Judith Isaacs
Introductory

Judith Isaacs has been studying yoga since 1988 and teaching since 1994. She has studied in India with the Iyengar family and considers Mary Dunn her primary teacher.

Since 1972, Judith has been a teacher of the Alexander technique, a gentle, hands-on approach to postural alignment and unlearning tension patterns. She practices Authentic Movement, a contemplative process in which one learns to move from the source. She is also a painter and collagist.

Judith is also quite taken with her two cats and is a lover of jazz and the Argentine tango.

She describes her teaching style as “earthy, challenging, and compassionate.” Her own Iyengar Yoga practice helped her overcome depression. “After some years of practice, it was no longer an issue for me. I owe this to the method’s ability to effect profound changes in the mind and body.”

She offers this advice to new students: “Stick with a teacher you connect with.” From that commitment comes “a deep trust in the teacher and faith in the learning process itself” that creates a foundation on which to develop a solid practice.

Richard Jonas
Introductory

Richard Jonas has studied yoga since 1990 and taught Iyengar Yoga since 2000. He looks forward to his studies with the Iyengar family in India in February, 2006; his primary teachers are Mary Dunn and Brooke Myers.

Richard has taught yoga to people living with AIDS and to incarcerated teenagers at Rikers' Island. His teaching style is persistent, patient, and motivating.

“Yoga helped me work my way through a serious injury, while giving me emotional balance and a spiritual grounding I never had before,” he says. “I teach to share with others what was given to me.

“The Iyengar method spoke to me from my first class. The way it tied together body, mind, and spirit made it clear this would be a worthwhile lifetime pursuit.”

Previously Richard worked as a writer, in advertising (writing TV commercials) and journalism (as a film and music reviewer, reporter, and editor). He co-founded Children of Nowhere, which funds health care for children with AIDS in Romania.

He advises new students, “Listen to your teacher, listen to your body. Don’t compare yourself to others—compare yourself to yourself. Watch for progress. It will come, and the watching hones your perceptions. Work with what you understand and trust that in time your understanding will be enlarged.”

Genevieve Kapuler
Intermediate Junior III

Genny Kapuler has studied yoga since 1976 and has been teaching since 1980. She has studied three times in India with the Iyengar family. Her primary teacher here is Mary Dunn.

Before the birth of her child and before she began teaching yoga, Genny performed as a modern dancer; for many years she had her own company. She is also trained as an Alexander-technique teacher and is a practitioner of Body-Mind Centering.

In addition to her yoga training, Genny has studied anatomy extensively.

She applies this knowledge to her understanding and teaching of yoga, directing her students toward a deeper awareness in asana and pranayama through precision of alignment. Genny also uses the poetics of language to guide her students, and to create ”a mind-state in the room that is gentle and focused.”

Through Iyengar Yoga, she says, students attain ever more precise alignment of the skeletal-muscular, organ, and nervous systems. Working towards harmony of body, mind, and spirit, they are able to move out into the world with more grace.

Gina King
Introductory

Gina has been teaching movement to people of all ages for over 25 years. She has been practicing Iyengar Yoga since 1994, and began teaching in 2000. She has studied with the Iyengar family in Pune; her primary teachers have been John Schumacher, Patricia Walden and Manouso Manos.

Gina received her BFA in dance from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1981, and after a professional career turned her attention to studies of human movement. She earned a Master's degree in Movement Studies from Wesleyan University where her studies focused on the nervous system, perception and attention. Gina's life reached a turning point when she discovered Iyengar Yoga and found that it provided a way of studying these same things through practice and self-observation. This has enabled her to blend her interests in science, human experience and art within the context of a spiritually-based practice.

Gina sees each student as unique, and gives personal attention in her classes. She thinks of the asanas and pranayamas, along with the other limbs of yoga, as tools. Each practitioner can learn to use them in order to live more skillfully and peacefully, with more contentment and joy. Her goal as a teacher is to help each student to clear away the obstacles that keep him or her from living in the best possible state of health, serenity and awareness.

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