Sara Saberi is an alignment-based Hatha yoga instructor, dedicated to fostering a deep connection between individuals and their bodies in a nurturing and safe environment. Her teachings and gentle adjustments foster a deep understanding of the body anatomy, guiding you to tap into your inner wisdom..
Growing up in Tehran, Iran, yoga was a rarity. It was a stroke of serendipity that led Sara to a prominent Iyengar teacher's 42nd birthday party. Sara vividly recalls, 'The teacher danced with the energy of a 20-year-old! How could I resist trying yoga?' This chance encounter marked the beginning of Sara's journey into yoga nearly 15 years ago as Elham Badrian became her first yoga teacher at the Tehran Iyengar Institute.
Feeling a profound calling to deepen her practice, Sara made a courageous decision in 2014. She sold her car and embarked on a one-way journey to India, where she dedicated two transformative years to practicing and learning yoga under senior instructors, including Sharat Arora of HIYC-Dharamsala and Surrender Singh of Swasti Yoga-Rishikesh, ultimately earning her 200-hour certification. Upon her return to Iran, she opened a humble studio in Tehran to share all she had learned.
Teaching quickly emerged as one of the most rewarding facets of Sara's yoga journey. Sara was fortunate to achieve her 500-hour certification under the guidance of esteemed teachers in the Bay Area at The Yoga Room Berkeley.
Beyond the world of yoga, Sara is a professional musician, classically trained in traditional Persian music since the age of 11. She has graced audiences worldwide with her artistry on the Barbat, an ancient Persian healing instrument.
Today, Sara's teachings grace the East Bay, where she offers unique 'Yoga with Persian Classical Fusion' events. These events blend journaling, meditation, restorative yoga, live music, and her soulful vocals, creating a profound experience of healing, transformation, and spiritual connection in every moment.
Dominique Cowling
Dominique (she, her) is a Bay Area native dedicated to transforming trauma and violence into opportunities of embodied liberation. She is honored to share tools of mindfulness and trauma informed yoga for collective healing. For the past decade, her community based work has centered the self determination of BIPOC and LGBTQ2+ communities. As the former Healing Justice Program Director at Community United Against Violence she supported queer and Trans survivors of intimate partner violence, hate violence and violence from the police. In addition to being a dedicated student to politicized healing movements, she completed her yoga teacher training at Namaste Yoga + Wellness and Relax and Renew (Level 1) Restorative Yoga training with Judith Lasater. She believes that Restorative Yoga is one powerful way to support the nervous system and be a catalyst to the transformation we want to see for our future. Dominique's work is deeply guided by her relationship to spirit and the natural world. Through her business, Black Seeds Project she provides individual and group sessions in the outdoors. These sessions explore ways to deepen our relationships through the lessons from mama nature. Visit her website at brownsugayogini.com.
Rose Allen
Rose (she/her) began her movement practice at the age of seven, studying ballet intensively through high school and falling into modern dance in college. She gravitated to yoga asana as a natural complement to her dance practice after graduating, finding that it strengthened and balanced her body and awareness in her dancing. Her choreographic dance background strongly influences her teaching resulting in creative, playful, yet adaptable sequencing. Rose hopes to share her passion for movement and yoga asana with humans of all ages and abilities and to support her students in finding ways of moving that help them find their power, grace, and curiosity in their movement and the rest of their lives.
Rose completed her 200-hr yoga teacher training at the former Vibe Yoga with Jonathan Rickert. She has completed additional training in Trauma Center-Trauma Sensitive Yoga, Mama Tree Prenatal Yoga, Restorative Yoga, and Yoga for Teens, among others.
If she’s not at work or in the studio, Rose can often be found planning her next travel adventure or hanging out with her rescue pup, Katsu.
Keisha Courtney
Keisha found yoga when she was in a high-visibility, high-stress career as a TV news reporter. Her yoga practice helped her cope with anxiety not only in my job, but also in her daily life. She says she is thankful for her practice every day as it reminds her not to take myself too seriously, to breathe, and to be present.
She received her 200-hour training certificate from Namaste Yoga and Wellness Center, and has been trained by alignment instructor Whitney Walsh, who her classes are heavily influenced by.
Students who attend her alignment-focused vinyasa classes can expect a high energy class that will pique their curiosity about their own movement. Also, many of her students say her playlists tend to be the icing on the cake!
Keisha is an E-RYT 200 teacher, YACEP, and founder of The Driven Yogi, a continuing education platform that trains yoga teachers how to become safer, more effective, and inclusive instructors.
Richard Rosen
BIO.
BORN: The Big Apple
CURRENT TOWN: Berkeley, CA
OCCUPATION: Yoga Instructor / Writer
RICHARD ROSEN began his practice of yoga in 1980 at the Yoga Room, in Berkeley, CA. Two years later he began a two-year teacher training course at the B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco, from which he graduated in 1983. In 1987, with his good friend Rodney Yee, he opened the Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, CA, which operated until 2012. Richard has written numerous articles and reviews for national yoga magazines, and is also the author of five books, four of them published by Shambhala: The Yoga of Breath (2002), Pranayama: Beyond the Fundamentals (2006), Original Yoga (2012), a book on traditional yoga practice based on the seventeenth century Gheranda Samhita (Gheranda’s Compilation), and Yoga FAQ: Almost Everything You Need to Know about Yoga–from Asanas to Yamas (2017). His fifth book for Shambhala, Yoga by the Numbers, is due out in the Spring of 2022. Richard lives in a 115-year-old bungalow in beautiful Berkeley, CA.
Vickie Russell
Bio
Vickie strives to facilitate connections, fostering an environment where students can drop below the layers of habit and distraction in order to integrate more fully with who they really are and with their more expansive nature.
In her classes, you will learn about alignment and the subtle body and breath in order to be transported into new territory and possibility. She creatively and intelligently interweaves asana, meditation and restorative yoga to help students regulate the nervous system and find a sense of presence.
Teaching and sharing yoga has been Vickie’s passion for over 20 years. She graduated from the Advanced Studies Program at Piedmont Yoga and has been greatly influenced by many teachers including (and not limited to) Richard Rosen, Rodney Yee, Judith Lasater, and Tony Briggs.
Yoko Yoshikawa
BIO.
Yoko has been teaching yoga in Oakland since 1996. She builds sequences that are effective, often fun and always pithy, sweeping everyone in the class to greater flexibility, body intelligence, core strength, deeper breathing and more ease. Yoko is also a bit of a yoga philosophy geek — feel free to talk to her about it at any time! Contact her for private instruction and check out her website (plus blog).
Margi Young
BIO.
BORN: to explore
CURRENT TOWN: oaktown
OCCUPATION: spreading the news
Margi’s classes emphasize clear, individualized alignment, awareness of breath and relaxation so that the benefits of yoga reveal themselves. She roots her alignment-based vinyasa classes both in Buddhist philosophy and in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali to invite the physical practice to result in a calm mental state. She offers personal attention, both verbal and hands-on, to help her students clarify and deepen their practice. Taking a cue from the Buddha, Margi’s classes are light-hearted; it is imperative that we come together and study this vast subject with joy.
After receiving an MFA from New York University ‘s Tisch School of the arts, Margi was a professional dancer and choreographer in New York. But, her yoga mat and teaching called her name loudly and in 2001 she became certified from Cyndi Lee’s OM Yoga Center, where she taught for 10 years, was a primary teacher on the teacher training staff, and headed the restorative department of the studio. She is also certified in pre-natal yoga through Integral Yoga Center and restorative yoga through Judith Lasater, and continuously studies the teachings of BKS Iyengar. She has lead numerous workshops and retreats in the USA and around the world, and regularly leads teacher trainings in Bali with Recharge Retreats. Margi relocated to her home town of San Francisco in 2010 and has recently happily moved to Oakland. For more info please visit www.margiyoung.com.
Jacqui Rowley
Jacqui teaches a dynamic and centering hatha class, blending the precision of alignment with movement and breath awareness.
She had studied movement through dance since childhood, and has been stretching, twisting, binding and playing with the physical form for years.
jacquirowleyyoga.com
Lynn Ursic
Lynn arrived to the heart of Hatha Yoga in 2010 at Piedmont Yoga Studio,
training with Richard Rosen and esteemed faculty. Since that deep dive
she has continued her studies including a second teacher training, anatomy,
pranayama and The Roll Model Method.
She brings an athlete‘s sense of body and a designer’s sense of space to her
teaching. Relentlessly kind and attentive, Lynn sends her students out of practice
feeling relaxed, refreshed and self reliant. Her mission is simple, bring into the
world more clarity, more compassion, more connection, more love.
She has great gratitude for her many wise, wonderful teachers.
website: lynnursic.com
Darren Main
For over thirty years, Darren Main has been writing books, teaching yoga and speaking about mindful living. His work has evolved to support yoga teachers and studio owners in growing a successful and ethical yoga business. He currently lives in Northern California with his son Jaden where he teaches yoga in San Francisco’s iconic Grace Cathedral.
Melina Meza
Melina Meza is a pioneer in the field of yoga, nutrition, and Ayurvedic Health, sharing her knowledge with yogis around the world for more over 20 years.
She is the creator of Seasonal Vinyasa Yoga, a holistic practice that features lifestyle, diet, and yoga practices tailored to the rhythms of the four seasons to help people stay healthy as they age. Her passion for Nature, the five elements, beauty, and humor forge the foundation of her unique approach to well-being.
Melina facilitates year-round yoga and Ayurveda workshops, leading retreats in extraordinary sanctuaries around the world. She is the author of Seasonal Health and Wellness and the Art of Sequencing books as well as the creator of the Yoga for the Seasons – Fall Vinyasa DVD. Her unique teachings can also be found on Yoga Anytime, YogaUonline, and Gaiamtv.
From her very first yoga class in 1993, she has never stopped exploring the physical, mental, and spiritual practices passed down from the ancient sages. Yoga has been the “launching pad”—as her teacher Gary Kraftsow describes it—that has rocketed her into a life journey of cultivating the disciplines necessary to gain insight and wisdom integral to being healthy, compassionate, and radiant, as well as how to share those gifts with others. In addition to teaching yoga to thousands of practitioners since 1997, for over 16 years Melina led the 200- and 500-Hour Teachers’ Training Program at Seattle 8 Limbs Yoga Center as either Director or Co-Director.
With creativity at the center of her passions, Melina loves to inspire and be inspired, bringing this not only to her teaching but to her artistry as well. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious, igniting the creative fire in those with whom she connects.