Leadership Team
More about Sheryl
Sheryl discovers great joy in the experience of being embodied. Sheryl began a steady yoga practice over 20 years ago and her initial training was in Nasik, India at www.yogapoint.com in 2005. Her dedication to yoga ignited while teaching middle and high school however, the earliest seeds were planted through a passion for dance. Sheryl has always been a teacher in some capacity. With a background in experiential education, she was guided to a path of working with people, holding space and facilitating healing. She enjoys connecting and listening to the similarities of the human experience. Sheryl strives to honor the art of teaching in her classes by offering an experience that is inspiring, resonate, digestible and authentic. Sheryl has taken countless hours of trainings and workshops and finds value in recognizing the similarities of varying spiritual disciplines. She has additional training in prenatal, kids, and trauma-sensitive yoga. Sheryl also leads retreats both locally and internationally.
Sheryl has blended the sister sciences of Yoga and Ayurveda into her own life and helps others rediscover a true and balanced nature. She is a graduate of the Ayurvedic Health Practitioner (AHP) program through the California College of Ayurveda and shares her knowledge through seasonal cleanses, workshops, cooking classes, public lectures and individual consultations.
Sheryl finds grounding, strength and inspiration in connecting with the natural world. Her heart lights up through creativity, music, adventure, humor, leadership and community involvement but her most beloved pastime… being and laughing with her son, Cedar.
More about Deb
Deb enjoys fusing devotion, strength, integrity, and grace in order to inspire contagious enthusiasm in service to Mother Earth, Community and Self. She practices deep interest in Yoga as a rich path of transformation, awakening innate intelligence and healing through which yoga combines the practical with mysticism. Deb embraces the boundless yoga practice as something that can open paths of transformation and nourish one’s unique spiritual way of life. Her specialty is to encourage students toward self-inquiry through their connection to nature as well as exploring how yoga practice can be a metaphor for how we choose to be in life and in relationship. She loves to discover and continuously question how to embody the practice; how to really walk the talk and perceives Yoga as path towards wholeness. Deb began yoga at the age of 19 eventually participating in her first yoga teacher training through Yogadurango in 2010. She has since invested her time and heart in study with Bhavani Maki, diving deep into the heart of Yoga Philosophy and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and most recently studies with Eddie Modestini and Kristin Bosteels in the method of Yoga on the Inside.
Teachers
More about Tatiana
When I was 16 and trying to find solutions for depression, Yoga found me. I originally saw it as a way to become physically strong, but quickly learned yoga made my body, mind, and soul strong, and brought me back to a healthy, balanced state.
I wanted to share the gifts yoga had given me, so became a teacher in 2013. In 2019 I chose to deepen that journey, and am working on completing my Yoga Therapy certification, with emphasis on trauma informed practices.
I lead yoga with the belief that strength -in all aspects of life- comes from understanding, and I work to dive deep and explore the body and mind through breath and mindfulness to gain true understanding of the world we share.
More about Amber
More about Kimberly
Kimberly DeVenero didn’t have a lot of experience with yoga until she was 21. In 2009 she was a massage therapist at a yoga studio in New Jersey and was offered free classes (that she never went to) and one day the owner told her about a 200-hr teacher training program. Kimberly didn’t know why but she always had a feeling she was going to be a yoga instructor, so she took the leap and said “yes” to the 200-hr. training. She was teased (lovingly) by her fellow classmates because she couldn’t bend over without discomfort, she would check the clock behind her in three-legged dog to see how much more time she had to be tortured and when teachers said the poses felt yummy, she would feel annoyance come up in her body because nothing about that felt “yummy”. Yoga didn’t come easily at first for her but during that teacher training she was very aware of the peaceful bliss she would feel after. Along that journey, she slowly discovered the magic and beauty in understanding and truly feeling in her body. She discovered a deep patience and playfulness within herself that she shares through her teaching. She loves holding space for others to let go of expectations and begin to observe the amazing Being within. Since then, she has done a lot of yoga and it has become the love of her life. She has done trainings in the Bahamas, New York City and upstate New York at the Sivananda Ashram with her beautiful teacher, Arjuna, as well as, weekend trainings with some of her favorite instructors. She pulls lessons from all aspects of her life to bring into her yoga instructing and tries to bring her yoga into all aspects of her life. Her goal is to weave a deep spiritual practice with a playful, light spirit. She knows her yoga teachings are a life long journey and she couldn’t be more pleased by that. During her time in Durango, she fell in love with the community and created a business called Thimbleberry smoothie Co.
More about Lindsay
Lindsay started on her yoga path early – lying in Savasana on her family room carpeting in her mother’s yoga classes after kindergarten. Following in her mother’s footsteps (only after leaving the house) Lindsay stepped onto her intentional path as a practitioner in 1997. She received her RYT-200 from Kripalu in 2008, and has since done advanced trainings at Laughing Lotus yoga studio in NYC, and studied with teachers around the world including Patrick Creelman, Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, and Jim Harrington. She has done immersions in Ashtanga-Vinyasa, Anusara, Forrest, Kundalini, Synergy and Sivananda yoga and never tires of new learning. For Lindsay, yoga is the truest mirror, and the most intelligent, free way to dance with her inner self. Lindsay’s classes are heartfelt and intuitive, and develop as a natural extension of her own practice.
More about Joy
Joy Kilpatrick trusts the bodies’ intuitive intelligence to be the entry point for healing and transformation. Joy is passionate about sacredly serving others through a tapestry of healing art modalities while empowering them to live authentically. Joy’s love of learning has inspired her continuing education on the path of unity by becoming a certified Yoga Therapist with IAYT accredited Inner Peace Yoga Therapy program; registered Yoga Teacher, certified advanced Thai Yoga Bodyworker, Reiki practitioner and a student of NVC (Non-Violent Communication). Joy feels blessed to teach Kid’s Theatre, Yoga and Mindfulness classes to young people through Durango’s District 9-R Schools. To learn more about Joy and her offerings, visit: https://
More about Chloe
As it often does, yoga found me. At 20 years old, it was a buoy in the treacherous waters of coming of age. I was always drawn to yogic philosophy and the spiritual wisdom I picked up in class is what kept me coming back to my practice. Exploring the capabilities of the mind, body, and spirit feel like a never ending and worthwhile journey in this lifetime. My gratitude for the impact yoga has had on my healing and wellbeing are what spur my desire to share the gift of yoga with others. I had the privilege of completing a 200 hour Ashtanga Vinyasa Inspired YTT with Sarah Klein in 2021. My practice continues to build upon that foundation as well as include chanting, mantra, and meditation. In a culture which is so often externally facing, a yoga practice provides the container to connect with Self and Spirit, which illuminates the truth of connectivity. Nurturing our practice is an act of deep intimacy and love of thyself. As we learn how to truly love ourselves, we are also learning how to love the animals, plants and people with whom we share this beautiful planet. My intent is to support and be supported by others in this dance of continually coming home.
More about Michele
Michele believes in yoga’s ability to heal and transform, and that yoga, regardless of one’s physical ability, is available to all. As a way to balance out her active life, Michele first stepped on a yoga mat in 1999. It was not long after that she began to practice regularly; and while she could not quite put her finger on it, she was amazed at how much better she felt. For the first time, she began to live in and appreciate her own body. And, more importantly, she started to understand that she was much more than her physical body.Michele started teaching yoga in 2005, has studied various yoga styles, yet is most drawn to the teaching and practice of Yoga Therapy. Through her own journey of Self-discovery, she has come to realize that yoga is a practice for all life situations. She leads retreats, teaches private yoga thearpy sessions and a variety of classes including Yoga for Healing. Originally from New Jersey, Michele moved to Durango, CO in 2006. Along with her yoga teaching credentials, she also has an MBA, and has worked in large and small corporations for over 15 years. She still uses this skillset in her current endeavors: Michele is the founder and director of Inner Peace Yoga Therapy an IAYT-accredited 800-hour yoga therapy certification program.
More about Luna
Luna first fell in love with yoga in 2007 when she began a daily practice while backpacking through the wild places of California on a college Eco-psychology course. For her, yoga is linked to deep healing, self love, connection with nature, and community. In 2009 she went to live and work at Mount Madonna Center, located in the Santa Cruz mountains, where she completed her 200 Hour Teacher Training. Since then she has assisted with the teaching of two other teacher trainings through Mount Madonna and taught at various retreats offered there. She has taught on the beaches of Maui in exchange for pineapples and in gym and studio settings in Santa Cruz, CA. She is passionate about spreading the messages of self kindness, reclaiming wildness, and listening to one’s own intuition in each pose. She has worked as a yoga teacher and counselor in eating disorder recovery, and believes that all bodies are beautiful and deserve love and care. Also a singer and a dancer, Lunaloves to let creativity emerge and step outside the box in her yoga practice and her teaching style. She is humbled by and grateful for the vast practice of yoga and how it embraces her body, mind, heart, and soul again and again.
More about Eric
Eric began his yoga journey many years ago as a Freshman at UC Santa Cruz. His instructor planted a deep seed that sprouted in the last 9 years. In that interim Eric was an educator with Outward Bound, climber, straw bale house builder, Durango community business leader, and loving father and friend. The yoga seed continued to grow as Eric immersed in his personal practice and continued education in yoga practice and philosophy, completing his RYT-200 at the Sivananda Yoga Center in Uttarakhand Himalaya India in 2019, and more recently completing his RYT-200 at the Yandara Yoga Institute. Eric finds his inspiration to practice and teach from the teachings of BKS Iyengar, Krishna Das, Tommy Rosen, and the many gifted teachers at Yogadurango.
The teachings and practice of Yoga for Eric provide a road map on the path of self discovery; peeling away our past conditioning, karmic history, trauma, and beliefs and behaviors that no longer serve us. Moving us out of our mind and into our hearts, revealing our true nature so as to be of service to ourselves and the world.
More about Lily
I feel very fortunate to have been practicing yoga for the past 20 years. It has been a path of health, joy, transformation and empowerment since my teen years. Initially, it was the physical practice that captured my attention, but over the years this led me to study all the other facets including pranayama, meditation, tantra, and yoga’s sister science, Ayurveda, as well as other influential disciplines, primarily Buddhism, the Tao te Ching, and plant medicines. I have participated in over 1000 hours of yoga trainings, and am an affiliate of Shiva Rea’s Samudra Global School of Living Yoga, leading 200 Hour Prana Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Trainings. As a Sacred Sensuality Guide, Yoga Teacher, Retreat Organizer, Podcaster and Ayurvedic Wellness Coach, my goal is to guide others to embody a path of connection to their higher selves and to all other beings, and be empowered to access the great cosmic source of radiance, creativity, and healing.
My deepest passion is connecting with women and guiding them to fully cultivate their natural feminine powers of sensuality, intuition, compassion, radiance and pleasure! More information at www.lilyrussoyoga.com
More about Sara
Sara’s love for yoga began in 2005. This love grew deeper upon meeting her teachers Tias and Surya Little in 2007. Since this time, Sara has become certified and has completed over 600 hours of training with Prajna Yoga in Santa Fe, NM under Tias and Surya Little. In addition, she has also received training in prenatal, yin, therapeutics and The Great Yoga Wall. Sara has over 11 years of teaching experience in the Four Corners Area and was the founder/director of Sage Yoga Studio before recently moving to Durango. She offers group and private classes to all levels with a fun, playful, and informative teaching style, often incorporating Ayurveda into her classes. Sara’s passion stems from the benefits of healing she has received during difficult times. She is an avid meditator and enjoys traveling and spending time with family. For more information please visit saratweedieyoga.com.
More about Brandy
Brandy grew up in Boulder, Colorado. As a young girl, Brandy and her mother (a spiritual teacher and therapist), would talk for hours about the nature of life, exploring and diving into the subtle intricacies of the world around them. It was through these conversations that Brandy recognized the value of listening to her heart and therefore kindled her passion for alternative healing arts.
At age 19, Brandy went from being a competitive soccer player to a spiritual explorer as she turned toward nature and yoga. From that point forward, she was guided to various teachers, paths, and modalities shaping the person she is today.
For the past 20 years, Brandy has been a student and teacher of yoga, extensively studying the Feminine path of Hatha, Bhakti, and Tantra Yoga. Some of her main teachers have been Shannon Paige Schneider, Aditi Devi, Sofia Diaz, and Brenda Flemming. She has also had the honor to work with the spirit of plant medicines for 15years and dance the ceremonial Moondance in Mexico the last seven years, receiving the teachings from Aztec and Mayan grandmother Abuela Mali Nali.
Currently, Brandy splits her time between Durango and Salida, Colorado and offers bodywork sessions that incorporate Ortho-bionomy, womb and belly healing, yoni steams, ancestral healing, sound healing, plant brushings, emotional and somatic therapy, prayer, and song.
More about Lynn
Lynn’s journey on the yogic path began in 2001 while in graduate school and grieving the devastating loss of her mother to cancer a few years earlier. Her first yoga class brought an immense sense of peace, a state of being completely lacking in her life at that time, and she was immediately hooked. Over the next several years she navigated through periods of stress, emotional pain, and grief, and through her dedicated study and consistent practice of yoga and meditation, she allowed herself space to heal and transform her grief. This process ultimately led her to the path of sharing yoga with others. Her life was forever changed after completing a residential yoga teacher training program at the Yandara Yoga Institute in 2009. Since that time, her home practice has expanded to emphasize Bhakti and Kundalini Yoga, as well as Classical Hatha Yoga. She has taught group and private yoga of various styles since 2007 and is a proud co-owner of Yogadurango. Lynn also plays and teaches the harmonium and applies sound energy as a tool for healing in her group classes and with private yoga clients.
In 2020, Lynn became a Certified Yoga Therapist after completing 3 years of study through Inner Peace Yoga Therapy. Her areas of specialty include grief, chronic pain, and neurological disorders. She works one-on-one, applying the tools of yoga to address the individual’s health concerns and empowers her clients to take an active role in their health and wellness. Lynn also offers small group yoga programs for people in pain or grieving the loss of loved ones.
More about Brady
Brady is a lover of life and the natural world. An herbalist by trade, he makes the plant medicines at Durango’s Dancing Willow Herbs. With a background in competitive snowboarding, he is also an enthusiast of health and of the importance of maintaining one’s physical body for optimal performance. Gardener, wild-forager and nutrition buff, he dances a life in balance with all of the elements. Teaching both locally and internationally since 2010, Brady is humbled, honored and inspired to share his insights with you at his home studio for the benefit of all.
Subs
More about Nichole
Nichole Fox, Avtar Devpreet, LMT, is a spiritual healer. With over 18 years as a bodyworker, intuitive, and emotional healer, Nichole brings a gentle feminine approach to Kundalini yoga. She began her journey with yoga over ten years ago. Since then she has taken a deep dive into the roots of yoga. With training in Kundalini yoga and hatha yoga, her classes weave yogic philosophy, subtle body energy healing, skeletal alignment, breathwork, mantra, and nervous system healing. Yoga in its origin is rooted in the cycles of nature. Using yogic tools to transform the mind by shifting the body, Nichole inspires a remembrance of ourselves as nature and divinity. Nichole has 220 hours in Kundalini training, 100 hours with Bhavani Maki, and 200 hours of training in Yoga on the Inside.
More about K-Lea
K-Lea Gifford is Iyengar Certified at the Junior Intermediate Level 2 as well as certified with International Association of Yoga Therapists. She started practicing in 1983 and has studied in Pune, India with the Iyengars several times. She enjoys working therapeutically as well as specialty classes such as pregnancy, restorative, and back care needs. More can be found on her website at https://www.k-lea.com/
More about Ivy
Ivy is an educator, occupational therapist, and alternative health practitioner. Over the past two decades, Ivy has loved a range of styles including hot yoga-kundalini-yin-
Ivy received her RYT-200 with Devi Yoga for Women and is in the process of a 500hr training with Amy Ippoliti. Ivy offers a meditative yoga practice that helps students access and integrate the deep layers of inner wisdom that connect us all.
Along with her yoga classes and workshops, Ivy also combines complementary modalities such as Reiki, craniosacral therapy, rhythmic movement training and Bal-a-Vis-X techniques by offering individual and group sessions through her private practice, Red Monkey Therapeutics. Please connect with her at ivy.ot@icloud.com for more information.
More about Chanel
In my late teen years, I will always remember yoga intriguing me and consistently being in the back of my mind until the day I finally took my first class at Purple Yoga in Long Beach, CA back in 2013. On that very day, my life changed forever. I fell in love with yoga, the way it made me feel… it set my soul on fire, opened my heart and expanded my mind. Yoga has transformed me into the being that I am today! Ever since I began my practice, I knew that I wanted to share yoga with every soul I cross paths with. So, I got a scholarship in 2020 and took my YTT in Mancos, CO with the great Lily Russo and guest teachers, that is where my teaching journey began. My name is Chanel Miller, I am a 200hr certified Prana Vinyasa Yoga Teacher. Prana Vinyasa has taught me to be in balance with nature, the elements, and the four seasons. Prana vinyasa has also taught me to embody the light within and to embrace the journey (all of it) because it is the journey which makes us stronger and of course our daily sadhana (practice) too. I feel honored to share what I have learned, continue to learn from my teachers and to help transform lives the way my life has been transformed. Yoga is union, becoming one with the breath, body, mind, and spirit, evolving into ones truest self!
~Om Namah Shivaya~
More about Donna
Donna Stewart says that before yoga, she was insufferable. She combined a type A personality with a quick temper and an adrenaline junkie lifestyle, doomed to eventually blow herself up in some form or another, probably taking someone else with her. She found her way to yoga when a climbing partner suggested it would make her a better climber. What she didn’t expect was the moments of peace it brought to a heart that didn’t know how to relax (cliff notes: her spirit animal is actually a hummingbird!). She received her 200-hour yoga certification at the rigorous teacher training program at The Shambava School of Yoga in Rollinsville, Colorado, where she occasionally returns for more instruction. She says that she doesn’t have an allegiance to one particular style of yoga, but enjoys the philosophy and techniques from many styles that are reflected in her teaching style: Hatha, Vinyasa, Astanga, Anusura, Acroyoga, & Yin.