Kate’s Yoga Experience & Training

What began as a once-a-week class in 2006, has become a daily devotion in 2026. Yoga practice has been a constant in my life for the past two decades keeping me tethered within through all the ups, downs, and plateaus. Morning practice has brought structure and support to my life through three pregnancies, three births, three experiences of postpartum, major surgery, many beginnings and endings, unexpected loss, unexpected gain, transitions, elations, and devastations. It is a trusted path to returning home to myself again and again. In a world that is constantly in flux, the consistency of practice has become a saving grace.

Here’s the longer version of the story…

In 2006 while attending graduate school at a Buddhist University, I was trained in vipassana and samatha meditation, and immediately took it up as a daily practice. In the beginning, I was bombarded with so much discomfort in the mind and in the body that I could hardly hold my seat. Fortunately, despite a rebellious and restless mind, I had strong conviction that this was my path, and I stuck with the practice. With consistency over several years, the discomfort faded, and the ability to place the awareness in my body and sustain it there for longer and longer periods of time had been cultivated.

In this same year, a friend started taking me to a Sunday Kundalini yoga class. The class size was small and everyone was older than us. We sang together, chanted, and moved our bodies and breath in new and unexpected ways. After class, we all had tea and cookies together. The feeling of community that grew from spending time together with the same people week after week was just as important to me as the physical practice. Over time, I branched out to other types of yoga, seeking new forms of the practice.

Physically speaking, I was in a stiff, clenched, tense, restricted body. I was not one of those kids who spent sunny afternoons doing round-offs, handstands, and dropping into backbends. Mentally speaking, rights and lefts mixed me up, inversions disoriented me, and I often had difficulty interpreting the teacher’s instructions in my own body. Yoga practice deeply challenged me, bringing me face-to-face with opportunities for growth emotionally, mentally, and physically.

Despite the discomfort and the vulnerability that persisted for the first decade or so of practice, I stuck with it. For years, day after day, I would get on the mat, and do what I could. I read books, I went to classes, I tried a variety of teachers and styles. I just kept trying. I had so much conviction that yoga was my path, and eventually, little by little, things began to shift.

The major turning point came in January of 2017, when I started studying yoga with Todd Jackson. His emphasis on inner body integration over forced idealized shapes changed everything for me. I continue to be a dedicated student to this day. In his class, we utilize a meditative awareness to come deeply into the body, and truly feel the shapes unfold from the inside out.

Todd Jackson graduated from the Advanced Studies Program at The Yoga Room in Berkley, and has been teaching yoga since 1997. After multiple decades of learning, teaching, and deep personal practice, Todd presents original content in the field of yoga.

What I teach comes directly from what Todd has taught to me. Todd’s main teachers, Donald Moyer and Mary Lou Weprin, had a profound influence on his practice and teaching style. B.K.S. Iyengar taught Donald Moyer and Mary Lou Weprin. I am forever grateful for Todd’s patient guidance, clear instruction, and wonderful sense of humor. If there is anything of value that I pass on through teaching yoga, the credit belongs to him.

As for formal training, at the end of 2017, I completed a 200-hour Yoga Alliance certified teacher training program along with a supplementary restorative teacher training program in Portland, Oregon at Love Hive Yoga. I taught for three years at their studio in Portland until Covid shut things down, and I have been teaching classes on Maui since August of 2023.

Gratitude

Teaching yoga in this way allows me to give to others the tremendous gift of practice that has been given to me. It is my way of honoring the long lineage of practitioners that have kept yoga alive and continually evolving for thousands of years. It fulfills me to share this experience and I couldn’t do it without dedicated students like you. I truly believe that the work we do together on the mat goes with us into the world and creates ripples that positively impact all the relationships in our lives. Thank you for joining this beautiful community of practitioners and making the world a more wonderful place!