meet our yoga instructors

Name: Cassandra Bakke

Certification: RYT® 200, Yoga Works, 2015; 30-Hour Kids Yoga Training from Karma Kids Yoga, 2016; 85-Hour Prenatal Yoga Training, Floryoga, 2017.

From: New Jersey

Favorite Pose: Sirsasana (Headstand - I just love being upside-down).

Why I Teach: I teach to give back to my community in the best way I know how. I love creating a safe space for my students to explore and grow on their personal path where ever that may take them.

Life Mantra: Sutra 1.14 Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without a break, and with enthusiasm. 

Name: Emily Byrd

Certification: RYT® 200, Santhi Yoga International, Kerala, India.

From: North Carolina

Favorite Pose: Pincha Mayurasana (peacock or any bird pose!)

Why I Teach: Life is relentlessly chaotic, but our minds don’t have to be. Yoga is the best way I've found to understand that fact. I teach so that I can support my students on a path toward greater mental clarity, resilience, and equanimity. I teach to share the joy of practicing. And, I teach to pass along all the good things yoga has brought to my own life. 

Favorite Quote: "Let the beauty of what we love be what we do – there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground" - Rumi

Name: Emily MacLeod

Certification: RYT® 200, Urban Yoga, Charleston.

From: Long Island, NY

Favorite Pose: This changes every few months for me; but right now, trikonasana!

Why I Teach: I have immense gratitude for my very first yoga teacher. She taught me to trust, love, and believe in myself and know that I hold power. I teach because I hope to instill these things upon others.

Favorite Quote: "I am enough."

Name: Joshua Randorf

Certification: E-RYT® 200, Yoga Alliance; West Hartford Yoga, West Hartford, CT

From: That is a difficult question to answer, and it depends on how you qualify “from.” I was born in Seattle, spent my elementary school years in Chicago, spent my Middle and High School years in Western Mass, and then spent the last 25 years trying to find “home” including 10 years in CT, and the immediately preceding 3 years in Seattle

Favorite Pose: My favorite foundational pose is Virabhadrasana 1. Warrior 1 is the foundation to all other rooted, engaged, alignment based postures. This trains the body to feel proper joint alignment (from the connection between the feet and the ground, to the base of the skull with the cervical spine) and develops proper isostatic endurance helping to prevent muscular atrophy and injury as we get older. I don’t have a favorite advanced posture, I just like everything that challenges the edge of my comfort zone and helps me further integrate the mind and body with breath.

Why I Teach: I teach because the practice of yoga gave me my mobility back and helped me work through some fairly serious physical injuries. I teach because helping other people develop these physical, mental, and life changing benefits is my calling.

Favorite Quote: "Think, bigger picture."

Name: Nan Catherine McCully

Certification: RYT® 200, Power Yoga Certified, Charleston, South Carolina.

Favorite Pose: Natarajasana (King Dancer)

Why I Teach: I teach yoga because I love the transformation yoga can have on someone’s life. Yoga is a source of joy, healing, and balance. By showing up with confidence to teach, I am able to become a powerful mirror for my students to get out of their own stories about themselves. Through teaching, my students can then begin to experience what is possible, instead of staying focused on the definition they have for themselves.

Life Mantra: More than enough, and capable

Favorite Quote: “Don’t compare your life to others. There’s no comparison between the Sun and the Moon; they shine when it’s their time.” - Cassey Ho

Name: Patti Dohring

Certification: RYT® 200, Charleston Power Yoga. Level One, Baptiste. I have done many workshops and training, including the Art of Assisting, Advanced Art of Assisting. Baptiste Certified Instructor.

From: Buffalo, NY 

Favorite Pose: Urdhva Dhanurasana

Why I Teach: To share and continue learning. Why yoga...yoga quietly and slowly changed my world. Better attitude, better eating habits, a quieter mind, deeper level awareness, and some wonderful people have all come into my world thru yoga.

Favorite Quote: “Life is too short to worry about matching socks."

Name: Rita Donnelly

Certification: ERYT 200.

From: Washington, DC

Favorite Pose: Utpluti Dandasana (floating stick)

Why I Teach: I have realized the benefits of yoga can have for backs, for hamstrings, for the entire body. I like to be able to share the benefits with my students. I have found Yin to be especially beneficial to athletes.

Life Mantra: I have the ability to bring reality to anything I choose.

Name: Shannon McKenzie

Certification: RYT® 200, Yoga Source, Richmond, VA, 2003; year-long teacher training; Anusara Immersion and training, 200-Hour; Numerous workshops and trainings in Iyengar and Vinyasa styles of yoga from 1999-2019; Currently completing 500-Hour certification; Mindfulness Meditation Training through KORU Mindfulness, 2016; Certified FRC® Mobility Specialist (FRCms) - Functional Range Conditioning in mobility development, joint strengthening, and body control, 2019.

From:  Lexington, KY  

Favorite Pose: Supta Padangusthasana (reclining hand-to-big-toe pose)

Why I Teach: I teach to create a community of students and friends that lead a better life and have better experiences due to their practice. I am passionate about the practice, about the connections it can create, about the compassion it can instill in us, about the awareness that yoga can, and does, bring me and others every day.

Favorite Quote: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Viktor Frankl

Name: Sarah Bowdoin

Certification: RYT® 200 from Om West in Montezuma, Costa Rica.

From: Houston, Texas  

Favorite Pose: My favorite yoga pose is probably Supta Baddha Konasana. I love restorative hip openers. Sometimes I nap in this pose!

Why I Teach: As a professional ballet dancer, my day job involves a lot of emphasis on visual aesthetic and technical perfection. I love yoga and sharing the practice of yoga because it is the opposite of that! Everyone's practice is individual and unique, and how you feel is way more important than how you look. It's comforting and kind of magical to be in a space of non-judgement, with everyone breathing and moving together.

Favorite Quote: "Passion is energy, feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you."

Name: Dr. Sundar Balasubramanian

Dr. Sundar Balasubramanian is a Cell Biology researcher currently studying cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in resistance to cancer therapy at the Medical University of South Carolina, USA. He is also a Yoga Biology researcher, and is the Founder/Director of PranaScience Institute. Sundar’s Yoga research has provided scientific evidence how Yoga breathing practices could promote wellbeing in health and disease. His first book is “PranaScience: Decoding Yoga Breathing”, and his latest book is “Mind Your Breathing: The Yogi’s Handbook with 37 Pranayama Exercises”. His recent audio album is “Chanting Is Pranayama”. He was a speaker at TEDx Charleston 2015, and his video is among the most popular in the field (~630,000 views).

Name: Tanya Boykin

Certification: RYT® 200, Yoga Alliance. I earned my 200RYT through the Baptiste Institute and studied with Baron Baptiste and Paige Elenson in 2012 and 2014 with Level One, Level Two, and Art of Assisting.  Additional studies include Ashtanga with Doug Swenson and Advanced Studies with Suzanne Newton, Yoga Dharma in Huntsville, Alabama.  I am currently pursuing Advanced Studies towards 500-Hour yoga training through Holy Cow Yoga in Charleston.

From: San Antonio, Texas 

Favorite Pose: Triangle because of its open and expansive quality.

Why I Teach: I teach yoga because I have personally benefited from the practice and want to share yoga with others. I believe that yoga is a transformative lifestyle that encompasses the physical body as well as the mental and spiritual aspects of the whole person. I believe yoga practice transforms the individual, which transforms the world. Yoga is never ending. There is always something new to discover, learn and practice.

Life Mantra/Favorite Quote: Watch your thoughts, they become words;
Watch your words, they become actions;
Watch your actions, they become habits;
Watch your habits, they become character;
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

Name: Teresa Bulford

Certification: RYT® 200, Hatha Yoga.

From: Holy Cow 

Favorite Pose: Virabhadrasana III (Warrior III)

Why I Teach: to remind yogis to embrace balance through strength both on and off the mat

Life Mantra: “I’m thankful for my struggle because without it I wouldn’t have stumbled across my strength.”

Name: Vedrana Gjivoje

Certification: RYT® 200, Princeton Power Yoga, 2017; and currently working on 300-Hour certification.

From: Dubrovnik, Croatia

Favorite Pose: Anjaneyasana (Crescent Pose)

Why I Teach: To help disseminate the incredible power of yoga into the lives of others. Yoga is bar none the most powerful tool to help remedy what ails the mind, the body, and the soul. Its pure magic, and at some level available to all.