Mark Stephens is a best-selling author, scholar, and internationally renowned yoga teacher known for weaving together ancient wisdom, modern science, and contemporary practice. His seminal works – Teaching Yoga, Yoga Sequencing, Yoga Adjustments, and Yoga Therapy – are core textbooks in teacher and therapist training programs around the world. He is also the author of Yoga for Better Sleep, which combines yoga’s timeless practices with modern neuroscience and psychology to offer natural, drug-free approaches to restful sleep. His forthcoming book, Breathing: The Art and Science of Pranayama, is poised to be the definitive source on the subject, clarifying history, challenging misconceptions, grounding practices in science and experience, and offering clear, practical guidance for consciously tapping the breath in personal life and social relationships.

For more than three decades, Mark has sustained a dedicated daily practice while guiding others in making yoga more accessible, sustainable, and deeply transformational. His first teacher, Erich Schiffmann, taught him Joel Kramer's method of inner guidance starting in 1991. In 1994, Mark dove deeply into Ashtanga Vinyasa, initially with Chuck Miller and Maty Ezraty, independently completing the 3rd series ("Advanced A") in 2006. He completed teacher training at Yoga Works in 1995. As part of his advanced teacher training and thereafter, he studied with numerous senior Iyengar teachers, apprenticed in yoga therapy, and explored widely and deeply in tantra, Kundalini, and various innovative approaches. 

Soon after beginning to teach in 1996, Mark founded and directed Yoga Inside Foundation, pioneering yoga programs in schools, treatment centers, and prisons across North America, a movement that earned Yoga Journal’s first-ever Karma Award in 2000. He credits his experience teaching in such alternative settings and training others to teach in them with his inclusive methods that eschew the typical cookie-cutter approaches common in yoga education.

Called “the teacher’s teacher” by Yoga Journal, Mark has trained thousands of yoga teachers worldwide. His journey – from a humble working-class childhood immersed in nature in the Santa Cruz Mountains, through the loss of both parents by age twelve, leaving school at thirteen, supporting himself in various labor and construction jobs, exploring psychedelics and yoga in his later teens, to graduating summa cum laude from UC Santa Cruz and completing doctoral studies at UCLA – deeply informs his work as a yoga teacher, author and educator. Along the way, he has taught at UCLA and Los Angeles City College, led in California’s educational and social service systems, founded and directed L.A. Yoga Center and Santa Cruz Yoga, and mentored hundreds of other teachers and studio owners.

Beyond yoga, Mark’s life reflects a wide-ranging curiosity and creative spirit. His interests have led him through years of travel, outdoor adventure sports, culinary explorations, building and racing motorcycles, automotive mechanics, film and video production and editing, fine art and music, home construction and renovation, gardening, and orchard keeping. He’s currently learning to play acoustic guitar – an expression of his lifelong love of music and learning.

Mark lives in his hometown in the Santa Cruz Mountains along the central coast California and teaches globally.