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  Vinyasa Flow Yoga With Mark Stephens  
   
 
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Biography

Inspired by the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti and Alan Watts, Mark Stephens dabbled in yoga for a few years in his teens before beginning serious study and practice in 1991 at Yoga Works in Santa Monica, California. His first teacher was Erich Schiffmann, who taught Mark how to find his inner teacher. Starting in 1994, he spent several years exploring Mysore-style Ashtanga (mostly with Chuck Miller), Vinyasa Flow (mostly with Shiva Rea, apprenticing with her in 1995-96), Iyengar Yoga (with Lisa Walford and others) and Therapeutic Yoga (apprenticing with Jasmine Lieb in 1995).

 

Mark completed the original Yoga Works teacher training program in 1995 and immersed himself in advanced teacher training there from 1995-1997, including in-depth workshops with Rodney Yee, Patricia Walden, Gary Kraftsow, Ramanand Patel, Dona Holleman, Aadil Palkhivala, Tim Miller, Richard Freeman, John Schumacher, John Friend and Kofi Busia. He started teaching a full schedule of classes in 1996 and has taught ever since.

In 1997, Mark founded Yoga Inside Foundation, organizing and supporting ongoing yoga classes in hundreds of inner city and poor rural schools, treatment centers, prisons and other alternative settings in 42 states. He traveled extensively around the United States conducting teacher trainings for teachers involved with Yoga Inside. Yoga Journal magazine recognized this work with its 1st Annual Karma Yoga Award in 2000.

In 2002, Mark founded L.A. Yoga Center, an eclectic yoga studio offering 90+ classes weekly in various styles. The Center's 25 resident teachers, including Rod Strker, Marla Apt, Hala Khouri and Jorgen Christiansen, were encouraged to cross-fertilize with one another in developing and refining their varied approaches to teaching, which included Vinyasa Flow, Ashtanga, Iyengar, Viniyoga, Kundalini, Pre/Post-Natal, Kids classes as well as workshops, teacher training and yoga retreats. Mark sold the studio to Yoga Works 2004 , reapplying his time and energy 100% to teaching yoga.

Over the years, Mark has led dozens of yoga retreats, including at Esalen Institute, White Lotus Foundation, Zaca Lake, Maya Tulum, Haramara, Machu Picchu, Joshua Tree National Park and in the Eastern Sierras, has taught at Yoga Journal conferences and as a guest instructor at studios across the United States.

   

"Breathing in I calm the body and mind.
Breathing out
I smile, Dwelling in the present moment – I know this is the only moment."

- Thich Nhat Hahn
 

A native of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Mark feels blessed for growng up in an awe-inspiring natural environment and with loving spiritual parents, a foundation that helped him when later navigating through a pretty wild adolescence in the Southern California desert. Eventually making his way to college, he graduated from UC Santa Cruz with highest honors, then completed what he describes as far too many years of masters and doctoral studies in comparative and historical sociology at UCLA, which he says yoga has done much to alleviate. Mark taught at UCLA and L.A. City College, worked for many years as a community activist and was a policy and management consultant in the L.A. County alternative school and juvenile justice systems until 2000.

The author of Teaching Yoga: Essential Foundations & Techniques (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, available Spring 2010), Mark is registered with the national Yoga Alliance at its Advanced E-RYT 500 level, authorizing him to award basic and advanced teacher certification and to provide Continuing Education credits for both RYT 200 and RYT 500 teachers. Over 350 teachers have taken his teacher training workshops in Santa Cruz since 2005.

Happy teaching on his native soil and being part of the vibrant Santa Cruz conscious living and healing arts community, Mark's classes bring together a wide and diverse spectrum of Santa Cruzans and visitors.