Emily’s Yoga Background
I was fifteen the first time I experienced yoga in a high school PE class. I remember going home after school and practicing the warrior poses alone in my room, recalling my teacher's cues to feel "strong" and "stable." I had never truly felt strong or stable before, so the idea really appealed to me. Working on Warrior II in my bedroom was the first time I EVER felt strong.
With a desire to create a community of people who wanted to experience, talk about and practice yoga, I decided to found the Yoga Club at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Thirty students attended the first meeting. They entered the room, quietly set up their mats and waited patiently for a class to begin.
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I had thought that we might chat, get to know each other, maybe decide to practice together—but never in a million years did I think that I would be teaching a class. Still they waited in silence with such persistence that I grounded myself and made the decision to teach.
With no official training, I taught up to four free yoga classes a week until I graduated and handed the Club down to other passionate students. We practiced all over campus, we took hikes to destinations and found beautiful coastlines to practice on.
For my Sociology Senior Thesis I interned at the local yoga studio, teaching their “Free Community Class” and learning as much as I could through hours and hours of observational research. My thesis was an ethnographic case study concerning the construction of community through a mutual desire for health, and the practice of Yoga as a means for achieving social connectedness.
After graduation I immediately left for Santa Fe, New Mexico where I spent the summer studying Yoga under Tias and Surya Little and Linda Spackman. I received my 200-hour teacher training from Prajna Yoga, and have been teaching ever since. I have continued my education through workshops with various instructors, officially was trained as a prenatal yoga instructor (RPYT) and am now a continuing education provider through Yoga Alliance.
The Teacher Training at Prajna Yoga is truly special. Spending thirty consecutive days with the same community of individuals working towards the same goal was rare and exceptional. Because Tias, Surya and Linda come from such different backgrounds, they were able to bring experiences from every perspective. We studied different forms of meditation and asana, prenatal and postpartum yoga, anatomy and physiology, nutrition and yoga, Buddist, Taoist, and Yogic philosophies...
In March, 2015 I had the pleasure of attending a yoga teacher training in Thailand where I met up with the yoga instructor who first inspired me in India, Gaurav Malik.
April 2016 was an incredible time for me, where I was exposed to Leslie Howard's workshop: Yoga and the Female Pelvic Floor.
I completed my Prenatal Yoga Teacher Certification Program in early 2018 at Yoga Garden SF (Now Folk Yoga) with Alexandra Rossi. Contributions by Leslie Howard and Katrin Kutner. I have been a contributing teacher to Yoga Garden SF's Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training since October, 2018.
In 2023, I completed Leslie Howard’s Pelvic Floor Yoga (TM) Training.
Now, I teach 1:1 yoga to clients over Zoom, or privately in their homes in Portland, Oregon. My clients typically are focused on fertility, pregnancy, or postpartum practices, and because I am a doctor of PT, I can help to create and modify plans that really work for my clients.
