GUEST TEACHERS

Shiva Rea
Shiva Rea, M.A., is a leading teacher of prana vinyasa flow yoga and yoga trance dance worldwide. She began exploring yoga at the age of fourteen as a way to understand her name, given to her by her father, a surfer and artist. Her studies in the Krishnamacharya lineage, tantra, ayurveda, bhakti, kalaripayattu, world dance, yogic art and somatic movement infuse her approach to living yoga and embodying the flow. She is known for bringing the roots of yoga alive for modern practitioners in creative, dynamic and life-transforming ways and for offering the synthesis form of vinyasa flow out into the world.

As a global adventurer, she has lead over 70 retreats and pilgrimages nationally and internationally as well as served as a creative catalyst for conferences, festivals and actions for the environment, yoga and the arts including the third annual Yogini Conference of Kripalu and Omega. Shiva writes for Yoga Journal and is the author of award-winning CD's and DVD?s to empower and transform yoga home practice. She lives with her family near their favorite surf break at Sunset Beach in Pacific Palisades, California.

Sally Kempton
Sally (Durgananda) is known for her ability to transmit transformative meditation and insight to students at all levels of experience. For 20 years as a swami in the Siddha Yoga tradition, she was personally trained by Swami Muktananda and Gurumayi in all aspects of spiritual philosophy and culture. Her teaching is both innovative and rooted in the traditional texts, informed by the insight of 30 years of practice and teaching. The author of the groundbreaking meditation book, The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience, Sally writes the "Wisdom" column for Yoga Journal and leads workshops around the country.

Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad
Joel Kramer is an internationally influential author, innovator, and adept of physical and mental yoga. His teaching, books and articles aim at freeing spirituality and yoga from its authoritarian roots. His unique combination of mental and physical yoga and his widely used principles, such as “playing the edge,” “yoga as self-exploration,” “using internal feedback as one’s teacher,” and “creating lines of energy,” are a foundational basis of modern yoga. Since 1974 he and Diana Alstad have created, taught and written together.

Joel was on the resident faculty at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California from 1968-70. His seminars dealt with the basic concerns of living and included the nature and evolution of awareness as well as yoga. From 1970-82 he taught throughout North America, in Europe and in Asia. Joel studied for doctorates in philosophy and psychology at the University of Florida, New York University and Columbia where his philosophy training included metaphysics, the philosophy of science, theories of knowledge, Eastern thought and comparative religion. In 1963, after leaving graduate school, Joel moved to California and became part of the burgeoning counterculture. This led him to a deep exploration of Eastern thought and yoga. He was influenced by Eastern Oneness, and by Krishnamurti’s methodology for looking within, as well as by many other thinkers.

Diana Alstad is an author, teacher, activist and linguist. She began teaching with Joel Kramer in 1974. Through her vision and instigation, they developed the Yoga of Relationship and began including talks on it in their yoga seminars. Diana had long been concerned with transforming power and gender patterns, both intimate and social. She and Joel created new ways of resolving conflicts, tensions, and resentments that hinder keeping passion alive over time. Their talks developed into seminars on “Deepening the Connection between Men and Women” which they taught, as well as yoga seminars, at such centers as Esalen and Omega. In expanding their concerns to society, they developed new perspectives on power, overpopulation, conscious reproduction and abortion, and created new frameworks for such arenas as gender relations, the family, and sexuality.

A Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Diana received a Ph.D. from Yale in 1971, and was on the Duke faculty in the humanities until 1973. She co-founded New Haven Women’s Liberation in 1968, initiated and taught the first Women's Studies courses at Yale and Duke, and was on the board of the Veteran Feminists of America from 1998-2004.

Diana has trained in several psychological and body-based therapies, and is currentlly training in Focusing, Reichian breathwork and Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing (trauma healing).

Sarah Powers
Sarah Powers began teaching in 1987. She interweaves the insights and practices of Yoga and Buddhism into an integral practice to enliven the body, heart and mind. Her yoga style blends both a Yin sequence of long held poses to enhance the meridian and organ systems, combined with a flow or Yang practice, influenced by Viniyoga, Ashtanga, and Iyengar teachings. Sarah feels that enlivening the physical and pranic bodies, as well as learning to open to our emotional difficulties is paramount for preparing one to deepen and nourish insights into one's essential nature--a natural state of awareness. She draws from her studies in Transpersonal Psychology, as well as her in-depth training in the Vipassana, Tantric and Dzogchen practices of Buddhism. She is co-founder of Metta Journeys, a service oriented organization that offers yoga retreats internationally to help women and children in developing countries. She also teaches trainings and silent retreats with her husband Ty. They live with their teen-age daughter Imani-Jade in Marin, California. She is author of the upcoming book Insight Yoga: Integrating Yin/Yang Yoga and Buddhist Meditation.

James Bailey
James is a third generation physician and health educator who has been living yoga and ayurveda for 20 years with his wife, yoga teacher Shiva Rea. He practices Ayurveda, Oriental Medicine, and Yoga Tantra, aiding patients via clinical Ayurvedic techniques. His training includes 5 years (3000+ hours) of clinical studies in Oriental Medicine (Yo San University) and training in Ayurveda under such luminary teachers as Dr. Vaijayanti Apte, Dr. Subash Ranade, Dr. Avinash Lele, Dr. Vasant Lad, Dr. Robert Svoboda, and many Ayurvedic doctors and therapists in Kerala, south India where he spends time teaching and studying each year. He is a contributing editor and former columnist for Yoga Journal, Light on Ayurveda, LA Yoga magazine and other wellness magazines. He is a Board member of the California Association of Ayurvedic Medicine (CAAM) and founder of Sevanti Ayurveda in Santa Monica.

Jill Miller
Embodying 20 years of expertise, Jill Miller?s yoga classes synthesize a vast repertoire of movement arts including; Modern Dance, Pilates, Breathwork, Shiatsu, and Butoh. Jill choreographs a total experience for each individual?s body, mind, and spirit. Her yoga strengthens you from the inside out – removing tension from the body, releasing the entrapments of the mind and reconnecting you to your core in a thoroughly conscious way. Her insatiable curiosity for authentic movement and healing infuses every moment with surprising clarity.