My yoga adventure began with a bikram yoga class in Phoenix Arizona in August 1999.  I was 23 years old,    fresh out of college and intrigued by that sweaty class in a small carpeted room in the desert.  I left Phoenix shortly  after and settled in Portland Oregon to study Naturopathic medicine.  During the spring of 2000 I found Ashtanga  yoga and dove into a regular practice for the next two years.  I loved yoga but something was missing.  Then  through the grace of God and the help of a very good friend, I walked into a Vinyasa class with Lisa Mae  Osborn.  I was home.  She introduced me to an amazing, ecstatic form of Vinyasa that I instantly fell I love with  and most importantly she introduced me to the beauty and devotion of Bhakti yoga.  Daily devotion through mantra  and meditation became the focus of my practice even when life led me away from the mat.  And life did indeed lead me away from my mat often over the next few years but the practice of yoga was never far from my mind.  In 2007 I finally made it back to class just in time for the grand opening of The Bhaktishop and The Bhaktishop school of yoga.  I completed my teacher training in May of 2008, bowed deeply to my dear teachers Lisa Mae and Diana Hulet and headed off to Santa Fe to find my own yoga voice.  That yoga voice continues to grow and change but will always be firmly rooted in the ecstatic vinyasa style of asana so lovingly handed down to me by my teachers and in the ancient, devotional practices of Bhakti.  www.nataliepedro.com

Kyrsta began the study of yoga as a teenager, at the Santa Fe Community Yoga Center, in 1998.  As a young adult she greatly appreciated learning form yoga’s qualities of patience, acceptance, and relaxation. She is grateful to all of her teachers, who taught her the benefits of yoga and how to incorporate the practice of yoga into daily life.  In 2009, Kyrsta received a yoga teachers certificate from the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, in Massachusetts.  Her classes are beginner friendly and focus on body mind awareness, breath, relaxation and compassion. 

I started practicing yoga at 16 with a B.K.S. Iyengar book that my mom had. I practiced alone from this book until taking my first class in college. I have been practicing yoga for over twenty years now, both privately and in public classes and I decided to make that transition from student to teacher recently. I completed my 200-hour teaching certification at The Lotus Seed—a non-profit studio in Portland, Oregon— in Summer 2011 and am looking forward to teaching and sharing my practice at the Santa Fe Community Yoga Center. I am trained in Vinyasa style flow with a focus on spontaneous sequencing and connecting the breath to the movement. I am excited about the new ways that yoga is reaching out to everybody in our culture today. It is no longer only the territory of the ascetic man in the loincloth. Western culture has embraced yoga in such a way to offer it to everyone—from kids to chair yoga. With my busy life as a graduate student I am currently interested in what I call everywhere yoga; poses that can be practiced most everywhere we live—while waiting for the train or in line at the grocery store—poses like Mountain or mudras, or just simply deep breathing. My current favorite poses are garudasana (eagle pose), salamba sirsasana and savasana. Today, my least favorite pose is gomuhkasana (cow face pose) but I am willing to embrace it for awhile to see what it has to teach me.

According to Hippocrates known as the father of western medicine, “it is the natural forces within us that are the true healers of disease”.  In the Invocation to Patañjali, the great sage who authored the Yoga Sutras, yogis pay reverence to the “jungle physician” which is within each and every one of us as the greatest healer of all.  As a student of yoga I believe that a regular yoga practice can heal and transform anyone in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  The key is learning to tune into one’s own jungle physician!  My personal yoga practice which is the foundation of my classes is inspired by ashtanga vinyasa and yin yoga styles with a focus on tuning into physical sensations at each moment during the practice and listening to the breath.  Through careful attention to the breath, alignment, sensation, and perceptual awareness I strive to help others discover their own inner healer.

Andrew received his 200-hour teacher certification at Yoga Now in Albuquerque.

My classes offer yoga as a portal for connecting with our higher selves and our deeper spirit.  The intentional connection to inner light combined with opening of the physical body leads students towards the unlocking and lightening of the heart.  I work with details of alignment and meditation while always staying alive and true to the inherent fun and joy and brightness of yoga. I encourage students to be open and honest on the mat, physically and psychically, in an effort to deepen their self-knowledge in a concrete and literal way.

I know aches and pains as I embarked on my yoga path to address a frozen shoulder in 1993. I was certified by Prajna Yoga in Santa Fe in 2009, and have studied Tantric yoga with Tara Yoga in Britain, Hatha yoga with Robert Webber in Canada, and alignment-based-yoga with Tias Little and Sean Tebor in NM.  I currently apprentice with Surya Little in Santa Fe and study in both the Anusara and Iyengar traditions. I received my BA from St. John's College (Annapolis) and my MA at Oxford in the UK.