My training includes:

I’m a Certified Purna Yoga Teacher at the 2,000 Hour Level, a registered Yoga Alliance teacher (E-RYT 200, E-RYT 500), and the director of Purna Yoga 828 in Asheville, N.C. My work centers on creating a community-driven, non-competitive, compassionate space for practice and growth. I’m grateful to study in an authentic Indian lineage with Aadil Palkhivala and Savitri, the co-founders of Purna Yoga. I have also trained in the Great Yoga Wall™ system with Aadil and Bryan Legere, studied meditation with Michael Stone, yoga for scoliosis with Elise Browning Miller, and adaptive yoga with Matthew Sanford. I’m currently exploring NeuroSomatic practices with Diana May.
 

My teaching style is:

I like to focus on how the practice truly lands in people’s bodies and nervous systems, not whether the pose fits an ideal shape. I break things down with clarity and precision, and trust silence as much as instruction. My classes are grounded, honest, and shaped by real experience. I try to meet people where they are, offer accessible guidance, and seek to give enough detail for students to feel supported and confident in their own bodies without flooding them with over-instruction. My aim is always to offer yoga as a path of real transformation while keeping the room grounded, spacious, and human.
 

The threads I’m following right now are:

A blend of philosophy from Sri Aurobindo and The Mother about the understanding of the self, alongside the rich lineage of Purna Yoga and Heartfull Meditation as an inner and outer practice, and with the recent explorations I’ve been following into brain health and the nervous system. Together, these are helping me have an expanded understanding of who I am and how I can live a whole-hearted life.

A bit about me:

In addition to teaching yoga, I DJ, both on the radio and live. DJing has taught me a lot about how to talk, and how to guide people through movement, and teaching yoga has taught me a lot about being patient, regulating my ego, and maintaining energy reserves. I really like the balance these two vocations bring to each other and to my life.

My training includes:

I got my 200 Hour Certification from Purna Yoga College at All Life Is Yoga studios in Atlanta, GA in 2017. In 2019, I entered the 300 Hour program at Purna Yoga College and graduated in 2020, just in time to start honing my skills as an online instructor. In the last few years I’ve been working on guided meditation and finding the right balance between saying too much and saying too little.

My teaching style is:

I try to lead classes with the perspective that I am as much a student/practitioner as I am an instructor. As an asana instructor, I like working on strength as much as flexibility, but as a yoga instructor, I’m most interested in the inner journey that comes from the mind/body connection. I really like guiding meditations and discover a lot about myself when I lead them. Students seem to enjoy my humor, my willingness to share my personal experiences, and my radio-honed voice.

What I’m learning to prioritize is:

Yoga as an individual exploration of a greater connection outward by journeying inward. To look at students’ poses and imagine how I can help them refine their own optimized practice for their current needs rather than how they can achieve my idea of an “ideal” practice. How to find the right spaces for quiet as well as instruction, in asana and in meditation.

A bit about me:

I wear many hats. I teach yoga, I am a student, I am sous chef at a local catering company, I am a sister, I am a daughter, I am a friend. I am person who loves a decaf oat milk lattes with honey and cinnamon.

My training includes:

My yoga training has exclusively been in Purna Yoga. I have been a student of Letitia’s since 2014. I received my 200 hour certification with Catharine Eberhart in 2017 and my 500 hour with Aadil Palkhivala and Savitri in 2020. Since then, I have many continuing education hours in Yoga Therapeutics with Letitia and Aadil and I am currently working on my Bachelors of Health Science.

My teaching style is:

My teaching style is very warm and gentle. I have a tendency to be a bit silly. My classes can be physically challenging. I love to incorporate yogic philosophy and anatomy.

Where I feel most myself is:

I feel most myself when I am walking outside in nature. I might be listening to a book or podcast or perhaps just the sound of the wind and the birds. It’s my time where all I have to do is take one step and then another. It’s simple.

A bit about me:

I am a retired ocean scientist, and am still discovering what I want to do when I grow up. Like a very lucky cat, I have lived many lives, and yet deep down inside, I am a child, my 10-year old self. I spend my time taking walks, reading, re-learning piano, cooking, traveling, but in the back of my mind, I know I am just a passenger in this body.

My training includes:

My training includes a 200 hour Purna yoga teacher certification, and numerous workshops and classes with Aadil Palkhivala and Letitia Walker. Through the years, I have also explored the philosophical roots of yoga, the link to Ayurveda, and the science of why yoga works.

My teaching style is:

My teaching style is to offer a gentle and accessible practice often using props, giving students an opportunity to explore their body and their way of thinking. I also offer ways to add challenge for those who want it. During class, we cultivate humor, humility, and dedication, pausing to watch our thoughts, our breath, learning to be a better person.

What I’m learning to prioritize is:

My health, physically and mentally, so I can be in the best position to help others. I endeavor to transform my mistakes, my injuries, my blind spots into opportunities for humility, courage, and learning. Instead of telling others what or how they should do, I strive to be the example, flawed as I may be.

A bit about me:

Yoga found me. After set back from a car accident my doctor sent me to yoga as part of my recovery. I’m forever grateful.

My training includes:

Various styles of yoga: yin, hatha, vinyasa, aerial, yoga tune up, 200 hours of yoga therapy and Pilates certification. My latest style of yoga I have learned is the great yoga wall.

My teaching style is:

I find my teaching style to be eclectic. For each student to honor their own body during practice. I aim to create a supportive and safe environment for all.

What I’m learning to prioritize is:

I’m learning to prioritize self-care. Life gets in the way and sometimes I put myself on the back burner so to speak.

A bit about me:

I’m originally from South Africa. Have lived and travelled to many places on our beautiful globe. I love my dog, Jax. I’m a published Poet, love to dance, paint and write.

My training includes:

A background in Dance, my first love. Anusara Yoga. Siddha Yoga Hatha Yoga teacher. Trauma informed teacher, which includes working with adults with special needs. Certified kids Yoga teacher.

My teaching style is:

Is rooted in alignment, which lends to safety first and ultimately freedom. I teach from The Heart, interweaving various philosophies and life experience. A little woo woo with a lot of real.

What I’m learning to prioritize is:

Is learning to prioritize my boundaries and honor them. This helps me cultivate the crown jewel of all the virtues, Trust. Trust in the Divine and myself.

A bit about me:

I fell in love with Purna Yoga after taking my first class with Hannah Berlin at PY828 in April of 2019, and then signing up for Hannah’s “Deconstructing Downward Facing Dog” workshop that was happening the very next day. By the end of the month, I was a regular at the studio, working the front desk, and welcoming other students to class. Before I knew it, I was graduating from the 200 Hour training at Purna Yoga 828 in October of 2020. Off the mat,I enjoy tending to my garden, cooking, reading, and spending time in nature with my family.

My training includes:

Graduating from the 200 Hour training at Purna Yoga 828, completing Level One and Two of the Great Yoga Wall training with Letitia, and taking numerous workshops with Aadil Palkhivala on a variety of subjects.

My teaching style is:

My approach to teaching includes a balance between tapas and santosha, the Sanskrit words for discipline and contentment. I aim to bring a bright smile and playful energy to each class I teach and am dedicated to empowering myself and others to discover and become more of their truest and most authentic self. My aim as a yoga instructor is to create a safe and supportive environment for people of all ages, races, genders, and body types so that more may experience the wonderful benefits of yoga on the mat and in all aspects of life.

The threads I’m following right now are:

Purna Yoga teaches us that only when we learn to live as much as possible from the dictates of the heart chakra, are we able to fulfill our dharma, our life purpose. Ultimately, I hope to inspire my students to approach their practice with a sense of curiosity and exploration so that they may discover that inner wisdom and live their dharma, as well.

Gloria is a longtime PY828 student and one of our dedicated substitute teachers for Chair Yoga.

Melody became interested in the world of yoga as a teenager when she adopted a macrobiotic diet and began to read voraciously about different forms of self care and spiritual awareness. She came across BKS Iyengar’s book, Light on Yoga, and began to practice in her hometown of New York City.  A professional musician whose main instruments are harp, piano and voice, she uses her musicality to
to connect intuitively with others while emanating joy and confidence. “I now see my music as a vehicle and not just an end in itself.”

Her personal practice deepened when she moved to Asheville in 2016 from her longtime home of Key West, Florida and relied on her daily practice for grounding, ease and balance during the transition. She took classes with Cindy Dollar at the Iyengar-focused studio One Center Yoga as well as with Letitia at PY828. In October of 2020, she graduated with her 200 Hour Certification from Purna Yoga College at Purna Yoga 828. Melody has a great love and affinity for teaching Yoga Nidra, or yogic sleep, as well as soothing and accessible restorative sequences and poses. She holds a 100 Hour Certification in Yoga Nidra from Indu Arora of Yog Sadha.

“I think of restorative yoga as the younger sister to the deeper work of Yoga Nidra where you release the body, mind and emotions to touch base with our inner light. It is the deep joy that comes from this experience that I long to share with others.”