Our Guides
Brian Moore has been practicing Yang style Tai Chi for over 30 years. His Tai Chi journey started with the Martial aspect and has progressed to the health and wellness benefits over the years. He enjoys the internal energy concepts of Tai Chi for improving health, happiness and longevity. Brian is also very passionate about martial styles including Wing Chun, Baguazhang, and Tai Chi sword forms. He is excited to share and teach his never-ending love and passion for Tai Chi and hopes you too will find the benefits and joy of this practice in your life. The Chinese says “like begins at 60” so it is never too late to learn to breathe and become rooted.
Chris is passionate about practicing and teaching yoga. A certified somatic psychology educator and Theta Healing practitioner, Chris completed his yoga teacher training at Shoshone Mountain Ashram near Nederland, Colorado in 2014, and has delighted in offering yoga classes at the foot of Tava (aka Pikes Peak) ever since. Chris also works as a transformational coach for entrepreneurs seeking to tap their limitless potential (christopher-dwyer.com) and operates a vacation rental business (WhiteYarrow.com) for people visiting and conducting retreats in Old Colorado City and Manitou Springs.
Chris teaches Haṭha Yoga, an accommodating practice typified by mindful breathwork, static poses, an alignment focus, and a manageable pace. The practice is accessible to practitioners at all levels—beginner to advanced—and Chris tailors each class to attendees’ specific needs and abilities. Chris also brings progressive relaxation and sound healing dimensions to his classes to help students reach deeper states of relaxation, integration, awareness, and connection.
Chrissie leads a practice of awareness, gratitude, and intention. By paying attention to the body, mind, and breath without judgment, there is opportunity for self-reflection and growth. Gratitude is the fertile soil in which to plant the seed of intention. Intention is what you are opening up to, what you are inviting in, what you want more of in your life. Chrissie offers appropriately challenging physical postures (āsana) and breath work (prāṇāyāma) in class. She prioritizes safety with lots of options for poses to meet you where you are. She also works to give you space to have the practice you need, encouraging you to listen to your body and intuition. Chrissie believes you are your own greatest teacher. She strives to help you reveal your clearest, brightest self through the practice of yoga.
Chrissie has been practicing yoga since 2006. In 2013, she began teaching while living in Chicago. Chrissie taught for several years in Columbia, MO where she was inspired by her student and studio community. In Sacramento, CA, Chrissie taught at a nonprofit yoga studio where she had the opportunity to study trauma-informed yoga and work with survivors of sexual assault. Chrissie is passionate about sharing the practice. She has called the Colorado Springs area home since November 2019 and recently moved with her family to Manitou Springs. She loves hiking, reading poetry and historical fiction, cooking, traveling, building community, gardening, and tending to her many houseplants. She enjoys spending time with her young daughter Charlotte, husband Alex, and sweet dog Thor.
Deborah is a 200-hour Registered Yoga Teacher through Pranava Yoga Center and has completed Level I Yin Teacher Training with Kari Kwinn Yoga. She has practiced yoga on and off since 1987 and has been teaching Yin Yoga on a weekly basis since 2019. She loves to practice during the soft glowing light when the sun is below the horizon either greeting the day or letting it go. She is drawn to Yin Yoga’s cool, quiet stillness in both body and mind.
Yoga became a part of Goi's life in 2006 when she first attended a corporate yoga studio in Bangkok, Thailand, where she was born and grew up. Early in her practice, self-care was her priority in attending yoga. But later on, Goi found yoga to be more of a meditative path in her daily life, staying in the present by practicing breathing with movement.
Goi followed her passion for yoga by becoming a certified teacher through the 200-hour yoga teacher training in the U.S. in 2016 with Pranava Yoga Center, a year after she and her family permanently moved to the U.S. from Thailand. Goi continued her education in teaching yoga in different modules: yin, hot yoga, restorative, yoga wall, and children’s yoga, respectively. In 2020, Goi completed her 300-hour advanced yoga teacher training, also with Pranava Yoga Center.
Here in Colorado Springs, Goi has also followed another of her passions, her love of working with children, by becoming a preschool teacher and assistant school director. When she has extra time, Goi loves to spend it with her husband, daughter, and their cat “Milkshake,” practicing yoga, hiking, reading, taking care of her plants, and cooking Thai food for her family and friends. Yoga is a lifelong journey for Goi. She enjoys practicing with various teachers in different styles so she can bring that knowledge and experience to share with other practitioners in her classes.
LeAnne’s practice is in its early thirties now. She is delighted and honored to bring yoga’s many benefits to all practitioners. Her joyful compassion and down-to-earth sense of humor bring perspective and accessibility to the practice and honor the truth that Yoga is for every body.
LeAnne’s background as a competitive gymnast in her long-ago youth set her up to enjoy inversions, but her foray into yoga began with watching her great aunt practice via PBS. (That great aunt lived to 101.) Then, again, as an adult on the floor of her classroom during her planning period when she was teaching middle school the practice came to the rescue. The energy and patience that she could bring to her students after a few short poses and some breathing was remarkable. Her practice became much more consistent when a car accident took running out of the picture for an extended time. Yoga was therapeutic, relieving and challenging unlike anything else.
In the rest of her life, LeAnne enjoys her unusual family, travel, reading, theater and film, as well as cooking and the New York Times crossword puzzle (yep, super-nerdy!) She is grateful to yoga for its many gifts and loves to learn and teach.
Mike Kerek, YA 200hr ERYT, moved to Colorado in 2006, for our beautiful mountains and the adventures they provide. Mike fell in love with yoga from his first class back in 1995, and continued his yoga journey with Rodney Yee on VHS tapes, the first “streaming” classes. After many years of private practice, Mike decided it was time share what he lives. Teacher training in 2013 provided that space and he has been teaching ever since. He brings a calm, compassionate, and joyful voice to his classes, that are based on alignment and movement principles. Haṭha yoga and its teachings have provided Mike with the realization that moving the body mindfully, brings more mindfulness in all aspects of living. In his public classes he uses āsana to prepare the body for the stillness that pranayama and meditation provide. A diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease in 2015 further cemented this idea that āsana is a way to align the systems of the body for better health and functioning. Taking care of the physical body gives us the ability to tackle the mental side of our functioning. Yoga is much more than āsana and is really a complete system of living in all parts of this life.
When not in the studio, Mike enjoys spending time in the garden or with his with his wife, two children, and dogs in the mountains camping, skiing, or hiking.
Molly is an instructor for the number 1 globally recognized sound healing training group, the Sound Healing Academy. In addition to sound healing certification, she also holds certification as an intuitive life coach, reiki master and yoga instructor. She has a BA in voice and MA in ethnomusicology. She has traveled the world, lived in Japan for 11 years and is fluent in Japanese.
Molly has used sound healing not only to heal herself but has also become a guide helping others on their healing journeys, through sound healing, yoga movement and intuitive coaching.
In 2021, Molly took huge leaps of faith and made transformational changes in her life, including quitting her 30-year high school teaching career and moving intrastate from Indiana to Colorado to follow her heart’s calling of opening her own business of sound healing.
In addition to offering sound healing workshops through the Sound Healing Academy, Molly currently implements her award-winning teaching skills, musical background, certifications in her business Sacred Sound Healing LLC. (www.mollyadkins.com) She offers individual and group sound healing sessions, as well as life and business coaching programs and retreats.
Patricia loves to assist those she teaches in becoming their own healers and inner masters. That potential develops through understanding how our consciousness guides the energy in our meditation, breath, sound and movement practices as well as in our lives.
Patricia was first introduced to Zhineng Qigong (ZQ) in 2001, after an injury ended a devoted yoga and meditation practice of 30 years. She immediately knew that she had found not only a way to heal the chronic pain from the injury but also a cohesive system of healing and awakening that integrated the various spiritual paths and healing modalities she had studied for over 20 years.
In recent years, Patricia has had the opportunity to learn from some of the most cultivated Zhineng Qigong teachers in China, for which she is deeply grateful. She is certified through the Xi’an Research Centre to teach all levels of movement and sound healing as well as advanced methods. She is also certified as both a Mingjue Teacher and Healer through The World Consciousness Community. Mingjue means clear observer and is an advanced consciousness practice of Zhineng Qigong.
Patricia holds a doctorate in Clinical Psychology with a combined emphasis in Environmental Psychology and Creativity and focused training in transpersonal and somatic modalities. She closed her private practice in 2008 to teach. She especially loves teaching qigong in nature, sharing ways to connect and exchange qi (energy) with life in and around us.
Samantha (she/her) has been a practitioner of yoga since 2003 where she first found yoga after a back injury. What she really connected with, however, was the relief yoga offered from her self-hatred and depression. She fell in love with the peace she experienced after her practice, her community, and herSelf.
In 2007 she started teaching yoga in Green Bay, WI, where she was already employed as a personal trainer. She completed a 200-hour teacher training in 2011 at Pranava Yoga Center and after years of self-study, she completed her 300-hour advanced training in 2018.
In 2022, she became a Certified Yoga Therapist with the International Association of Yoga Therapy (C-IAYT) through her teacher Hansa Knox of PranaYoga and Ayurveda Mandala. She has thousands of hours of study as a practicing Jyotiṣī (Vedic Astrologer under Freedom Cole), is a certified Svastha Ācarya (Āyurvedic lifestyle coach, under Dr. Jessica Vellela, BAMS), an ongoing student of Saṃskṛta (the language of yoga under Keith Topar) and is also a Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT). She knows her dharma (life’s path) is to share what she’s learned through life and brings her love of studying into every class to provide a safe and thoughtful environment to her students. Her goofy and genuine character is reflected in her offerings, and she hopes to impart to her students that we all have something to learn, and yoga is one of the greatest teachers.
Taffi loves to start new projects, yet had a tendency to lose interest without completing them. Discovering yoga changed all that. Once she found the courage to attend a class, she loved the challenge it brought; the blissful feeling of sweatiness during the class and the afterglow that followed. This is just one small piece of what yoga is for Taffi. She began to see that yoga is a continuous learning experience each and every time she steps onto the mat. It is a philosophy she believes continues off the mat and into her daily life.
Having that deep desire to learn more about yoga, she enrolled in a teacher training program with no interest in teaching. Taffi taught her first class shortly after graduation in 2013 and discovered her voice as her passion grew.
Yoga is more than an āsana practice; Taffi believes yoga has a therapeutic way to empower people to discover their own awesomeness through the exploration of all eight limbs of yoga. She is excited to share how yoga is accessible for any body and everybody.
During her time away from yoga, Taffi enjoys spending time with her husband, taking long walks, and reading. She is actively embracing the changes her new life chapter is bringing. Her motto is “Embrace change… One breath at a time.”
Willow (she/her) teaches yoga to help us remember who we really are.
She began casually practicing āsana in 2006 for fitness. Nine years later, she dove into the practice wholeheartedly to get through an especially dark period of depression and anxiety. She began teaching yoga in 2017 after completing a 200-hour Power Yoga teacher training through UpRise Yoga School. Growing increasingly curious about the “why” behind yoga and how best to honor its roots, she completed a 265-hour Contemplative Hatha Yoga teacher training program through Yoga Home of Vedic Sciences in 2022. It was in this program, which explored yoga philosophy and often-ignored limbs of the yogic path, that she grew in honoring the lineage, traditions, and cultures that shared the gift of yoga with us here in the West.
Willow’s teaching style is now a hybrid of all she has seen, learned and experienced, guiding mindful and (hopefully at least sometimes) fun classes that incorporate movement, prāṇāyāma, mantra and mudrā.
Willow is also a writer, musician, social justice activist and plant-medicine coach and guide. She lives in Colorado Springs with her husband and two cats.
“I believe that all of our lives we’re looking for home. If we’re really lucky, we find it in someone’s loving arms. I think that’s what life is; coming home.”
— Anita Krizzan