Offerings from My Heart and Soul

I am a mother of two and a certified yoga, meditation and breathwork teacher, retreat leader, yoga teacher trainer, massage therapist, craniosacral therapy and Reiki practitioner, infant massage instructor, and birth educator. With over 25 years experience in the healing arts, I have a passionate and extensive specialization in women’s health, in the childbearing year, and in drawing deeply upon yoga to sustain us through all phases of life. My greatest joy is supporting people with practices that open a path to transformation, growth, and connection with one’s true essence.  

I have loved massage since childhood, and I began to practice meditation at age 18, and yoga after my first trip to India at age 21. My life before the healing arts as a profession spanned numerous countries and states and centered on economic development and education and social policy. The desire to conceive a child led me to focus more on my yoga and meditation practice, and to consider shifting away from work that demanded 70+ hours a week and extensive travel.  

Yoga during my first pregnancy in 2000 changed my life in the most beautiful, profound ways – it allowed me to cultivate a new depth of awakening, inner tranquility, trust in my body’s innate wisdom, and connection with my baby – all of which propelled me to change my professional path in order to guide other women along this path of transformation. The moment I began to teach I felt as though I had come home to a place warm, rich and familiar, and I have loved teaching yoga ever since.

My growth in offerings over the past two decades has been a deeply organic process based upon my personal and professional life experiences and continuous study independently and with extraordinary teachers (highlights noted below). I bring in my experience in sustaining, healing from, and preventing injuries, in managing the stresses of raising children, and in creating healthy community. I am committed to the ongoing inner work yoga guides - to face our unconscious beliefs and evolve to allow more and more of the luminosity of Self to shine through.

I feel profoundly moved and blessed every day by the intimate sharing in people’s lives that this work invites. Thank you for considering working with me!

 

Namaste,

Kari

 

Influences

  • Barbara Kaplan (Iyengar Yoga), Erich Schiffmann (Inner Yoga), Shiva Rea (Vinyasa Flow), Michael Cooper (Power Yoga), Charu Rachlis (Hatha Yoga, meditation, breathwork, retreat leading), Judith Lasater (Restorative Yoga), Helen Garabedian (Baby Yoga), Jai Uttal + Nubia Teixiera + Daniel Paul (Bhakti Yoga), Harvey Deutsch + Anne Saliou (Therapeutic Yoga), Kate Holcombe (Yoga Sutra), and Himalayan Yog-Vedantic Teachings, Kundalini and Kriya. My anatomy and movement bodywork studies and meditation practice have strongly informed my teaching and my touch as well.

    There were no well known Prenatal or Postnatal Yoga trainings yet when I began to teach in 2000. I developed my teaching based on my own experience of yoga through conception, birth and beyond, my prenatal massage study, supporting thousands of women through the childbearing year with yoga and massage with deep attention and attunement, continuous reading and study, training new teachers, collaborating with other prenatal teachers over the years, and most recently, integrating Himalayan Yoga prenatal teachings of mantra, kriya, and pranayama.

  • Jocelyn Olivier (Neuromuscular Reprogramming), David Weinstock (Neuromuscular Reprogramming and Craniosacral Therapy), Art Riggs (Deep Tissue), Carole Osborne (Prenatal and Postnatal), Eric Rubin (Craniosacral Therapy and Reiki).

  • My meditation teachers and journey are shared in depth here.