Rachel, USA, E-RYT500
Coming from a background of 20 years of ballet and contemporary dance training, Rachel has always been interested in working with the body and the amazing capacity our bodies have. Rachel has been practicing yoga for 10 years and teaching for 7 years. Originally from the U.S.A., she has been a main teacher in 20 yoga teacher training courses world-wide and currently splits her time teaching yoga in India and Albania. While her practice and teaching styles are predominantly Vinyasa Flow and Ashtanga-based, Rachel also enjoys teaching Yin and Restorative yoga in order to create balance in both body and mind.
Rachel spends half of the year in India teaching Vinyasa teacher trainings in south India. Teaching on both 200-hour and advanced 300-hour yoga courses, she is currently the main asana, anatomy, teaching methodology, and alignment teacher for 300-hour trainings and is occasionally one of the main teachers in 200-hour trainings.
When not in India for the seasonal training season, Rachel spends the rest of her year in Tirana, Albania teaching yoga at the studio she co-founded 4 years ago—Tirana Yoga. After her previous job working in grassroots organizational development in rural north Albania, one of her main goals in Albania now is to see development happen at a more personal and individual level. She continues to realize this through training Albanians to teach yoga, as well as continuing to teach there herself in order to expose people to the benefits of a dedicated yoga practice and to promote change one person at a time.
Rachel’s teaching style is a blend of her own experience—drawing not only from the physical practice of yoga in both its Eastern and Western forms, but also from traditional yoga philosophy and meditation techniques in order to develop an integrative, creative, fluid class that is energizing, engaging, and inspiring for all. She is a firm believer that yoga is for everyone—meeting people on their path where they are, in order to help them move forward with awareness, mindfulness, and heightened consciousness.