Camarillo Yoga Teachers are real people, just like you… not flexy-bendy pretzels in white leotards with perfect hair and whispery voices.    We all feel that yoga is a gift in our lives, and we teach to share that gift.

If I had a penny for every Warrior 2 I have done in the decades I have taught and practiced yoga, I would be as rich as a celebrity yoga teacher! Instead, my life is enriched by living in Camarillo for the last 14 years, and teaching and practicing yoga with a warm and wonderful community of people, who range in age from 6 weeks to 94 years. I am moved to tears each Thanksgiving, when our yoga room is crowded to overflowing with faces of students who have become friends, all of us grateful for the gift of yoga in our lives. Yoga has healed my body, banishing the back pain which caused me to begin, and rehabilitating knees injured two years ago after a hiking fall which required three surgeries. Yoga keeps my joints lubricated, my bones strong and my muscles supple, so that at 52, I feel healthy and confident. Yoga has grounded me through life’s difficulties, and helped me to appreciate the simple things- the tender and never-to-arise-again moments that are easily missed in the headlong rush of daily life. Yoga has been my shelter- I simply can’t imagine life without yoga practice.

My classes are a blend of Iyengar and Viniyoga, with liberal doses of traditions ranging from Astanga to Kundalini, a synthesis of the gifts of every teacher I have ever studied with, and every practitioner I have ever taught. My teaching is completely indebted to them.

Yoga saved my career. I first discovered yoga by accident after a bad back injury that threatened my career as a commercial airline pilot. Massages, physical therapy, drugs all had very little effect.

By sheer coincidence my wife, Allison, and I were celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary at a hiking spa in Canada. The first activity each morning was yoga before our hike. After I made the standard lame excuses that come from middle- aged men, my wife and the teacher “encouraged” me to try it. With the teacher’s guidance and watchful eye, I was able to make it through the class without significant pain. Now encouraged for real, I successfully completed a challenging hike that day. After four more days of yoga, hiking and massages, I felt 50% better than I did when I first arrived at the spa.
Upon returning home, Allison encouraged me to continue yoga. We tried DVD’s and books for about a week but the absence of a good teacher was sorely missed. It just wasn’t the same level of instruction I needed. We searched on-line and found the Camarillo Yoga Center. After three months of practicing yoga 3 to 4 times a week with Audrey, my back was pain-free. I was flying my regular schedule and feeling good. Six months after starting yoga my whole body was pain- free! I had spent 24 years in the Navy and had never had the comprehensive whole body workout that good yoga practice can provide. Had I known 20 years ago what yoga could achieve, I would have started long ago.

Yoga ignited a desire in me to explore the muscles and bones inside my body and how they work together. I fly with men mostly in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s and I see them in the pain that I once shared. I wanted to share the gift that yoga has bestowed on me with others. Allison and I attended teacher training classes together and now teach at the Camarillo Yoga Center. In addition, I teach yoga classes while on the road to any interested pilots, flight attendants or friends. Each class challenges me to learn more and encourages me to continue to share the gift of yoga.

I’m a Registered Nurse, and work as a School Nurse in substance abuse prevention. I started doing yoga almost 5 years ago to support my husband—he started doing yoga quite by accident while we were on vacation, and he had a miraculous recovery from significant back pain. Little did I know that I would feel so great myself!

Yoga offers me a sense of physical, emotional and mental balance that nothing else provides, and I love to share that with others, both in the Yoga Center and in my nursing practice. Our daughter teases me that I really don’t need to tell EVERYONE I meet that they could benefit from yoga…

My husband and I live in Camarillo, have two grown children, and a grandchild on the way.

Two years prior to my retirement after 35 years as a night nurse, in 2000, I severely injured my left shin and also started to feel tingling in both wrists.

The year 2001 was the beginning of my journey to Yoga. I moved to Ventura, my last child finished college, and I started to watch the food network!! My weight ballooned, I couldn't do aerobics anymore, my normally sunny outlook was starting to desert me and my passion, quilting, was suffering.

Sept 10, 2001 I saw a poster in a coffee shop about a Yoga studio opening that day!! I went there and met Audrey and came back the next day to start my journey to balance! I was 55 years old when I took my first Yoga class and thank my lucky stars for that poster!!!

Today, I can balance on my left leg, feel no tingles in my wrists, seen my body start to change shape, and can do a one hour monologue of the joys of YOGA!!

I love to teach classes in Yoga and Quilting because I'm still learning about both. Two years ago I became certified to teach Restorative Yoga by Judith Lasater.

My husband of 39 years has also become a believer because it has improved his posture and breathing and therefore his golf game. Our first granddaughter, two children and a daughter-in-law are the lights of our lives.

We have down dogged to China and back and with the help of CYC, and hope to continue to do so for many more years!!

I love yoga !
I teach yoga so I can share my passion with others. I met Audrey eight years ago and became an enthusiastic student and eventually one of her CYC teachers. Audrey and the teachers she trains emphasize breath, body alignment, and a meditative (mindful) way practicing yoga.

Like many of us, I deal with chronic pain, so it was great to discover that yoga can provide continual, dependable, relief from pain. Also important to me is our mental attitude towards the stressors in life, both physical and emotional. That’s why I teach a free laughter yoga class every Saturday morning at Camarillo Yoga Center. In Laughter Yoga, we use our body, via laughter exercises, to retrain our brain, cultivating a “habit of happiness.” Scientific research shows that both spontaneous laughter and simulated laughter will produce the same physiological and psychological benefits. Having a positive attitude can improve our health and general well-being.

Come join the Camarillo Yoga community to enjoy improved health and happiness!

Having danced since childhood I was overjoyed when I took my very first yoga class at 27 years old. I felt like I had come home to meet myself; to dance my own dance. Yoga has helped me through the birth and the raising of my three beautiful children and the death and letting go of my amazing mother. I am eternally grateful for all of my blessings and yoga gives me the opportunity to practice gratitude daily.
Through yoga I have become more aware, patient, calm and confident.

I am blessed to have many wonderful teachers who include my students and I love teaching yoga to children of all ages!

Yoga became a part of my life during my first pregnancy, and became a valuable resource to me in my journey through pregnancy, birth and motherhood. Practicing Yoga allows me to connect with my inner self and my physical body, to find strength within, and to trust in my body and its ability to serve me well. This has been helpful not only in childbirth and parenthood, but in life. Supporting other women and families who are finding inner strength along their journey into parenthood has become my passion, and I am honored to witness and share in that experience.