Elaine Musselman

Elaine is founder of Akasha Project. She comes from a background in art and architecture, and has worked for non-profit organizations. Her personal interests include philosophy and self-care of the body and spirit. She has taken  teacher trainings with Tias Little, OM Yoga, and Anusara in 2008. While Anusara has been her primary inspiration, she has also studied Restorative Yoga with Jillian Pransky and has a certificate in Trauma Sensitive Yoga through Bessel Van der Kolk and David Emerson. It is her hope and commitment to help provide yoga to people who could benefit from yoga but may not otherwise receive it. Starting Akasha Project has been a coming together of many of her passions and she is extremely grateful for the opportunity to give back some of what she has been given from all of her amazing teachers, family, and friends.
 
 

Taylor Garrabrant

Taylor connects deeply to Anusara® Yoga in its ability to always offer more. By weaving the principles of alignment with an invitation to step into one’s heart, Taylor offers a playful and precise approach for students to feel expansive through their own possibilities. Her enthusiasm to teach grew from a teaching background in dance to completion of an Anusara teacher training at Virayoga with Zhenja La Rosa.
 
Off the mat, Taylor works for an NGO that provides small grants to grassroots projects that empower women and children in developing countries. Bridging these passions is her work with Akasha Project, teaching yoga to young women at The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem (TYWLS). She enjoys watching the students connect to themselves and each other through yoga. She is enormously grateful for all of her teachers who continue to support her along this journey!
 
 

Kevin Lamb

Kevin began practicing yoga with the dawn of the new millennium and has been deeply in love ever since. He completed his first hatha yoga teacher training in 2005 at Yoga on Main in Philadelphia, studying under of David Newman, Shiva Das and Ed Zadlo. From Philadelphia to Hawaii, Kevin has been expanding his practice and teaching through the years, now blissfully aligned with a passionate Anusara practice and working toward full Anusara certification. He completed the first level of study within this divine methodology in August 2009 at Virayoga, studying under Zhenja La Rosa, Eric Stoneberg and Douglas Brooks. He offers immense gratitude to his family for all their love and support, Elena Brower for her generous spirit shared so freely, and his friends and teachers who allow him to see himself more clearly each and every day. Much, much love!
 
 

Marjorie Nass

Marjorie is a Certified Anusara® Yoga teacher who discovered Anusara’s life-affirming philosophy, universal principles and supportive community when she sought stress relief after a decade working in corporate environments. Her life dramatically shifted for the better as she explored and intensified her yoga practice. The path of teaching followed to offer others the gift of yoga. Since 2001, Marjorie has been teaching yoga privately in New York City, where she specializes in using Anusara® yoga therapeutically.
 
She offers gratitude to her teachers John Friend and Amy Ippoliti, and many other esteemed Anusara teachers in the community. marjorienass.com
 
 

Sara Neufeld

Sara leads two weekly Akasha Project yoga classes at the non-profit Groundwork, Inc. in East New York, Brooklyn. One class is for teens in their after-school program, and the other is a community class where participants range in age from young children to parents and even grandparents.
 
A certified Anusara teacher, Sara developed her passion for working with urban youth while covering public education as a newspaper reporter for over a decade. She continues to write about education – and now yoga – as a freelancer. In addition, she serves on the board of the Lineage Project, which provides yoga to at-risk and incarcerated youth in New York City.
 
She is also a teacher and program coordinator at Abhaya Yoga, an Anusara studio in Dumbo. She has accumulated more than 1,000 Anusara credit hours and completed youth-specific trainings with Street Yoga and Full of Joy Yoga. She is proud to be a third-generation yogini: her mother is a yoga teacher in Connecticut, and her grandmother is her mother’s most loyal student. saraneufeldyoga.com
 
 

Lora Nelson

After practicing yoga for many years, Lora was drawn to the heart-centered and life-affirming approach of Anusara yoga. She is proud to have completed her teacher training in Anusara yoga with Zhenja La Rosa at Virayoga in 2009 and is thrilled for the opportunity to teach at Validus Preparatory Academy, an Outward Bound Expeditionary Learning High School in the South Bronx. This class, sponsored by Akasha Project, combines her passion for the transformative power of yoga with the rewards and challenges of her work with young people at New York City Outward Bound.
 
Lora is honored for the chance to impact the lives of these students, as well as her own, through a practice of yoga that challenges and supports us to recognize our own true nature. She feels much gratitude for the Anusara Kula and, in particular her teachers and fellow students at Virayoga and Akasha Project.
 
 

Julia Pearring

After taking her first Anusara Yoga class, Julia set the intention of lifelong studentship. She felt a deep knowing and recognition of the joy that underlies the practice of Anusara Yoga. By acknowledging the highest within, she invites her students into an ever expanding freedom of moving intentionally from our core. Julia received her training at the World Yoga Center, where she continues to study and deepen her understanding of the yoga teachings with Rudrani Farbman. She is an Anusara-inspired teacher currently working toward Anusara certification, and she welcomes you into the practice!
 
 
 
 

Siri Peterson

Siri Peterson met her first yoga teacher, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, when she was 11 years old and has been a devoted yogi since that moment. An Anusara-inspired yoga teacher, she has completed more than 1,500 hours of training in that tradition.  She empowers students to connect with their inner teacher through inquiry, exploration and individual self-expression.  Her classes combine precise biomechanical alignment and practical philosophy, encouraging students to celebrate their freedom and test the boundaries of their ever-evolving potential. Yogis can expect a vigorous and challenging asana practice that combines flowing, dance-like sequences with long holds to cultivate a balance between effort and surrender, on and off the mat. Siri’s teaching is deeply informed by her continuing studies with John Friend, Dr. Douglas Brooks, Sally Kempton, Carolyn Myss, and the many incredible members of the vibrant New York yoga community.
 
In addition to teaching yoga, Siri and dances and choreographs, presenting her work in various venues throughout NYC.
 
 

Tim Seiwerath

Tim Seiwerath learned the deepest and most powerful aspects of yoga from his family, people who do not study the Indian discipline but who live their lives serving others. He was carried by this spirit of service into founding the Yoga for People with Parkinson’s program, which for the past five years has brought daily classes to students in Seattle who have Parkinson’s Disease. He came to New York City to share adaptations of the physical yoga practice that are accessible to and beneficial for everyone, regardless of ability. His three formal paths of study have been through Samadhi Yoga, Acro Yoga, and as servant to the “Teacher’s Teacher,” Dharma Mittra.
 
 
 
 
 

Ola Widera

Ola’s classes combine the knowledge of yoga, science and human anatomy to explore the power of the body. Her students learn how to use their inner resources, breath and internal awareness, to discover their full potential. Her first training was in vinyassa at Sonic Yoga Studio in New York. That led to her studying Ashtanga Yoga under Pathabi Jois in India. Finally, the elegant arrangement of the principles of Anusara Yoga became her foundation and passion. She continues to deepen her study of Anusara Yoga under the guidance of a great community of teachers: John Friend, Elena Brower, Zhenja La Rosa and philosophy teacher Douglas Brooks. www.yogaola.com