addition to teaching throughout the Bay Area, Kelly has led dozens of retreats, both locally and internationally. Kelly has also taught yoga philosophy, advanced asana and yoga therapeutics modules, for Anusara Trainings and for the Mount Madonna Teacher Training Program.

Kelly is a Marriage Family Therapist Intern. The study of Shaivism, Buddhism, and Classical Yoga Philosophy has shaped Kelly's therapy practice. Despite all this rather intense study, Kelly remains mostly amused by the life experience. www.yogawithkelly.com

Mangala Norskog

RN, RYT 500, ALC, CMT

Mangala is a student of Baba Hari Dass, and continues to “Teach to Learn” as one of the senior instructors at Mount Madonna Center since 1996. Her instruction integrates devotional intention, anatomical reference, and subtle body physiology into the classical methods of traditional pranayama, meditation, and asana practice. Mangala is enthusiastic and dedicated to service as an articulate and compassionate advocate for others’ health, safety, and well-being. Her practice bridges classical training in Ayurveda & Yoga and experience as a Registered Nurse. In addition to being a yoga teacher trainer at MMC, she leads weekend workshops in “Asana & Sacred Sound” and serves on the Yoga Administration of Pacific Cultural Center. She instructs privately and in group settings to a variety of age groups.

Peggy Galusha

Peggy first came to her mat in 2009 having always wanted to try yoga but never really having an opportunity. Being completely inspired by that first heart opening experience and the feeling that comes from a strong alignment practice, once a week classes quickly became as often as possible.

She began attending workshops and intensives in 2011, which led her to do an Immersion/Teacher Training in 2013-14 at the Shakti Yoga Shala School of Hatha Yoga with several amazing teachers including Samantha "Shakti" Brown, Kenny Graham, Siri Cavanna, Ashleigh Sergeant, Alice Kennedy, Kelly Blaser and Michelle Nayeli Bouvier. Other trainings include The Prison Yoga Project Training Seminar in July 2014 and completing Advanced Teacher Training and Mentorship, an additional 300 hours at the Shakti Yoga Shala in March 2016.

Yoga has been a prominent part of Peggy's life since that first class. It has helped her cope with many difficult life changes as well as to simply feel better in her body. "I practice on my mat to live off my mat."

Peggy believes that yoga is for everyone, and that everyone should have access to the practice and the benefits that can come from it. She is part of the Yoga For All Movement that is forming to bring yoga to the under-served populations of Santa Cruz County. She currently teaches the men at the Rountree Jail facility in Watsonville and co-teaches the women at the Main Jail in Santa Cruz.

"With Grace and Gratitude for this practice, Namaste."

Rachael Shishido

Rachael's class focuses on utilizing the breath with asanas to cultivate a practice that serves in bringing greater vitality, peace, and presence of mind. Her instruction offers options of therapeutic variations to classical asanas so that the student may develop on their path in a way that honors their individual body type. Variations are also used to challenge particular muscle usage. Her instruction encourages alignment and awareness. Yoga has personally been instrumental in her healing and transformation and she is grateful to share her love of the practice.

Rachael's first teacher training was in 1991 with Rod Styker and Erich Schiffman. From 1992-94 she completed her studies with Gary Kraftsow's Viniyoga teacher training. She was deeply moved by the vedic chanting taught in the Krishmacharya lineage and continued chanting and text studies with Lisa Goodwin from 1993-96.

Her passion for studying yoga continued over the years with senior Iyengar teachers as well as teachers in Pattabi Jois tradition of Astanga yoga (1st and 2nd series).

Currently she is deepening her meditation practices with Tibetan buddhist studies in the Nyingma tradition with Lama Lar Short (lineage holder with Dilgo Khyenste Rinpoche and Rudrananda). This work is providing a stable ground for her commitment to evolving with greater compassion, clarity, joy and awareness in embracing our natural design of exploring, discovering, learning, growing, and creating. rachael.shishido@gmail.com / www.rachaelshishido.com

Rachel Sonnenblick

A student of yoga for over two decades, Rachel Sonnenblick has been teaching in Santa Cruz since the year 2000. She has been fortunate enough to study with teachers from many different schools of yoga. Rachel's classes encourage a mindful focus on body alignment, creating the strength to support joint health, and the integration of movement with the breath. Her playful and down-to-earth style helps to create a fun, inclusive atmosphere for her students to practice in.

Major influences upon Rachel's teaching include studying with the Iyengar Family in Pune, India and participating in numerous intensives and retreats with Ana Forrest. In addition to her 200 hour yoga teacher certification from the Ananda Ashram in Grass Valley, California; Rachel has also completed a yoga teacher training with David Swenson, attended the Yoga Teacher Training program at the Iyengar Institute of San Francisco, and attends a diverse array of local classes on a regular basis to keep herself inspired and and continually learning on her journey.