The Mentor Sessions

As a driven and overworked business owner, Karen Kurzmeyer began her yoga practice to help relieve stress and regain strength and flexibility. She eventually sold her language travel agency so she could dedicate her career to inspiring others to prioritize their health, wellbeing and stress relief through yoga. She lives in Luzerne, Switzerland and completed her yoga teacher training in Thailand in 2014.

Samantha Harrison teaches alignment-based vinyasa and gentle yoga in Greenville, North Carolina, where she also is the manager of YogiVibes Studio. She teaches students in a variety of settings including health centers, corporate settings and private and group yoga classes at YogiVibes Studio. Samantha has been practicing yoga since 2008 and teaching full- time since 2014.

Megan Spears is a yoga teacher based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Megan has passionately pursued additional education with many teachers and mentors in areas of Trauma-Informed Yoga, Prenatal Yoga, Functional Anatomy and Sequencing, Private Yoga Teaching, and Mediation. Her personal practice, experience, and education informs her ability to effectively meet and teach each student based on where they are on their path.

Raquel Scalon is a full-time private yoga teacher in San Francisco. She specializes in delivering therapeutic and goal-oriented private yoga lessons to busy professionals, people healing from injuries, athletes and working mamas. She’s been teaching since 2010 and has an extensive background in therapeutics, functional movement and fascial release.

We are doing something new today on The Mentor Sessions! I’m reading some of the Most Frequently Asked questions I get about teaching private lessons and offering you my quick and dirty answers. Some of these topics very well may need their own episode, so please reach out and let me know what follow up questions you have.

Have you ever had a private client bring their partner or friend to a private lesson and wondered exactly what you should be doing? Have you ever struggled to teach private lessons to a couple who had wildly different physical and emotional needs? In today’s episode we are going to cover all that and more!

Jules Mitchell, she is a San Francisco based yoga teacher, educator and massage therapist. She blends the tradition of yoga with her extensive study in biomechanics to help teachers develop their craft and empower them with education. In this episode you’ll hear, what Jules thinks is working well in the yoga teacher training culture, a conversation about the current standards yoga trainings follow and how they are (or are not) are serving teachers and their students well and so much more.

Trina Altman is the creator of Yoga Deconstructed® and Pilates Deconstructed®, which take an interdisciplinary approach to foster an embodied understanding of yoga and Pilates and their relationship to modern movement science. In this episode you’ll hear why it can be helpful to add more stability, strength and motor control into our asana classes, the difference between local stabiliser muscles, global stabiliser muscles and global mobilizing muscles...and so much more.

Dianne Bondy is a celebrated yoga teacher, social justice activist and leading voice of the Yoga For All movement. Her inclusive view of yoga asana and philosophy inspires and empowers thousands of followers around the world – regardless of their shape, size, ethnicity, or level of ability and we are so lucky to have her offering her wisdom and inspiration on The Mentor Sessions podcast today!

It is becoming increasingly common for yoga teachers to bring movements and practices from outside the traditional yoga practice into their teaching. Are you one of these teachers? Do you want to be, but feel unsure about the most skillful way to bring non-yoga movements into the practices you teach? At the forefront of this cultural shift we find Cecily Milne of Yoga Detour and I am so excited to have her on the podcast today sharing her wisdom with us.

Have you ever had a pregnant yoga student walk into your group yoga class and immediately think, “Oh crap. I don’t know how to modify the practice for her or keep her safe without changing my whole plan!” ?   Today’s podcast episode with prenatal yoga expert (and my old friend!) Deb Flashenberg will cover everything you need to know on this subject! Deb is passionate about establishing safe, effective, and empowering yoga classes for pregnancy and beyond and she is full of wisdom for all yoga te

Crystal McCreary has a true teacher’s heart and if you aren’t already familiar with her work I am so excited to introduce you to her on today’s episode! Crystal has taught yoga and mindfulness since 2007. In this episode you’ll hear, how Crystral came to her teaching path a bit reluctantly, about the work Crystal has done with with teachers and professionals who support communities who suffer from trauma and so much more.

Have you ever taken (or taught!) a yoga class that was simple in sequencing but deeply powerful in its effect on you? Maybe you love teaching and practicing yoga in a simple way but you feel like you are the only one? Do you think that all your students want fancier, faster and more exciting asana classes? Whether this describes you or not, I am so honored to introduce you to my old NYC buddy Sarah Capua.

Do you have hip pain? Today’s episode is all about the hip joint and hip injuries that are common in yoga practitioners. I invited my friend Ariele Foster to join me in this conversation because in addition to being a doctor of physical therapy, yoga teacher since 2001 and an anatomy teacher for yoga teacher trainings, she also had a hip injury. In this episode you’ll hear the stories about our own hip injuries and subsequent healing...and so much more. (There is hope if you have a hip injury!)

Today on the podcast we get to learn from the wisdom of Lara Benusis, a pioneer in translating yoga into hospital environments. She was the first full time yoga instructor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where she developed their in-hospital and outpatient wellness offerings. A certified yoga instructor since 1996, Lara is currently an advanced masters student in Applied Physiology at Columbia University.