Liz Buehler (Co-Owner of Yoga High)
liz@yogahighnyc.com
Liz originally hails from Atlanta, Georgia and completed her Vinyasa Yoga teacher training in 2001 at the legendary East Village Yoga center Bhava Yoga with Peter Rizzo. It was in her classes and training at Bhava that Liz was able to first experience the Yogic principles live and in person. For this, she is forever grateful. The passion for Yoga and serving others at Bhava was contagious, and since 2001 Liz has been teaching group and private classes in Brooklyn and Manhattan and loving every minute of it.
In addition to extensive work and study with Peter Rizzo, she has studied with well-known Yoga instructors Dharma Mittra, Lois Nesbitt, Max Strom, Gurunam and Edward Clark. Liz also studies with many “not so well-known” teachers whom she appreciates and values just as much.
Liz’s background in modern dance feeds directly into her affinity for the movement of Vinyasa Yoga. After completing her dance training at the Ailey School, Liz co-founded Gritty Cherries, Inc, a non-profit dance production company where she continues to serve as Managing Director. Her experience in production was immeasurably helpful as she and Mel conceptualized and created their vision for Yoga High.
To Mel: Thank you for partnering with me on our dream of happiness and freedom for all beings.
To the students of Yoga High: Thank you for your warmth and sense of adventure. Thank you for freely sharing your struggles, accomplishments and practices with all of us.
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Mel Russo (Co-Owner of Yoga High)
mel@yogahighnyc.com
Originally from NYC, Mel began her love affair with Yoga in 1995 while living in Los Angeles and working as a casting director. She started with a 6 day a week Anusara practice where she first felt the Yoga high that made her so happy. Throughout the years she found more of a connection with the style of Hatha Vinyasa and the teachings of Max Strom.
After moving back to NYC in 2000, she received her certification through the Yoga Alliance in 2004. Mel finds knowledge and inspiration from so many wonderful teachers and continues to study and train under the guidance of Max Strom. It was (and still is) through his ethics, compassion, brilliance and pure goodness that Mel feels she really became the teacher she is now.
While teaching she loves using music, humor and positive encouragement to help students connect with their intention and feels strongly that being “good at yoga” does not mean being able to do an advanced pose.
Mel dreamed of opening up her own yoga studio for years and feels like the luckiest person in the world to have found Liz to share the dream with and to have found a community of students who make every moment worth it.
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Ani Weinstein
Ani learned her first sun salutations from her mother at age five. Yoga emerged as an integral part of her life twenty years later, and her commitment and joy in practicing and teaching continues to grow. Finding resonance with OM Yoga Center’s Buddhist perspective and flowing, creative practice, she completed the Road to OM teacher training in 2006. Ani is also a dancer and has performed and created work in NYC for the past eight years. She brings her love of movement and ideas into her yoga teaching, searching for creative connections between poses, concepts and people.
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Brett Boyar
Brett Boyar came to yoga from a lifetime practice of multiple martial arts. The realization that martial arts were not really the metaphor for interacting with the world that he wanted to cultivate, he quickly
found himself immersed in a regular yoga practice. With a previous career in massage therapy, a strong love of anatomy, and an aspiration to help people on a very personal level, Brett decided to enter teacher training at OM Yoga in New York, and graduated in 2007. He aspires to teach in a clear and compassionate manner, with both humility and humor, as well as with mischief. Brett is a practicing buddhist in the Shambhala lineage. He is thankful to all his teachers, who are too numerous to name and is very excited about teaching at Yoga High.
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Carrie Martens
Carrie took her first yoga class shortly after relocating to New York City from the West Coast to pursue an MFA in writing from New York University. She found the practice to be a grounding and calming presence in the midst of a major life transition. As her practice deepened her love for yoga did as well, and she completed teaching training through Laughing Lotus Yoga Center. Her classes blend graceful sequencing, pranayama and meditation to create a challenging yet restorative practice, finding a balance between effort and surrender, movement and stillness, every transition guided by the breath. She is grateful to all of her teachers for their unending support and guidance along this path.
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Emily Hicks
Emily first came to yoga to work her body and calm her mind, but soon began to suspect that the yoga practice was intended to do much more. She is eternally grateful to have found the teachers who have taught her the true aim of the practice—not to find a temporary refuge from our daily troubles, but to help us directly realize the true nature of ourselves and our world and thus permanently eradicate suffering in all its forms. With this intention in mind, Emily teaches a tough but joyful class, using both the outer and inner methods of the yoga practice as a means to ultimate transformation and liberation.
Emily is honored to be a graduate of the Kelly Morris Conquering Lion Teacher Training Program. She gives thanks to all of her countless teachers, notably to Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally for making the teachings of yoga accessible to so many, and to dear Kelly-hla for fearlessly teaching the truth and being a constant presence in all of her students’ lives.
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James Hall
James has been doing yoga for over 10 years, but became serious about the practice when he met his teachers, Michael Hewett and Nicole Nichols. A graduate of the first Kelly Morris Conquering Lion Teacher Training Program, James holds firm to the philosophy that when practicing yoga we must apply both inner and outer methods; we need both wings to fly high and free. He is also a student of the Yoga Studies Institute, Asian Classics Institute and teaches Tibetan Heart Yoga. James is very grateful to his Holy teachers Lama Sumati Marut, Kimberley Veenhoff, Geshe Michael Roach, and Christie McNally. “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere through which we look…..To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of art.” Henry David Thoreau
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Jen Guarnieri
Jen went to her first yoga class in college and instantly fell in love with the practice. At first, she was just attracted to the fun spirit of trying to come into all of the different poses, but soon she gained a greater appreciation for not only the flowing movement of the sequences but also the philosophy and spirituality that is so ingrained in the practice of yoga. She graduated from Laughing Lotus's College of Yoga under the guidance and wisdom of Dana Flynn and Jasmine Tarkeshi. Jen sees teaching as an offering of the heart, and in her classes, she encourages the dynamic dance of movement and breath as a way of unlocking the freedom, peace, and love that signify the true Self. In addition to vinyasa classes, she also teaches kids yoga and prenatal yoga classes. The devotion and passion that Jen has for the yoga practice is what has led her to teach and to share this beautiful practice with others. She is forever grateful to all of her teachers, loved ones, and fellow yogis who continuously inspire her along this journey!
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Patricia Milder
After injuries removed her from the soccer fields she grew up on, Patricia found a new home in the yoga studios of Los Angeles and New York. Over the years, a consistent and evolving yoga practice grew to become the solid foundation of her busy, multi-dimensional life. She is committed to the idea that the greatest benefits of the practice are available here and now, and lead to a fully realized everyday existence. She was certified through Charles and Lisa Matkin’s Transformational Yoga Teacher Training in 2007 and is Yoga Alliance registered. Her teaching incorporates meditation, pranayama, specific alignment points, vinayasa, and Ayurveda, but above all she aims to share herself truthfully and encourages others to keep their personalities with them on the mat. Patricia is thrilled that Yoga High opened this Spring, and loves that she has the opportunity to practice so regularly again with her long-time teachers Liz and Mel.
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TaraMarie Perri
TaraMarie's study of yoga began in 1997 and stemmed from a lifelong fascination with body awareness and movement as a dancer. Her vinyasa classes are designed to keep moving at an organic pace incorporating the breath and mindful transitions, always emphasizing safe practice with proper alignment. Classes will explore an anatomical or energetic theme and are often injected with imagery, kinesiology and other bodywork investigations. She encourages her students to synchronize mind and body and to enjoy the many benefits of yoga as they make their own journeys beyond the physical practice.
TaraMarie received her certification from OM Yoga. When not teaching in the NYC yoga community, she is on Faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts Dance Department, Joffrey Ballet School and American Dance Festival, where she teaches her own Yoga for Dancers curriculum. With an MFA in Dance from Tisch, TaraMarie has performed extensively and taught ballet, modern, dance composition, and movement studies in various US and international venues. She continues to perform with independent choreographers in New York City.
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Tatjana Eres
Yoga found Tatjana in law school and gave her the means to regain balance when overwork and vanity threatened to overwhelm. Following her international law career to New York, she took advantage of the city's rich yoga culture and enrolled in ISHTA teacher training at Be Yoga, now Yoga Works, where she obtained her 500-hour professional certification. Her teaching reflects her experience balancing a professional career with a healthy spiritual life.
Tatjana's classes emphasize movement on the breath, alignment as a means of intelligent practice, and humor as a path to enlightenment. Deeply pragmatic herself, she recognizes that each student's expectations are different and respects students who come for physical practice (asana) and breath work (pranayama); these are the effective, efficient tools that strengthen the body and calm the mind. Tatjana, however, is not afraid to mix it up with digestible doses of spirituality and meditation. If you're not prepared for the divine within you, hold plank and smile. Begin where you are.
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