Welcome to the January 2026 PYP Yoga Teacher Training Cohort

Hello everyone,

My name is Tim, and I'm joining from New Orleans, Louisiana, where I work as a Staff Chaplain in palliative care at Ochsner Health System.

I'm originally from Belgium and have maintained a daily adapted Ashtanga practice for many years, though my practice has evolved significantly following knee surgeries — learning to listen to my body's wisdom rather than pushing through limitations has become its own profound teaching.

What's calling me to this training is the intersection of contemplative practice and service to others, particularly those experiencing suffering. I'm ordained as a Buddhist chaplain and have completed Path of Freedom training for mindfulness work in correctional settings. My long-term vision is to bring yoga and contemplative practices into Louisiana's correctional facilities through chaplaincy education programs. I'm drawn to understanding more deeply how the embodied wisdom of yoga can support healing and transformation, especially for marginalized and incarcerated populations.

I'm grateful to be learning alongside all of you and look forward to the conversations and insights that will emerge from our diverse experiences and perspectives.

With appreciation,

Tim

Hi all, my name is Meadow and I am joining the cohort from Lacey, Washington. I presently work for a behavioral health hospital where a large number of our patients are involuntary. In my sessions I mainly focus on expressive arts groups, but feel called to add more mindfulness and embodied practices into my work, and knew that PYP would be the perfect program for a justice and trauma informed lens.

After completing the training, I’m also interested in working with folks going through competency restoration and incarceration. Unfortunately Western Washington is not short on facilities where this work is needed, so I am looking forward to seeing where I can land and provide offerings.

@musschethotmail-com 

I feel you on what you have said about knee surgeries and listening to one's body. I myself have only been doing yoga for 2 years and I'm noticing that my knees are starting to hurt, just in the past few months, and that has lead me to try and soften and support myself more during practice, mostly to avoid further damage but also as a way of getting past ego and taking care of myself.

My name is Chris, I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). In the past I have worked mostly in child development and social services, right now I'm working very little and focusing on finishing my degree in Education (Kindergarten-2nd Grade Licensure).

My path to yoga was rather circuitous but I started practicing regularly two years ago, having long wanted to explore yoga but feeling intimidated because the studio seemed to be dominated by people with a very different cultural and class background, combined with fears that I would be disrupting what seemed like a defacto women's space: in a all, I was afraid that I wouldn't "fit in". It turns out I don't in fact fit in, but the people at my studio are really cool and open, and I've found an amazing community, and yoga has ended up being quite transformative for me. However, I have continued to carry with me the awareness that there are probably a lot of people who could benefit from yoga who will not be able to access it for either financial or cultural-fit reasons, so that is really what motivated me to take this training, I'm not exactly sure how I will use it but I am confident I will be able to find a way to bring yoga to people who need it. 

Hello Everyone!

I am so excited to be joining you from British Columbia, Canada. My journey to becoming a yoga teacher began around 15 years ago when I was navigating a violent relationship, and I found solace and healing in yoga. I remember wanting to start yoga as a means of moving my body more and getting in tune with my feminine side, as the relationship I was in had me deeply connected to my masculine energy. In an effort to find balance, I lay on my mat one day at the end of class and sobbed. I will never forget this moment. So much suppressed emotion was released through the connection of breath and movement. There was a power that yoga gave back to me in that moment, and I have practiced ever since.

Fast forward to now: as a social worker and human rights advocate, I believe in the power of yoga as a healing modality that is often overlooked in Western medicine. I hope to bring intentional practice to the forefront of my teaching, so I can support others in what yoga can do for us if we learn to remain "still" and shift our listening inward.

I am looking forward to connecting with like-minded yogis on this journey 🙂

Hello, everyone! I am so grateful to be a part of this program, and I look forward to getting to know the rest of the cohort. I'm Vivian Gonzalez (she/her and ella), and I am an arts administrator based in Houston, Texas. My journey to yoga began almost 6 years ago during the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020. Like most folks, I needed to find an outlet during that tumultuous time period and found myself practicing yoga online over YouTube. Even now, during a time where our attention is being pulled in so many different directions, I turn to yoga to ground myself and find clarity. 

This year, I'd like to dig deeper into yoga and learn how to cultivate a yoga community of my own. As someone raised at the U.S.-Mexico border, I'd also like to gain the tools to help my community navigate this intense time in our country. 

I look forward to beginning this training very soon! 

Hi Everyone,

My names Luke, tuning in from the lands of Wales (UK) with respect and recognition that this sits on the lands of Cymru, near the ancient kingdom of Dyfed, the home of the Demetae and Deisi people.

Yoga has certainly contributed MASSIVELY to my own healing and self awareness journey. Therefore my intention in enrolling onto Prison Yoga Project Yoga Teacher Training is to become educated and confident to offer this practice to my fellow humans - knowing how much value and benefit a regular yoga practice can provide us as humans. I believe from my own experience that Yoga is a vital component to actually being human. Along with Meditation. I am so grateful for this opportunity. The training sounds transformational and very powerful. I hope to integrate and share what I learn in this space with as many human beings as possible in this life.

Thanks to the whole team at PYP - you're certainly living your Dhamma and Congratulations to everyone who has enrolled on this Training and to all those who have came before us and who will come after us. 

We are all in this together, in a complex, bizarre and potent time in our history here on earth. I so look forward to learning with you all.

May we all be happy,

May we all be peaceful,

May we all be liberated.

with tremendous Gratitude,

Luke

Greetings all,

My name is Lizzy and I am joining you from South Lake Tahoe, California, the ancestral lands of the Washoe peoples. My journey into this program started a few years ago, and I had to take a hiatus from the program because life happened. I am really excited to join you all, one of my favorite components of this training is that we are able to meet and connect with folks from around the world - truly special. From my experience, this program is truly one of kind, including our wonderful instructor Jen. 

I am so excited to dig back in and learn with you all! My "why" that drives me every day ... to be of service to my community and help bring light and healing energy into our world. Once we finish, I hope to teach at my local senior center and juvenile detention facility. Like most, if not all, I too benefit from from the practice of yoga, meditation and movement. I started my own healing journey over 10 years ago and look forward to deepening my relationship with self, spirit and soul. 

Be well all, see you next week 🙂

Hello! My name is Caili (pronounced like Kaylee) and I’m joining ya’ll from Buffalo, New York! I'm so excited to be joining this training and feel like it's been a long time coming. I’m clinically trained as a therapist and prior to starting my own business, I had quite a bit of experience working with individuals in jail settings and post incarceration. I’ve been working for myself the last five years, primarily as a trauma specific life coach but have also worked for several years as a death doula.

I’ve been practicing yoga for about 5 years now, and have been following the Prison Yoga Project for almost as long. PYP is the confluence of the things I’m most passionate about- restorative justice, radical compassion, common humanity, service, and embodiment. Following course completion, I intend to bring a yoga program to at least one of the correctional facilities here in western New York.  I have no doubt that this will be an illuminating and transformational process and I look forward to sharing it with you all!

Hi everyone! My name is Betsy, and I live in Rockford, Il. I’ve been teaching yoga for about a year, and practicing for longer than that. My yoga journey began during COVID, during a time when I started to more fully process the loss of my parents, who passed away many years ago. For a long time, I carried a lot of unprocessed emotion, and yoga became a tool that helped me slow down, turn inward, and begin to heal.

Through this practice, I’ve learned the importance of creating space for awareness, compassion, and regulation, rather than holding everything in. That experience is what draws me to this work. I want to help bring yoga to people who may not otherwise have access to it, and to share it in a way that is respectful, supportive, and grounded in care. I’m grateful to be here and to learn alongside all of you.

@lukehobson11 

Shwmae, Luke! I myself lived in Wales for a year or two, up in Aberystwyth, it was amazing: the culture, the language, the friendliness of the people (it sounds trite but in my experience people genuinely were way more friendly and prosocial compared to here in the United States). Wales is known for its landscapes of course but I really appreciated the small cities, towns and villages of Mid and North Wales, they were dense, walkable, and stunningly beautiful, to me anyway. All in all, I often wish I had never left.

@trista-powell1987gmail-com 

The "stillness" piece you mentioned at the end of your post seems very important. I hope that in class we can unpack how to bring stillness, or introduce the idea of stillness, to cohorts whose trauma or life experience may have made them "stillness averse". I know that some people have intense fears around slowing down or reflecting, or can experience really strong physical and mental feelings when they pull back from the hamster wheel of constant action, thinking, ruminating, daydreaming, worrying, etc. I would guess that it has to be done very slowly over time, but beyond that I'm not sure.

Hello everyone

I'm so excited to meet you all as we prepare to begin this is amazing adventure. My Name Is Eduardo and I’m from Cusco, Peru. I feel very honored to be surrounded by such wise and inspiring souls. I came to yoga about 15 years ago when I was experiencing a very intense and painful battle against anxiety and panic attack and fibromyalgia. Yoga became central in my healing process which is why I decided to become a yoga teacher so I can share its transformational benefits in my community. Until then I had been a career lawyer working in the corporate world with a growing distress and frustration for not finding a sense of purpose in my life. A few years later yoga gave me enough clarity to build a new career path, so I decided to give up my legal work and my life in the city and relocated to the Peruvian highlands where I have been living for almost five years teaching yoga therapy to people in need of emotional and physical healing. I also have been teaching for almost 2 years in the female prison in Cusco yoga therapy classes and giving lectures on yoga philosophy and spirituality, which is why I plan to use the learnings from this course to deepen my service and offerings using trama-centered practices to bring more compassion and awareness to the Cusco correctional system. 

I am so looking forward to kicking off this journey with you all!!

Hi everyone, my name is Nikki Oort, and I’m joining you from Alberta, Canada. So grateful to be apart of this journey with everyone! I recently signed on with the Prison Yoga Project, and I’m currently in my second year of a Trauma-Informed Yoga Therapy Diploma. I feel a deep calling to this work and to supporting healing through trauma-informed practices. I’m especially drawn to working closely with Indigenous Trauma and creating spaces where safety, choice, and empowerment can be experienced through the body. I’m grateful to be here and looking forward to learning alongside all of you.