Teachers

As a little kid, Morgan Andrews practiced holding his breath in the bathtub, did headstands on his mom’s couch, and developed meditative relaxation techniques to fall asleep without ever hearing the word “yoga”. Years later he took up yoga poses and eye exercises as part of a regimen for visual rehabilitation and eliminating chronic pain. When this this self-led daily practice changed his life, Morgan began a perpetual study of yoga, movement, and anatomy with numerous teachers, including Ana Forrest, Zhenja La Rosa, Nicole Bindler, and Darren Rhodes. He started teaching at Studio 34 in 2009 and attends at least two trainings per year to explore yoga both as a teacher and as a student. Morgan also has extensive experience with vegan nutrition, natural vision therapy, and anti-oppression work through Theatre of the Oppressed, having trained with Augusto Boal at TOPLAB and Jana Sanskriti in West Bengal. His work at Studio 34 is a mixture of all these disciplines, rooted in commitment to community and a vibrant sense of humor.

Clarice Bailey comes to yoga as a lifelong teacher. She incorporates yoga as yet another tool for social change and healing as each of us commits to living more courageously than ever.

After a long relationship with dance, Anisha came to yoga in 2010 and reveled in its benefits – physical and mental. She dove into completing a 200 hour Ashtanga-Vinyasa based teacher training followed by an additional 200-hour Anusara/Alignment-based training in Philadelphia in 2014 and hasn’t looked back since.

Throughout different points of life, the practice of yoga on and off the mat has been a common denominator. The line between teacher and student blends in the classes she offers, as Anisha loves the shared experience of discovering new potential and understanding of one another. While teaching classes, Anisha hopes students leave with a new understanding of their own capacities and maybe a laugh throughout the process! She is so thankful for the yoga community in Philadelphia, as well as, at Studio 34 for fostering the ability to make yoga accessible for every person.

Amanda DeLeo became deeply committed to yoga and physical fitness after a cycling accident left her with a metal plate in her elbow. As she grew stronger and more aware of the effects that yoga and training had her mind, body, and spirit, she felt compelled to take a teacher training which she completed at Studio 34 Yoga. That training changed the course of her life, it opened up for her the reality of a higher power which in turn brought her to recovery from drugs and alcohol. After spending 6 years pursuing a career in Web development, she recently quit her desk job to dedicate her life to personal training and teaching yoga as a way to help others who are struggling with addiction or body dysmorphia.

Starting in her early days as a graduate student, Adrienne has incorporated meditation practices into her spiritual development. With over 800 hours of silent retreat experience, she has facilitated yoga and Vipassana and Zen meditation practices and designed health and wellness programming to support various communities since 2006, including people of color, children, medical students, and teaching faculty. As of January 2018, Adrienne has been part of managing daily operations and teaching yoga classes at Studio 34.

Jean-Jacques is a Haitian-born artist, father, and teacher living in Philadelphia. He started painting in his father’s studio, before he could walk, and later studied at the University of the Arts and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Jean-Jacques found yoga while at art school in 2001, and has delighted in consistent practice and study since. He has studied and trained in Ashtanga, Vinyasa flow, Thai Massage, AcroYoga, Anusara, and Yogahour. In both art making and embodied practices, he honors the power and potential of rituals, inspired creativity, and human connection to foster freedom.

Jean-Jacques has taught in prisons, public schools, yoga studios, and festivals both nationally and internationally. he currently co-leads the teacher training program at Studio 34 in West Philly. Jean-Jacques is the co-creator of a yoga clothing clothing line with Philadelphia Printworks called “The Embodied Collection.” It was created to honor and inspire the efforts of people of color in creating wellness. The line is rooted in the words of Audre Lorde, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.”

Naima remembers being drawn to yoga ever since she first heard about it. She became more interested in yoga after realizing how much havoc her artistic career was wreaking on her body. Long days and nights spent hunched over a piece of paper, or looking into a computer screen left her feeling achy, stiff and irritable. Yoga became a way for her to feel more energized, and opened in her body, as well as a way to feel spiritually connected. Her relationship with the practice grew as she used yoga to help cope with stress, anxiety and intense emotions. Naima is constantly amazed by the healing properties of yoga on physical, mental and emotional levels. She believes that our bodies are wiser than our brains, that each sensation is a message and if we just listen, we can begin to cultivate a deeper relationship with ourselves and everything we touch. To Naima, yoga is a practice of empowerment, showing us that we already have everything we need; it is simply a matter of believing in ourselves and this deep love running through all life. Yoga allows for the discovery of just how mysterious and magical life truly is. Naima is certified through Studio 34’s alignment based vinyasa teacher training. Her classes focus on mindfulness, and a balance between work, play and rest.

Nicole began practicing yoga over 13 years ago as a way of bonding with her mom. Little did she imagine how profound an experience it would become, renewing her perspective on life, love, career and everything in between. Yoga makes Nicole feel good – physically, mentally and spiritually – and now she wishes to create a space for her students to feel the same. Receiving her 200-hour RYT certification in 2014 from Studio 34, Nicole has studied a spectrum of yoga styles including Vinyasa, Hatha, Baptiste, and Anusara. Still inspired by her first yoga teacher, Johnny Gillespie, Nicole’s vinyasa-based classes place special emphasis on the link between breath, movement and alignment. In 2017, Nicole broadened her passion for the body-mind-spirit connection by completing her training to become a License Massage Therapist, LMT. In her newly found massage practice, Nicole weaves various massage techniques together, creating a specialized session for every individual.

Known as a Stevie Wonder-loving, truth-speaking, change-maker who bagged law school to pursue a creative thirst, Brittany rarely follows the pack on or off the mat. She believes transformation can be tumultuous: sometimes loud and messy, but always packed with guidance and grace. And she leads her students into the heart of the practice from the start of her classes. With over 6,000 hours and nine years of experience, Brittany teaches from an inspired space of connected consciousness. Her technique is influenced by her 300 hours of training in Anusara, practice in Vinyasa and Restorative Yoga as well as deep study in India. Inspired to create global awareness, Brittany has travelled to Cambodia, Brazil, Tanzania and India teaching yoga to children and connecting with each culture. In 2010, Brittany founded Beyond Asana and co-created the Beyond Asana Yoga Teacher Training, which combines asana, sacred activism, personal growth work and global travel. In 2009, Brittany’s blog was published in Yoga Journal. In 2010 she appeared on the 10! Show for a segment for Healthy Backs. In 2011 her poems were featured in The Poetry of Yoga, alongside some of the most recognized teachers in the world, and in 2012 Lululemon Athletica named her an ambassador for their Philadelphia store. Brittany cooks and eats consciously, loves to dance and continues to be uplifted by reruns of The Cosby Show.

Kathy Revelle developed an immediate attraction to yoga thirteen years ago, when she picked up her first yoga book from the library. Over the years she kept up her own practice of yoga until naturally, accompanied by her desire to teach, she was lead to a 200hr yoga teacher training through Yoga on Main in Manayunk. She completed her 200hr YTT in February 2011. This training opened her up to yoga on a much deeper level, adding a stronger sense of spirituality to her practice and leaving her yearning for more. In a quest to indulge her passion, she immediately enrolled in a 500hr YTT which she completed in August 2012. Both trainings were in Inner Fire Yoga, a Hatha based, artful balance of postures, yoga philosophy, mantra & meditation, as well as a deep focus on Ayurveda, the natural health system of India. Kathy’s classes are designed to awaken your own inner fire while tuning in to your sense of calm & relaxation. Her classes promote balance, increase flexibility and build strength within the mind, body & the spirit. As a native of Philly, she is ecstatic to share her love for yoga & the joy it brings throughout her local community.

Pronouns :: fae, she, they

Mint, wild Rose, Buffalo, Ox — these are some of the plant & animal spirits that move with Frances Rose. Imagine the fervor of mint, the sweetness of rose, the collective, grass-fed power of buffalo, and the persistence of ox. Faerie-identified, Frances Rose tends to multiple connected community gardens (both physical & metaphorical) in West Philly & beyond. Fae dreams of sharing lives, work and food, with all who practice affirming Life in its myriad forms & expressions — while she engages deeply in her life-work of learning, loving, healing, and growing, and helping others do the same.

Their yoga teaching grows from the soil of her own practice, and their practice is in turn, strengthened by her teaching. Fae guides an Earth-supported yoga, rich with living metaphor, that seeks to access the connected inner wisdoms of each individual’s being & our Home planet. Their classes tend to embody a fierce but gentle, bovine drive, with an emphasis on engagement, and the radiance of our hearts in open flower. She strives to share a rounded practice that includes the many limbs of yoga beyond asana — and to frame it as a practice of tranifold unions (breath to body, body to mind, people to place, and all to spirit). Further, cultivating openness in one’s being through support of self is a perennial theme.

Fae came to yoga, coaxed by a teacher friend in 2005, more or less just before a car accident changed their life & body forever. With a practice that has grown from the traditions of many teachers in multiple cities, they have found deepest resonance with the alignment-based, community yoga she trained to teach at Studio 34. Fae is so deeply grateful for the innumerable ways that Studio 34, and its amazing community, have served her life & times.

Hasan Rucker teaches ancient, contemporary, and traditional Holistic energy-based movement art forms through systematic, progressive, and profound training methods. Hasan is a lover of life, movement, health, spirituality, knowledge and mysticism. He seeks to utilize his aspirations to advance human culture and well-being through the use of mind, body, and spirit expansion techniques. Since his early days interning with art department and physical education teachers in high school, Hasan’s desire to find the links between mind, body, spirit, and energy has led him upon a path of discovery. This Quest particularly led him to the mind, body, spirit arts of China, in the form of Wushu Kung Fu, Tai Chi Chuan, Qigong, and Meditation. While in China, Hasan learned esoteric and modern practices centered upon the balance of Yin and Yang. China’s unique history, with the Shaolin Temple being so intimately related with India, helped direct Hasan’s mind into the world of Yogic knowledge, Buddhism, and sutra. Hasan immediately developed a connection with Bodhidharma and his spiritual pilgrimages from India to China. Upon returning home, Hasan entered into a disciple program of the “self realization fellowship” of Paramahansa Yogananda to further his experience of the Yogic Kriya, Philosophy, and Physiology systems. While using his Kinesiology degree in Exercise Physiology, he began to form a unique synchronicity of all the wonderful biorhythms unlocked while practicing these wonderful systems coherently. Truly their efficacy went far beyond titles, names, and country borders. From daily astute practice of these Holistic Systems, Hasan engendered an ethos predicated upon nurturing the ideal that the human potential is limitless and available to all mankind. Today, Hasan by day works as a “Holistic Health and Wellness” Supervisor at Girard Medical Center, and works with a team of Dance Movement therapists, Art therapists, and Music Therapists to help Philadelphia’s populations in need of health assistance. During the evening, Hasan follows his energetic calling and teaches Tai Chi, Qigong, yoga, meditation, martial arts (Wushu Kung Fu), and Prana/Qi (Life Energy) healing.

In 2013, Amanda started practicing yoga because of a back injury and stayed for the way it has helped her heal from trauma and stress. As an anxious person, Amanda continues to find peace and rest within her practice and has discovered that home, for her, is where she lays her mat. Amanda completed her 200RYT training at Studio 34 in 2014, the same studio where she took her first yoga class. Forever a student, Amanda hopes to share her love for yoga as she continues to grow and learn.

Anssumane Sillá began his dancing career at the tender age of 11. He has since danced professionally for over 18 years with the National Ballet of Guinea Bissau. His career has lead him to perform for Dignitaries, Ambassadors and Presidents from around the world. Anssumane has performed in Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, South Africa and Libya. He has garnered numerous awards for excellence in dance performance and teaching. He is very excited to teach the traditional and contemporary dance style (Bijagos, Balanta, Fula, and Manjaco) from Guinea Bissau and for people to enjoy themselves while having an amazing workout and learning a facet of culture from his county.

Nicole Taylor is a 500-hour certified yoga and meditation teacher who has practiced and taught for 11 years. Her classes provide a playful, connected experience with an emphasis on stabilizing the body, drawing awareness to the breath, and quieting the mind. She is a NAMA-certified Ayurvedic Health Counselor and weaves Ayurvedic principles into her classes.

Kari uses breath as the central rhythm from which all movement stems, encouraging each student to find their unique flow. Kari pauses at each key pose allowing time to explore proper alignment, a deeper stretch, and more subtle sensations. Kari began practicing yoga at Studio 34 to work on posture, never guessing that it would change their whole way of thinking, feeling, and perceiving the world. The simple act of moving their awareness out of their mind onto the bones, muscles, breath, and deeper inside made them experience life in so many new ways. Finding a deep sense of stable happiness, Kari knows that every practice will produce a smile. Kari was moved to help others find the treasures inside themselves and pursued teacher training at Studio 34. Kari looks forward to all the places this journey will take them.